The following letter is adapted from remarks delivered to the Class of 2026 at their Commencement ceremony on Monday, May 18.
Once upon a time, life was supposed to keep getting easier. In the year 1900, The Ladies’ Home Journal prophesied optimistically that, by the dawn of our own 21st century, “automobiles will be cheaper than horses,” strawberries will be “as large as apples,” and “a university education will be free to every man and woman.” Also, “there will be no C, X, or Q” in our 21st-century alphabet, which I expect is welcome news for English-language learners everywhere, but also a confusing one for the 61 of you graduates who, it turns out, have been misspelling your first and/or last names your entire lives.
By the year 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes had done the math on easy living. With compounding capital growth and continuous technological advancement, “the standard of life in progressive countries one hundred years hence,” he predicted, “will be between four and eight times as high” as that of his era, and “freedom from pressing economic cares” having been generally secured, a mere 15-hour work week will be the norm by 2030—the year you will graduate from college. You must be so relieved!
Keynes had remarkable foresight in one respect: real gross domestic product per capita in the United States has in fact multiplied about sixfold since 1930, so our “standard of life,” at least by this measure, is exactly “between four and eight times” what it was then. For several decades, it also looked like Keynes might be right—or at least on the right track—about the American work week, which, including holidays and other days off, dropped from a 45-hour average in 1929 to a 35-hour average in 1982. At this rate, a 15-hour average would indeed have been achieved, not as soon as 2030, but certainly by the end of this century. The trouble is that we’ve seen virtually no change in this figure since 1982. We appear to be stuck at 35 hours.
To make matters worse, there is our growing burden of “shadow work,” a term defined in 1980 by the philosopher Ivan Illich as the “unpaid work which an industrial society demands as a necessary complement to the production of goods and services,” and which “infallibly extends with progress.” The classic example is domestic labor. In a world without household laundry machines, workers would pay someone else to clean their clothes and require increased wages to afford the service; but in our home washer and dryer world, thanks to “progress,” we do it ourselves for free, so wages don’t rise, and work hours don’t diminish, and in our so-called leisure time we get to launder and fold clothes. And by “we,” to be clear, I mean Mom. Thank you, Mom! Mom is the O.G. shadow worker.
Don’t be too envious of Mom, though. Shadow work is fast becoming an equal opportunity employer. Why trust a skilled and experienced carpenter or painter when you can go to Home Depot and do it yourself? Why hire a seasoned travel agent when you can spend an unpaid chunk of your leisure time planning with Claude? I’m sure Claude’s been to Indonesia. “Dr. Google” means you get to be the doctor, just without any pay, and now we get to be our own cashiers at the grocery store too! Who knew that ringing up loose produce could be such an adventure?
Of course there are also the social media platforms that you just have to use if you’re going to have any friends, but which require hours of weekly shadow work to “curate your content” (or, more delusionally, “your brand”), which are purpose-built to siphon off your leisure time, and which almost certainly will not compensate you for your closely tracked data even though it rises in value with every unpaid hour you “invest.”
Once upon a time, life was supposed to keep getting easier.
I learned recently that the word “ease” likely derives from an ancient term for “elbow room.” I have no idea whether Lionel Richie knew this when he wrote the pop ballad Easy for the Commodores in 1977—Lionel Richie who, by the way, was just cited by the New York Times as one of the 30 greatest living American songwriters—but, either way, his lyrics are all about elbow room. “Why in the world would anybody put chains on me?… Everybody wants me to be what they want me to be. I’m not happy when I try to fake it.”
The Bengali poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore observed that “it is simple to be happy, but it is difficult to be simple.” Between all of our work and our shadow work, what if we are actually putting the chains on ourselves? We’re not happy when we try to fake it, but what if we’re mainly faking it to ourselves? John Maynard Keynes enthused almost 100 years ago that humanity “is solving its economic problem,” but he also warned that “for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem—how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.… For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.” It is simple to be happy, but it is difficult to be simple.
Graduates, I wish for you a life of ease. By this expression I do not mean a life of riches or a bubbled-wrapped, conflict-free existence. Indeed, I hope that you struggle, and through your struggles discover meaning. I hope that you fail, and through your failures discover perseverance and happy accidents. I hope that you are challenged, and through your challenges discover creativity, strength, and purpose.
But be jealous of your elbow room all the while. Protect your independence, your integrity, your authenticity. Protect your good heart. Don’t let anybody put chains on you, and don’t put chains on yourself. Don’t fake it to them, and don’t fake it to yourself. You cannot have an easy life—no one ever has an easy life—but you can have a life of ease, and I wish it for all of you.
Congratulations to the Class of 2026.
Jay Rainey
Head of School
This week’s addition to the “Refrains for Rams” playlist is Easy by the Commodores (Apple Music / Spotify).