Graduation Ceremony 20
Monday 7 December 2015 at 1630hrs – Jesuits Church Valletta
Graduation Oration
Dr Malaika Sarco Thomas B.A. MALS, M.A., Ph.D., P.G.C.H.E., F.H.E.A.
Head of Dance Studies at University of Malta
Dreaming Big, Falling Forward, Seeing Beauty:
Small Acts of Revolution for the 21st Century
Good evening graduates, faculty, staff, and loved ones. I would like to thank the Senate very
much for the invitation to be here today. It is truly an honour and a delight to share this
occasion with you, and to be able to offer some thoughts about what might be useful to
keep in mind as you ‘commence’ your lives from this point. It’s a beginning, isn’t it? One
thinks commencement sounds like the completion of a degree, but it is the first steps
beyond the support of university and the start of the rest of your life in the world. And what
a world we are in! This is the year which was most definitely the future when I was a kid in
1985, when Michael J. Fox played Marty McFly in Back to the Future, and he was transported
to 2015, a world of hoverboards and expanding pizzas.
Now, although I haven’t seen hoverboards on the streets yet, they aren’t too far off, and
anyway on the Strand in Malta, the sight of someone riding on a Segway has become
relatively commonplace. This question of the future, is the question we have before us this
evening, as we celebrate you, graduates of 2015.
As a dancer and academic, I have sat in your seat many times, listening with curiosity to hear
what wisdom might be offered to a group of graduates on one of life’s most remarkable
celebrations. Now I have been tasked with offering some kind of wisdom to a large group of
freshly educated people, an invitation both daunting and exciting.
So before I say something about dreaming big, falling forward and seeing beauty, I would
like to congratulate you for your phenomenal accomplishment. As each of you knows all too
well, achieving a degree is no small task, and you should each be extremely proud of your
achievement. It has taken extraordinary time, effort, and dedication to reach this moment. I
am impressed, and encouraged by the degrees represented here today, including Masters in
Mediation, Human Rights, Climate Change, Law, Linguistics, Music, and more. Your talents
are urgently needed in our lively and diversifying world.
Congratulations also to the lecturers. All this would not be possible without your inspiration,
dedication, and love of what you do. Congratulations as well go to administrators, support
staff, technical and estates staff—I am sure every graduate here can think of how his studies
at the University of Malta have been made easier by many hardworking, kind-hearted
people. Finally, congratulations are owed to loved ones who have supported these
graduates through the process—those who have believed in them, coached them, been
there to offer guidance, encouragement, chocolate, tea, and sometimes a good kick in the
right direction—you too, must know how essential your role has been. To accomplish
something great, both the dreamers and the supporters are equally vital, and in many ways
they are interdependent—by supporting others in reaching for their dreams we enable our
own dreams to grow.
So, I would like to talk today about dreaming big, which to me, is a matter of the spirit. One
could remark that dreaming is also a matter of getting more sleep, a cause I am sure many
of us here would also support! But whether it is brought about through napping, or creative
work and deadlines, dreaming is part of who we are. Throughout your studies you have
exercised your minds with many ideas. Having achieved a degree from the University of
Malta you are accomplished critical thinkers, and have been guided toward being engaged,
creative and thoughtful citizens of this world. Now you have an even greater task before
you: how will you use this education to nourish your spirit, and the spirit of others?
I will begin with a true story. In 2005 I listened to a talk given by Satish Kumar, a Jain monk
turned writer and activist, about how he began a walk around the world for peace. Kumar
was raised in India and as a young boy his family pledged him to the Jain order to serve his
life as a monk. For years he trained to the finest level of detail in prayers and practice. In the
way of the Jain tradition, he swept the path before him when he walked, lest he tread on an
innocent bug, and only ate food received by donation (Jain monks beg for their food, and it
is customary for villagers to feed monks as a sign of their devotion). At age 18, inspired by
Mohandas K. Ghandi’s book, My Experiments with Truth, Kumar decided to leave the Jain
order and to dedicate his life to acts of nonviolence and civil disobedience for peace. In 1962
he and friend E P Menon embarked on a ‘peace walk’ to the four nuclear superpowers of the
world. Travelling by foot and without money, they accepted food and shelter from those
who offered it on their path from India through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Iran, the
Caucaus Mountains, Georgia and the Khyber Pass to visit Moscow, Paris, London, and
Washington D.C. where they visited world leaders and urged them to disarm. Kumar’s book
No Destination, Autobiography of a Pilgrim documents this walk and his belief that
reverence for nature should be at the heart of any political debate.
Kumar is a normal person who took incredible risks, to pursue a dream he believed in.
Hearing his story inspired my own PhD project, which sounded equally ludicrous as an idea
in the beginning. In 2006, my husband Richard and I journeyed by foot, hitchhiking and rail,
over land from England to China, planting trees and giving dance performances. We did this
in order to investigate how improvisation might be an ecological practice; we called this
initiative the TWIG Project. ‘TWIG’ stands for Together We Integrate Growth, but in British
colloquial English, ‘to twig’ also means ‘to understand or realise something’.
Though we also travelled with very little money, our journey too was unimaginably rich. We
planted over a hundred trees, worked with three hundred children over the course of a sixmonth journey, and met many people who supported the project through their interest,
curiosity and openness. What we found was that tremendous experiences are possible when
you go out on a limb (or a twig!)—and when you do something as a result of dreaming
rather than as a result of being ‘realistic’. As actor Denzel Washington said:
I found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Nothing.
I’m sure people have told you, ‘make sure you have something to fall back on!’ I don’t
want to fall back, I want to fall forward. If I’m going to hit something I want to see
what I hit. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success. If you
don’t fail, you’re not even trying. To get something you never had, you’ve got to do
something you never did. Fall forward. 1
I think falling forward is vital for the spirit. Taking risks to pursue what is close to our heart
will keep us truly alive.
This feeling of falling forward is also beautiful to me, for two reasons. Firstly, as any
contemporary dancer knows, falling safely requires being soft and open; having tension in
the body means greater possibility of injury from a fall. Soft falling is safe falling. Secondly,
falling forward requires having attention forward, mind forward—or, a ‘big feeling’ as we say
in Ki Aikido, the Japanese martial art I practice. If you have a small feeling, the person
attacking you has already won. If you greet each new situation with a big feeling, like
opening your arms to a long-lost friend, then there is immediately softness, and no
possibility to be afraid. Softness is not the same as being naive; it is a warm, interested
response. In Ki Aikido, I can still move quickly if I need to, to avoid danger, but the forward
feeling of my attention means that I can see a dangerous situation coming with plenty of
time to act. If I act small, and shrink backwards in fear and doubt, then I am already lost.
Falling forward is about being vulnerable, courageous, and soft.
So what is softness? To me, softness is about sensitivity to the things happening all around
us; it is about noticing beauty. In a world where more and more value is placed on what
appears on the screen, and less and less admiration is given to the tangible world of senses
we live in, noticing real life: real beauty, real everyday heroes and real humanity can be
revolutionary acts. And I’ll fall forward here, at the risk of sounding naïve when I say this is
about spending time with a small child, letting a ladybird walk on you, feeling raindrops on
our face, seeing a flower pushing up through the crack in the pavement; can we be touched
by these small but powerful acts of life? Can we value these moments beyond the pressures
to be productive, realistic, and clever? Can we really see the sunsets and sunrises for
ourselves, and not just to take a photo of it? Dance artist Simone Forti captures this feeling
of seeing beauty, and softness, in small poems. She writes:
I saw a man in pyjamas walk up to a tree, stop, regard it, and change his posture’2.
At the opening ceremony of this academic year, our Rector, Professor Juanito Camilleri,
reminded us that we are living in exciting times of rapid change. The information processing
speed of a computer chip is doubling every two years, he said, and at this point, a computer
chip can already mimic the processing capacity of a mouse’s brain. He posed the question:
what will these changes bring to our lives in the next twenty years? What does it mean for
humans that machines become so intelligent, capable and prolific? I think one answer is that
we need to celebrate our humanness, our dreams, our softness, our creativity.
1
in his commencement address to the graduates of Pennsylvania State University 2011.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpW2sGlCtaE
2
Simone Forti, 1978. Handbook in Motion, Contact Editions, p. 9.
According to Jose Mujica, former president of Uruguay, who has been part of real revolution
in his lifetime, ‘more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these
qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost’3.
Softness and gentleness might seem unrealistic in our current economic system. Realism,
however, may be overrated. In response to criticism that Kumar’s goals for world peace are
unrealistic, he says:
Look at what realism has done for us. They have led us to war and climate change,
poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of
humanity goes to bed hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the world. I will tell
people who call me ‘unrealistic’ to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an
outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept.4
Each of us faces the voice of realism in our heads, and in the words of people who try to
protect us. But I would like to talk with you today about small acts of revolution toward
something more important: your dreams. Recently I attended the book launch of a friend
who published her first book of poetry, Pomegranate Heart. In an impromptu, heartfelt
speech, Miriam Calleja said, ‘If I have learned one thing from this experience, it is to go for
your dreams. It will be both easier, and harder, than you can imagine’.
So I wonder, at this moment of commencement, what dreams do you have for yourself, for
others, and for the twenty-first century? What are the dreams you have that feel too crazy
to admit? Those are the real keepers. Keep them close to you. Anything truly beautiful, and
worth dreaming will be met with some resistance along the line. Think of Ghandi’s work, and
Martin Luther King Jr. Both started with a dream that they pursued quietly, diligently,
bravely, but they continued to reach further, to fall forward. As the skateboarders say,
‘skating isn’t the art of staying on, it’s the art of getting up again’.
If you live this way, you will find that not only are you able to enjoy the dreams of others,
but your own dreams will find support and allies in unexpected places. The world needs
courageous dreamers, more and more. So fall forward. Do things that challenge you; notice
the beauty around you; move in the direction of your biggest dreams. If you do, wonderful
things will happen. Adventures come from going somewhere new. You will fall, but, you will
fall in the right direction, and then you will rise again in that direction. Trust yourself,
champion the best in others, and fall forward toward your dreams with courage, softness
and openness.
Thank you.
[2135 words]
3
Jose’s Interview: Uruguay HUMAN. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GX6a2WEA1Q
4
Sica, Giulio (16 January 2008). "What part does spirituality play in the green movement?".
The Guardian (London). Retrieved 23 May 2010.