OF HOVAGUIMIAN-MANOUGUIAN
AND TAROUHI HAGOPIAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS
JUNE 28, 1992
Thirty-five
years ago, at a similar occasion I read, on behalf of my classmates a farewell speech,
summary of youthful ideals, dreams and self-promises. Today, when I no more
know everything, when values are not completely black or white, I do not permit
to myself establishing moral criteria and directions in life.
However,
dear graduates, as an alumni I would like to share with you meditations upon
the idea of success, considering them the essence of my modest life experience,
leaving to you the obligation to search for your own unique pattern of life.
As
society and as individual we have a web of values; although apt to change due
to external influences they remain guidelines for the formation of our
personality. Those values, constituting our paradigm, include national, social
and personal principles and form the basic element of our subconscious,
emotional and rational structure and its guiding force.
Since
ages, man has searched for the Truth, the Beautiful and the Good. Instead, he
has found truths, beauties and varieties of the good. History is rich with
examples of truths considered eternal being denied in an unimaginably short
period of time, with unending aesthetic discussions, with religious and
philosophical interpretations and definitions of the good. Heroes, passing
through the sieve of history, if not reduced to traitors, they have been
ignored and gods of others have been our devils. But, without skeptical
questioning, man has survived with his instinctive internal equilibrium,
finding his own truths, leaving to the judgment of time the essence of beauty,
being sometimes good and sometimes evil, trying to reach the absolute in God,
praying to Him in his moments of despair.
Success
is one of our values on social and personal levels. How can we define success?
Using what criteria for value judgment? Success may be external, material or
moral, or it may be also internal. Symbols of external success may be our
jewelry, our car or jet plane; moral success may be exteriorized by expressions
of respect expressed in our absence. But, external success is not sufficient to
access to happiness, the end reason of success. Internal success, starting with
contemplative "know thyself" is the necessary link to achieve the
thorough one. We may have great wealth, expose degrees in higher education, as
leader of our community be admired by our likes and at the same time feel
lonely in crowds.
External
success at best may be relative and incomplete if it does not provide peace of
mind.
One
of the conditions of success is intelligence, composed of several
intelligences: intellectual, practical, manual, creative etc. Guinness Book of
Records is full of information concerning the limits of human possibilities.
Our millennium has born only one Leonardo ad Vinci with capabilities
approaching total intelligence. We, with modesty, let us find our natural
skills, develop them, and realize visions of our imagination. But intelligence
is not sufficient without the driving force of will power, and stubbornness in
perseverance, in order to achieve aims forming the ideals of our values. If we
have enough knowledge to learn what we ignore, if we can satisfy our basic
needs and our personal satisfaction is neither an illusion nor bare pride, we
may consider, we have taken our first stable step towards success.
Dear
graduates,
Let
us have a balanced life. Let us give equal importance to the obligations of our
national identity, to the welfare of our family life, to the responsibilities
of our practical life, to our personal pleasure and health, to our external
relations and our inner self. If besides all above, we can bequeath sweet
memories to those who have known us, then we can say we have lived our life
fully.
To
end,
I
address my word of respect to all teachers, especially to those who a lifetime
ago, through their daily inspired educational activities they transmitted to my
generation our ethnic values and on a similar day submitted to us the
indefinable key of success.
I
bow with thanks in front of their white haired presence and to the permanence
in their eternal life.