In a 2000 commencement address...
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In a 2000 commencement address at Villanova University, newspaper columnist Anna Quindlen had some wise words to share with college graduates. Departing from the usual bromides about striving for excellence and pursuing success, Quindlen encouraged the class of 2000 to order their lives in a radically different way: “Don’t ever forget,” she wrote, “what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for re-election because he’d been diagnosed with cancer: ‘No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the office.’ Don’t ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: ‘If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.’ Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: ‘Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.’ ” Let us make the most of the time.
