Speaking of advice for graduates, here are a few passages from recent commencement addresses that I found especially meaningful. From them I gleaned many insights on how to live more gracefully with depression and anxiety.

Toni Morrison at Wellesley College, 2004:

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human…. And although you don’t have complete control over the narrative (no author does, I can tell you), you could nevertheless create it…. The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who you are and what you mean. But then, I am a teller of stories and therefore an optimist, a believer in the ethical bend of the human heart, a believer in the mind’s disgust with fraud and its appetite for truth, a believer in the ferocity of beauty. So, from my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.

Elie Wiesel at DePaul University, 1997:

My good friends, we are all waiting. We are waiting, if not for the Messiah, as such, we are waiting for the messianic moment. And the messianic moment is what each and every one of us tries to build, meaning a certain area of humanity that links us to all those who are human and, therefore, desperately trying to fight despair as humanly as possible and–I hope–with some measure of success.

Jon Stewart at The College of William and Mary, 2004:

How do you know what is the right path to choose to get the result that you desire? The honest answer is this: You won’t. And accepting that greatly eases the anxiety of your life experience.

Margaret Atwood at the University of Toronto, 1983:

When faced with the inevitable, you always have a choice. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it. As I learned during my liberal arts education, any symbol can have, in the imaginative context, two versions, a positive and a negative. Blood can either be the gift of life or what comes out of you when you cut your wrists in the bathtub. Or, somewhat less drastically, if you spill your milk you’re left with a glass which is either half empty or half full…. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.

The Dalai Lama at Emory University, 1998:

It is important to have determination and optimism and patience. If you lack patience, even when you face some small obstacle, you lose courage. There is a Tibetan saying, “Even if you have failed at something nine times, you have still given it effort nine times.” I think that’s important. Use your brain to analyze the situation. Do not rush through it, but think. Once you decide what to do about that obstacle, then there’s a possibility that you will achieve your goal.

Desmond Tutu at Brandeis University, 2000:

You know the story of the farmer who in his back yard had chicken, and then he had a chicken that was a little odd looking, but he was a chicken. It behaved like a chicken. It was pecking away like other chickens. It didn’t know that there was a blue sky overhead and a glorious sunshine until someone who was knowledgeable in these things came along and said to the farmer, “Hey, that’s no chicken. That’s an eagle.” Then the farmer said, “Um, um, no, no, no, no man. That’s a chicken; it behaves like a chicken.”

And the man said, “No, give it to me please.” And he gave it to this knowledgeable man. And this man took this strange looking chicken and climbed the mountain and waited until sunrise. And then he turned this strange looking chicken towards the sun and said, “Eagle, fly, eagle.” And the strange looking chicken shook itself, spread out its pinions, and lifted off and soared and soared and soared and flew away, away into the distance. And God says to all of us, you are no chicken; you are an eagle. Fly, eagle, fly. And God wants us to shake ourselves, spread our pinions, and then lift off and soar and rise, and rise toward the confident and the good and the beautiful. Rise towards the compassionate and the gentle and the caring. Rise to become what God intends us to be–eagles, not chickens.

Tony Snow at Catholic University, 2007:

Never estimate the power of other people’s love and prayer. When you put someone else at the center of your frame, the entire world changes for you.

Oprah Winfrey at Wellesley College, 1997:

Turn your wounds into wisdom. You will be wounded many times in your life. You’ll make mistakes. Some people will call them failures but I have learned that failure is really God’s way of saying, “Excuse me, you’re moving in the wrong direction.” It’s just an experience, just an experience.