Valedictory Advice

Valedictory Advice to Friends, Classmates, and Colleagues in World Arts & Cultures
“Choose life.
Choose a career.
Choose a family.
Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish brats you spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future.
Choose life...”
--Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
Rarely have I used drugs to numb the pain—the haunting hunger for approval, the lonely need for a caressing hand on my cheek, the aching wish for someone to be there and tell me things will be all right.
No, I’ve born that sadness, that chain about my neck, sober and awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering how long before the stink of my rotting body would annoy the neighbors enough to call the police to break down the door.
Sometimes not much keeps me away from a box cutter or bottle of pills—not much except a fuzzy, black & brown friend, who finds his own way of reassuring me, like when he winks as if to say, “Maybe things would be better if we just went outside and rolled around in the grass…”
Therefore, I reckon Tucson (well, dogs in general) has been the best therapy—for everyone--and bringing him with me to school everyday has been my own secretly--successful activist--art.
Dogs make the best socializing agents, so it always seems bizarre to me that Hollywood churns out weepy-eyed blockbusters featuring lovable dogs like “My Dog Skip” and “Old Yeller,” and zillions of books strongly advise people to adopt a dog (you’ll live longer and less stressfully) yet, when I take my dog on the bus, people freak out like I’m attached to an alien!
I reassure them by muttering something about being disabled, and there’s a collective sigh of relief (Whew! Glad that guy has a disability and needs a dog to help him out!)
Folks hate talking about mental illness—it makes them uncomfortable—something you whisper like “cancer.”
Again, I can’t figure this out, especially when our campus boasts its own psychological services center (which limits the number of sessions students can receive because the therapists are so completely back-logged) and dozens of workshops and groups targeted at coping with depression and anxiety, while hovering o’er all: the gigantic industrial-hospital complex filled with psychologists, psychiatrists, and clinicians.
Nevertheless, when I transferred to UCLA two years ago, I was the only person with a dog on campus (there weren’t even any seeing-eye dogs!) and most people had never heard of therapy dogs before.
It warms my heart there are at least three other dogs on campus now, for which I’d like to take some small amount of credit.
Thus, before our Commencement commences, I advise the underclassmen, graduate students, and professors to make room in your lives for a dog.
Maybe even two dogs.
You’ll be glad you did.
I promise.