Suresh Menon: It’s time to cut the clichés

Many people above a certain age (and in the case of women, an uncertain age too) get invited to schools to deliver inspiring lectures to students on the verge of graduating to bigger things. This is because of the myth that wisdom comes with age and the associated myth that giving youngsters advice comes naturally to those who have been youngsters themselves.

I suspect most of these lectures are prepared in some central kitchen, for they use similar language, and identical clichés in their efforts to inspire the future heroes. When I was in school (yes, all those decades ago), these speeches were already boring, uninspiring, tedious, mind-numbing, dreary… you get the idea. I was startled to discover recently that in all these years, nothing has changed.

The chief guest of the evening – in a suit and with his hair dyed strategically to suggest a combination of youth and wisdom (or old age and a young heart) – began with the most stunning platitude of them all: think positive.

The key figure in this section of his speech was Robert the Bruce, the spider man. Not the guy – for some of our younger readers – who wore strange outfits and walked up buildings, but the one who watched a spider try to build a web and fail seven times before succeeding on the eighth attempt. I nearly stood up and screamed the line from WC Fields: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”

But he had already moved on, jumping from cliché to cliché with the assurance of a mountain goat leaping from crag to crag. “You are the future,” he said with the air of a man who had just discovered an important scientific principle. I knew what was coming. It had to do with instinct, hope, promise – and there it was: “Follow your dream.” My dreams as an adolescent included dating a female movie star, punching the guy who once stole my sandwich, and so on. Had I followed my dream, I would be in jail now. I was told all those years ago that I – and my classmates – could make a difference. Now, years later, here was the same advice. Has nothing changed in the inspiringspeech business?

If I ever become the principal of a school and invite an inspiring speaker for the commencement speech, I will get him to sign a contract saying that the following messages will not be delivered to the students: make your own luck, smell the roses, be in the moment, make a difference. The SPCA – Society for the Prevention of Clichés in Academia – needs our support.