 the commencement address. Before I keep time to our commencement speaker, let me share a brief introduction of Sir Paul Kimomo. Dr. Kimomo Paul Kimomo was born in Akok in Waka district and his wife, Puchonori Cha from Ichakama Kuhima district. He then migrated to the U.S. in the mid 1980s and now living in American North West with their families. Dr. Paul Kimomo received his formal education from North East India and USA. He received his doctoral degree in English Literature at Southern Indian University at Carbondale. Dr. Kimomo is an emeritus professor at Central Washington University in the United States. Sir retired in the year 2019 after teaching English for four decades in five universities, both in India and in the USA. The Booger and Nordic Central University in India and Southern Indian University, Georgia Southern and Central Washington in the United States. His teaching varies from colonial post-colonial literature, 19th and 20th century British literature, world literature, literary theory, African American literature, and human rights literature. He has several publications in diverse fields and has appeared in several journals in different countries. They include the critical quarterly UK Journal of Commonwealth of Post-colonial Studies, interdisciplinary press, Oxford, the Netherlands, Naga Freedom Struggles and Cultural Studies, which was published in the Economic and Political Weekly Heritage Publishing House and many others in India. To add to his scholarly achievement, he has also trained English or Japanese in usage dictionaries for Japanese learners of English in Japan. Sir, we are privileged to have you in our midst today. Ladies and gentlemen, and I present to you a commencement speaker. Sir, the time is yours. Thank you very much, Dr. Pesie, for the lovely introduction delivered with a smile. So that was really great. And if I may call you by your first name, who is at least for in the beginning here, for those hard warming sentiments that you expressed about the friendship of our families, two families. I can assure you that the sentiment is mutual. So good morning, everybody. Warm greetings to each and all of you. Principal Dr. Herwessa Lauren King and the administrative leaders of Tetsuo College, the managing board, faculty and staff, students and parents and friends of the college. It is wonderful to be among you today and on a personal note, my wife, Rose Putronau and I convey our warm regards to our friend, Mrs. Sachinle Lauren and the Lauren family, whom we have not seen in person for too long, in 30 years. Dear Tetsuo College and higher secondary graduating class of 2021, I feel privileged to address you and your parents and well-wishers. It is a special honor and I'm grateful for this opportunity. But before I say anything further, I'd like to dedicate this talk to Dr. Pierce Lauren, the founder principle of Tetsuo College and my friend, going back a long time in the 1980s in Shalom and in the United States and Southern Illinois. May I invite you all then to please join me for a moment of silence in grateful remembrance of Dr. Pierce Lauren's exemplary personal life and immensely successful work in higher education in Agiland, about which you know better than I do. I don't doubt Dr. Lauren's presence among us this morning in ways we may not immediately realize. Let's pause for a moment then of silent reflection. Thank you, Lauren, for everything. Your life's work continues in and through the people of Tetsuo College, whom I'm so privileged to address here today. Goodbye, my friend. Today's graduates and parents, you know better than I do, how difficult this last year and a half have been for you to get here. The pandemic has ravaged the world, killing over 4 million people and disrupting our lives to an extent we have not seen in our lifetimes. This has been a season of confusion and unnecessary divisions, but across the divides, we have witnessed two realities in the world that we will do well to remember. First is the massive tragedy and suffering on a global scale. Most of it reported to us anonymously, simply as numbers and statistics. But we know, of course, that each death is experienced intimately and personally, by the deal once left to grieve. Some of you may have also lost a family member or a friend at the pandemic. All of these goes to show we are all in this global problem together and we must each tour apart, however small it may seem to be. Not to do so, not to do so, would be grossly irresponsible. The second reality is the other side of the tragedy, the simple fact of human caring and love for one another, manifested in healthcare professionals and communities around the world and the genius of human ingenuity excellence is one of your motos of the college and the genius of human ingenuity and excellence among scientists and epidemiologists who have given us the means to cope with this terrible world problem, vaccines. So we better get them. So graduates, as we do our part to help eradicate the pandemic, still raging in many parts of the world by getting vaccinated, let this day of your graduation be a celebration of the other side of the pandemic in your lives, a day on which you plant two seeds of caring empathy and professional excellence for the common good. Your graduation shows that you are capable of both empathy and excellence. You and your parents have had to overcome extra challenges to graduate this year instead of later. That you have survived the pandemic may be partly good luck, but you're graduating today says something more than luck about you. It shows your determination to work hard and to succeed even in the worst of times. So graduates and congratulations to every one of you. And there are some of you here and I've seen wonderful speeches by four of you here. There are some of you here who are toppers and gold medalists. Your achievement speaks volumes about your personal resolve and drive for excellence. You have my sincere admiration. Congratulations. So what next? As successful as you are today, you didn't get here to this point in your life by yourself. You did it in partnership with others, your family, professors, advisors, friends, people in your community, whether the community is Tetsuo College, a church, town, village and so on. And despite the fact that you are in Nigerland, the community you also belong to is larger than wherever you are. It is global as well. Everybody says we live in an interconnected world because we do, though we don't often act like we mean it. We should mean it and live it. This event is a small example of a global community in action. I'm speaking to you Friday morning in Nigerland from my home in American North West on a Thursday night. I live 12 and a half hours behind you, which means that my life follows yours on the clock. That of course allows me to avoid all your mistakes and doubt and double your successes. Would that be true? Or perhaps in my life is second hand, a diluted form of your original lives? I don't know. The point, though, is that our lives as human beings happen in time and in space, in different clock times here or there, and we define ourselves within the same difference of our times and places. That is why I have decided to share with you for the remainder of my talk about the human phenomenon of the sameness of difference in our lives with reference to just three aspects. I've titled my talk, Clearing Confusion for Mindful Living. Let us start with two facts of life and a conclusion from those facts. The first fact, difference is a fact of life and reality on this planet Earth in the natural and material world as well as an animal and human world. Just look at the immense variety of biodiversity, of plants, insects and reptiles and animals. There is no counter argument to this. Second, diversity. If difference is a fact of life, then so is diversity. Diversity amplifies the visible differences that we see and hear and taste and smell all around us, not just the outward variations of difference, but the invisible inward states as well. So the conclusion from these two facts, when we put these two facts of difference and diversity on the planet together, the conclusion we are forced to arrive at is coexistence. Nothing seems to exist individually and separately. Everything exists in relation to something else. And there, and we share the only one habitable planet as far as we know at this time in history. What about human beings then? If we were to apply this natural reality of difference and diversity, coexisting on Earth to human beings, we quickly see that despite our diversity in color, size, gender, culture, et cetera, humans are more interconnected than we like to admit. We all exist within the same difference of space and time. We live in societies that are different, but also very similar. Human beings have thought about this reality of co-existence and framed it in various ways, but arrived at the same conclusion. Let's just take two examples. The Khosar people of South Africa have a world view they call Bantu, which translates to, we are because of other people. Let me repeat that. We are, I am because of you. We are because of other people. They came into this world because of other people and they lived not by and for ourselves alone, but with and for one another. In other words, as mindful living teachers like Tich Hat Han exude us, we cannot exist apart from others. We are incomplete beings by ourselves. Yes, incomplete beings. Humans are naturally symbiotic creatures. The reality of our lives is not, I think therefore I am. The reality is, I am not I without you. Hence, I am not unless you are. We inter are despite our differences and diversity. So let's briefly apply this idea of sameness and difference to everyday life by looking at three examples. First, we often confuse a person's temperament for their values and convictions. We mistake their personality for their character and worth. The reality is, person's personalities can do, can and do share the same or similar values and convictions. Because we are remembering Dr. Piers Lauren in a special way today, let me refer you to his mild, calm, patient temperament. His genial personality, with the wimmiest of smiles anywhere in the world, his thoughtful and measured manner of speaking and pleased indulge me for a contrast in temperament. Unlike Lauren, I'm impatient and passionate, too quick to react and respond to people's views and I show obvious annoyance with arrogant people. Despite this clear difference in our temperament and personalities, I notice very early on in our friendship back in Chalong that we shared the same values, respect for people, kindness, justice and fair play, human rights, peaceful coexistence, hard work and looking out for the common good. With these shared values, difference in our personalities do not matter, or if it did, it became a welcome form of difference and diversity in our friendship. The second common confusion has to do with separating success from failure, as though they are opposites. The reality in fact is that success and failure are inseparable, they are different of course, because we experienced them differently, but they coexist in us, failures don't happen outside, failures happen within ourselves, because we experienced them differently, but they coexist in us, as I said, they are ultimately related and intimately so, they inter are and they collaborate to shape the kind of persons we become, depending on our response to them. I bet you have your own examples of something, you consider the failure, which later turned out to be the start of an unexpected success. Not only that, sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between success and failure. Let me draw another example from Lauren and me. Back in the late 1980s, when both of us had completed a PhDs in the US, he in education, I in English, we were ready for our next move in life. If my idea of success then was to return to Nagaland and finding a job that would make a difference for our people, then I was a failure, because I stayed back in the US. If Lauren's idea of success was the same, to return to Nagaland and do something useful for our society, he was a success, a huge success. Tetzel College and you are living proofs of that success. Suppose our idea of success at that time were reversed, to stay back in the US, that's the way our people used to think in those days, and we ended up where we did, I in the US and he in Nagaland. Looking back over the decades, what has our respective success or failure done to our lives as individuals and as educators? I would unhesitatingly say, this was a huge success, much greater than mine, though I wouldn't call my life a failure either. In other words, what we call success and failure are different at the moment of the experience in our perceptions of them, but not in their nature and significance in our lives. Over a lifetime, success and failure are in fact inseparable. One thing crucially that defines the difference though is this, we must be true to ourselves in both situations, success or failure, at least as we understand them to be. We could say then the success and failure are like the two sides of a sheet of paper, two sides, I can't have this without this success, failure, and so on. So we could say then the success and failure are like the two sides of a sheet of paper, the left and right sides, or the back and front of your palm, one exists because of the other, that's why we say success and failure coexist, they enter R. The third one that I want to come to today is, and the last point about difference and sameness and confusing things is the common confusion of assuming death puts an end to life and the possibility of good. That is, we think life is good and we should leave us though and do the good and because death puts an end to life, therefore we think death is essentially bad. Of course, there are religious and other interpretations which create another kind of situation post-life on earth, but that's a different separate issue here. Now let's apply this enter R reality test here on to life and death. There can be no life without death. We know that, that's obvious. They are like the two sides of the paper, the front and back of your palm, life and death enter R. Accept them, welcome them both, because life will not have the meaning it has without death. It's counterpart, it's counterpart. For one thing, we know the human capacities and resources the person builds while alive live on and earn dividends for generations after the person dies. That is because life and death are in a relay. Relay race is not just a sports event. It is the law of nature. This is an equal opportunity sport. Unlike the summer Olympics going on in Tokyo, we are all participants in the Olympic human relay of life and death in just in just measure. Everyone born dies sooner or later to live on transformed lives or other forms of existence in various ways. Today's Tetsuo College and Higher Secondary Class of 2021 are joining the more than 3,000 young people who have graduated during Principal P.S. Lawrence's leadership of the college. The human resource of intellectual excellence, professional achievement and community enrichment that have already resulted and will be flowing from the life and work of Lawrence and everyone associated with his life work in this regard do not end with the death or his death or those of his associates, meaning your sales. The relay of good and helpful people continues, as you know, in greater numbers from generation to generation. We must celebrate that in memory of our dear friend P.S. Lawrence and in anticipation of the wonderful life that today's graduates will be taking on. This is not an ideal thinking. This is a fact, a reality that we ignore only to our disadvantage and loss. Life and death are factually inseparable. They enter R. There's another sense in which death does not put an end to life. When we die, we don't turn to nothing. Even physically, I'm not talking about spiritual matters yet, but even physically, do we really turn to nothing physically? I don't think so. Let's figure this out together. Physically, we are made of the natural elements. Earth, our body mass. Water, we are about three quarters liquid. Fire, our body temperature, which keeps us alive. Air, we breathe, and that's why we have life. So we are elemental beings, children of Earth. When we die, we return to our origin. The same elemental particles and forces that drive all life forms and things on Earth. Once born, we are alive. We'll live and die and merge back with the source of our birth. We become one with the universal cosmos. And as some mindful living teachers remind us, we are like soap bubbles floating on Earth for a time and then burst to join the universe of air from which we took our first breath. But most of all, and this is the thing that we must remember. We continue to live in and through each other. The ones we leave behind and pass the baton to the living. I'd like to conclude now. As we embark on the next phase of your life, the year 2021, graduates of Terzo College, both the college answer higher secondary. I want to leave you with a blessing. The blessing of a Naga elder in the form of a simple fervent prayer to God for you. May you advance mindfully on life and life's journey. May good health, peace of mind, professional excellence, and joy of the common good keep you company today, henceforth and all the days of your life and beyond. Congratulations, cheers to all, and thank you very much for having me.