Milton Erickson
High School Commencement Address 1936
by Milton H. Erickson
With Commentary from Jeffrey K. Zeig
This is a picture of Reeseville High School around the time that Milton Erickson was a student there. He graduated in June 1919 at the age of 18. Two months later he had a crippling bout of polio. Unearthed from the Erickson archives, we provide the following to illustrate the socio-cultural perspectives of Erickson. (For additional information: An Epic Life Milton Erickson, Professional Perspectives, and Epic Life II: Milton Erickson, Personal Perspectives, by Jeffrey K. Zeig, Erickson Foundation Press.)
In 1938 when Erickson was 37 and working as a physician at Eloise Hospital in Michigan, he was invited to give the commencement address to the graduation class of Reeseville High School
Reeseville High School was located about five miles from the Erickson farm in Lowell, Wisconsin. At the time Erickson was a student there, the school’s enrollment consisted of 30 students; Erickson’s graduating class had six students. Erickson graduated second academically in his class. There were two boys in his graduating class, one of whom became a professor at a university in the Northwest. Two of Erickson’s female classmates became schoolteachers, one became a switchboard operator and homemaker, and the other became a homemaker. According to Erickson, socially and economically, his graduating class was considered a success.
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
Reeseville High School
June 1938
Mr. Chairman, members of the graduating class, and friends and supporters of the Reeseville High School, it has been most gratifying and pleasing to listen to the kind introductory remarks by Professor Steinhoff. They make me feel deeply appreciative of the single honor that has been conferred upon me
by selecting me as the commencement speaker, and I hope that in the years to come you will, from time
to time, call upon various of your alumni to return and give an account of their appreciation for
Reeseville High School, even as it is my privilege to do so tonight.
Of all the kind remarks made in introducing me, the most pleasing and satisfying was the one which all
of you know, namely, that I am a graduate of the class of 1919. That fact alone gives me more pleasure
and satisfaction than anything else that might have been said. Hence, it is with exceedingly great
pleasure and satisfaction that tonight, 19 years after my graduation, I take this happy opportunity to
express publicly and personally my profound sense of appreciation for all the many things I gained from
the Reeseville High School, and my strong sense of gratitude and indebtedness to my teachers, to the
school board, and to all the citizens of this community who, through their own unselfish interest in and
support of the high school made it possible not only for me but for many others to gain so many things
of value in life, and to have privileges and opportunities that time and circumstances may have denied
to some of you. I feel justified in offering to you this personal expression of appreciation for all that you
have done in your daily routine execution of your duties as citizens of this community, because I know
that, even as I feel appreciative, so do my classmates of 1919, and my schoolfellows of the years before
me and the years after me. Likewise, I know that I am expressing in small part the sense of appreciation
that this graduating class of tonight has for all the things you have done for them and made possible to
them, and which they will not have full opportunity to express to you.
Hence, I say to you, the friends and supporters of the Reeseville High School, many, many, thanks for
the innumerable things that you have done, the countless contributions you have made, and the
changes and improvements you have effected so gladly and earnestly in order to provide for all of us
better and ever-increasing opportunities to prepare ourselves more adequately for independent and
self-expressive activities.
I make mention of these things because I wish to emphasize the particular educational values
obtainable only in communities like this and in high schools like ours. These values are those that derive
from the personal interest in and the personal sharing in everything pertaining to high school
developments possible only in communities like this. The primary purpose of education is always the
development of better personal and social integration, and this can be achieved best where citizens,
teachers, and students all know one another, where each takes a personal interest in the other, instead
of being strangers to one another, as is the situation in the large high schools of our big cities, where
even classmates do not know one another. But in such high schools as ours, along with the course of
studies there goes the equally important course of the integration of the individual with his fellows and
with his community, and the direct organization, through direct personal sharing of the community
about those things that represent the social ideals. In brief, in such a high school as ours we learn not
only our algebra and geometry, but the even more important task of how to share in the life of our
community.
Hence, there are many things that I would like to say to you, emphasizing the significant and
constructive values of the direct personal relationship which constitute so important an educative force
in the Reeseville High School: There are recollections of my associations with you when you were the
grown-up citizens and I was a schoolboy; my recollections of your personal and helpful interest in all
that the high school was doing, from athletics to publications to entertainment; your strong personal
interest and concern in the welfare of every student, whether it was your child or that of your
neighbor’s, my recollections of my schoolmates and those who were in the grades at that time, but who
now constitute the solid substantial younger citizenry who are looking forward to sending their children
to the old high school. I would like to call each of you by name and mention the kindly remarks, the
helpful interest, the casually spoken words of inspiration which each one of you gave to all of us
whenever we happened to meet, and which we in turn received from one another. All of this served to
help me and to help my fellows in formulating a plan of life leading to happiness and satisfaction. But
the names are too many and the list of things too long to specify. I can only make mention of these
things so that this class of graduates tonight can feel certain that their own sense of gratitude and
indebtedness to you for the opportunities and privileges you have given them will be as alive and as
warm in the years to come as it is tonight.
But much as I would like to say in full these many personal things, expressive not only of my own
happy feelings but also of those of every other graduate of Reeseville High School, neither you nor I
came here tonight for that purpose. Rather, we came here in a spirit of commendation, to do honor to
this group of young men and women, to give them recognition for their persistence of purpose, their
strength of character, their willingness to work hard for greater accomplishments, the promise they
offer, both individually and collectively, for the attainment of those better things we have all hoped for
and aspired to, but the attainment of which we must now relinquish to those who follow after us. Also,
we have come for our own sense of satisfaction in seeing the completion of a good task, in which each
of us has shared. And finally, we came to give evidence of our faith, interest, confidence, and trust in
them as our future associates in independent lives of activity, and to give promise of the continuance of
our interest in them and of our desire to aid them in the achievement of their personal joys and
accomplishments.
And since the best way the elders have of expressing this interest is to give advice, whether needed or
not, whether to be heeded or disregarded, it is customary for some one to try to voice the general
counsel and hopes that all of us entertain on such an occasion as this. Since this privilege has been
accorded to me, I shall try, members of the graduating class, to say some of those common sense things
that all of your friends here would like to say, and I shall try to put them in the same sensible, hard-
headed, matter-of-fact way that the farmers and the business men of this community used to talk to me
about the future, telling me what the hoped for me, advising me of their opinion of what was right and
what was wrong, expressing their ideas of what was desirable and good. As I look over the audience, I
see the faces of many, who in the casual conversation with me as a schoolboy, said many things that
were of service to me, who gave me better understandings of many things, although I may not have
realized it at the time.
Now I do not know just what each of you plans to do after graduation, nor is it important for me to
know. And I am sure that all of you are not certain, but even so, you know, I know, and we all know that
as time passes, each one of you will find your place in the world. And no matter how great or how small
that place may be, the only thing of importance is that you obtain from it that full measure of happiness
and contentment that is the right of each of us to expect from life. And happiness comes only from
doing well any piece of work, be it large or small, that comes your way and needs to be done. In brief, by
doing things as you have so ably expressed in your motto, “Step by Step.”
But what can I say about what may be the places you may find for yourselves in the future? Some of
you, I hope, will go on in your search of further education by attending college, but not all of you,
because there are other and equally important things that need to be done at once so that the
immediate task of continuing the substance and solidity of this community is adequately met. And it is
on the shoulders of those who do not go to college that this most important task of keeping up the
home community will fall.
Some of you, I hope and am sure, will become teachers as did some of my classmates, and thus earn
from coming generations that full measure of gratitude we all feel toward our teachers, contributing in
that way most significantly to the furtherance of all those things we know to be good, and exercising an
ever-widening influence in the affairs of men.
Still others, I hope, will become farmers and businessmen, since those two constitute the backbone of
our entire social organization without whom neither you nor I would be here. There is a need for the
youthful enthusiastic high school graduate in these fields of activity and I hope some of you will respond
to that need.
And all of you, I hope, will become fathers and mothers, since the progress of the race marches
forward on the feet of little children. And in that marches forward on the feet of little children, and in
that way each of you can make an ever-continuing contribution to your community, the world, and life
in general, and secure for yourselves those personal satisfactions, interests, and happiness that is the
right of every one of us, achieving through your children those dreams, hopes, and aspirations which the
force of circumstances denied to you, even as you tonight represent the achievement of many privileges
and opportunities denied by fate to your elders.
Now what advice can I give you directly, and in so doing say some of those things that all your friends
gathered here tonight would like to say to you? Not one of them would try to paint a rosy, fanciful
picture of worlds to conquer, of fame and riches to acquire. Rather, they would prefer to give sound,
level-headed common-sense advice, just as more than one man in the community told me, “If you just
try to be an ordinary good doctor, your job’s cut out for you.” In this same matter-of-fact way, I shall try
to give the same kind of good advice that I received.
First of all, what I would say, is to do that thing symbolized by your graduation tonight. Four years ago,
you began a long, difficult task, but you have stuck to it, step by step, and tonight you have the
satisfaction of finding your task well done. So, in the future, select some task worth your while, and stick
to it until you have the satisfaction of seeing it completed. I care not what the task may be, whether
manual work or intellectual labor, so long as you strive for the accomplishment of a good task, well
begun and well done. By adhering to that single ideal, you will find that life then becomes a series of
satisfying accomplishments, each based upon those preceding and there will not be an emptiness of life
caused by many starts and no finishes.
Next, I would suggest that you look upon your graduation as epitomizing the development of your
capacity for responsibility. You accepted the responsibility of attending high school, and as each year
passed, you accepted the responsibility of continuing your studies, although you could have dropped
out, neglected your studies, or postponed your graduation another year. The fact that you are
graduating shows that you have recognized the need of self-responsibility, that you have responded to
your sense of responsibility, to those who have given you opportunities and privileges, and that you
have benefitted from the examples of self-responsibility for a task well done set by your teachers, your
parents, and your neighbors. Now you have new responsibilities and all that any of us will ask of you is
just as you met your high school responsibilities the best you were able at the time, you now meet your
new responsibilities to the best of your abilities and will develop as you complete each new task you
select as worthy to be done.
Next, I would suggest that you entertain a wholesome respect for the work you do. Even though you
did not like some of your studies, you respected them sufficiently to measure up to the task they
constituted, and because you did, you are graduating. In the same way, whatever work you engage in,
respect it, and measure up to all the demands it places upon you. And in your attitude toward your
work, try to see and understand it in all its significance and importance. Perhaps I can illustrate my point
best by the story of three men working in a stone quarry who were asked what they were doing. The
first replied, “I am working expertly and carefully at $8.00 a day.” The second answered, “I am cutting
out perfect blocks of marble,” while the third said simply, with full understanding, “I’m helping to build a
cathedral.” And so, to each of you I say, respect and understand your work so that you can realize its
importance to yourself, your friends, and to your fellowman.
And now, finally, I wish to add one thing more and to emphasize it above all others; namely, that it is
not so much what you do, whether great things or little things, but how and why you do them. The
selfish seeking of fame and riches means nothing in the pursuit of life’s happiness and joys. Rather,
realize that the real satisfactions of life come from doing all those things that serve to promote
happiness for oneself and one’s fellowman; that the final satisfaction comes from the expression one
way or another of a love and tolerance for one’s fellows, shown in little unremembered acts of kindness
and gentleness. Hence, in looking out upon life, do not seek the cold beauty of a marble palace, but find
instead the warm joy of the handshake of an old friend.
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