Many of those dispensing advice (welcome or not) to college graduates this year are likely to address the economic downturn. Your job or career will consume much of your energy for the next 45 years or so, but I would like to invite graduates to think about other challenges.

Be conscious of how you think. When you get all caught up in what you are doing, make sure you sometimes step back from it and think about how you think about what you are doing. Beware of getting so immersed in your activities that you deny yourself perspective on what you are doing.

Listen carefully to someone who tells you that you are full of crap.   Maybe that person is wrong, but maybe not. Suspend judgement long enough to figure out that person’s reasoning.

Just as you should be slow to dismiss another’s challenge to your worldview, so should you be slow to accept someone’s approval of it. Praise may be even more dangerous than blame, if it prevents you from understanding how you think.   It isn’t easy to make time for genuine reflection. You may need to formalize that activity, if it doesn’t come naturally to you.

Art provides exactly the new perspective you need. It lets you see afresh what you may have erroneously thought you already understood. You don’t need to be rich to make sure that you regularly expose yourself to art. When you travel to a new city, stop by the museum to see the Manet. When you have a boring wait in an airport, try to read Balzac rather than Danielle Steele.
Don’t limit yourself to what you already like. If you find opera boring, but you get invited to the opera, go anyway! Try to figure out why folks like it. If you reconfirm your prejudices, you will have learned about your prejudices. If you don’t, you will have acquired a new perspective.

Have real conversations. We usually talk to one another about trivia or personal experience. It’s fine to ask about your friend’s weekend and to have an opportunity to tell about your own, but try to have some real conversations now and then.   Ask your friend when it is better to work for social justice and when it is better to work for your own advantage. Don’t just say that you liked this movie better than that movie because this one has a more attractive actor. Try to discuss what actually makes this movie better than that. When the Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on the door, explain your own concepts of God and try to understand theirs! Accept any opportunity to have a real conversation.

Finally and most importantly, love!   You may spend some hours during young adulthood worrying that you aren’t being loved enough (or, perhaps, that you aren’t getting laid enough).   Such worry, though natural, doesn’t get you out of yourself.   If you pay attention to art, or if you engage in real conversation, you are getting a new perspective; you are growing.

If you are merely being loved, you may not be getting a new perspective and you may not be growing. But if you, yourself, do the loving, you are sure to get a new perspective, for you will be striving to understand the perspective of your beloved.

So try not to worry too much about being loved, and try to pay attention to loving. The being-loved will flow from the loving, as the Beatles remarked: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”