Widener grads urged to get out of comfort zone
More than 700 get degrees on Chester campus
CHESTER >> Get out of your comfort zone and talk to someone different than yourself.
That was the advice - the potential greatness of the United States - that was imparted to more than 700 graduates at Widener University’s commencement Saturday. It all depends on their willingness to do something that may not in their comfort zone.
Steve Gillon, a Darby Township native and Cardinal O’Hara alum, shared how he only came to Widener University because it was the only place that would accept him. His plans were on becoming a Major League Baseball pitcher.
Then one day, while sitting in a medieval history taught by professor Lawrence Buck, he had a revelation.
He asked himself why couldn’t he discuss topics like the other students – and decided to hand in his baseball uniform and find the library.
Years later, he became a history professor himself at the University of Oklahoma and is an on-air host and scholar-in-residence at The History Channel.
He said he had one piece of advice for the graduates: “Life begins at 30.”
That was something told to him by historian John Morton Blum while Gillon was a 28-year-old assistant professor at Yale University. He shared his interpretation of life’s journey.
“Your 20’s should be focused on self-discovery,” he said, adding that many of the graduates had followed a path prescribed by others to that point, with elementary and high school legal requirements. “In the decade that lies ahead, you should test and challenge those expectations and, in the process, discover your true identity.”
Gillon told them how to do that.
“The only way to discover the boundaries of your capabilities and skills and to uncover hidden dimensions of your personality, is to force yourself out of your comfort zone,” he said. “That means being willing to take risks. Don’t fear failure.”
He said failure in your 20’s could be the key to success later.
“At the same time, expand your personal horizons by spending time with people who are different from you,” Gillon said. “Travel and experience other cultures. Try to see the world through the eyes of others. If you grew up in the suburbs, spend time in a city. If you are not religious, spend time with people of faith and try to understand their value system. If you grew up in a comfortable, middle-class family, volunteer at a soup kitchen or a food bank.”
He said the future of this country relies on their ability to do so.
“In my mind, the most pressing challenge is the political polarization that corrodes the very foundation of our democratic culture,” he said. “This polarization has seeped into every dimension of our public and private lives.”
It’s compounded, he said, by technology that has allowed us to create and exist within cocoons of likeminded people where social networks are formed that rely on information from specific websites and news organizations, which only reinforce what particular groups already believe.
“This ideological segregation creates an echo chamber that places a premium on purity and punishes compromise and negotiation,” he said. “A deeply divided society cannot solve the pressing problems of the 21st century.”
He quoted Abraham Lincoln in saying, “the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion.”
Gillon told the graduates they can do it – they can lead the way to preserve the very democracy and exchange of values America is founded upon.
“You can begin the healing process by building bridges of understanding, searching for common ground and highlighting the deep values that unite us and not the hotbutton issues that divide us,” he said. “If you use your 20’s to get out of your comfort zone, meet new people, expose yourself to new ideas and immerse yourself in different cultures, you will not only enrich your own life, but you can help forge a new national unity that will realize Lincoln’s dream that this divided Union continue as ‘the last best hope of Earth.’”