Why Not Me? (31 page)

OK, back to your beautiful diploma, this Harvard Law Degree. It’s not just a piece of a paper. You can do whatever you want now, and this institution will follow you everywhere. If you kill someone? You’re the Harvard Law Murderer. If you’re caught in a lewd act in a public restroom? You’re the Harvard Law Pervert
.
And then you can represent yourself and you’ll probably get acquitted because … you went to Harvard!

In fact, the only downside of this degree is later, when you run for Senate, you will have to distance yourself from it to seem more like a regular person. You’ll tuck your flannel shirt into your freshly pressed jeans, and still this institution will haunt you. No matter how many diners you eat at, how many guitar solos you do with Rascal Flatts, you are Harvard to the grave. You won’t be able to buy a pickup truck rusty enough to distance yourself from this place. Mitt Romney preferred to be known as “That Mormon Guy” to distract people from his Harvard past.

I am an American of Indian origin whose parents were raised in India, met in Africa, and immigrated to America, and now I am the star and creator of my own network television series. The continents traveled, the languages mastered, the standardized tests prepared for and taken, and the cultures navigated are amazing even to me. From Calcutta and Madras to Lagos to Boston to Los Angeles, my family, in two generations, made a dizzying journey, and the destination could only be America. My family’s dreams about a future unfettered by the limitations imposed by “who you know” and dependent only on “what you know” was possible only in this beautiful land. Their romance with this country is more romantic than any romantic comedy I could ever write. And it’s all because they believed that the concept of inherent fairness was still alive in Americans, that here in America they could aspire and succeed, and that their children could aspire and succeed to levels that could not have happened anywhere else in the world.

The fairness that my family and I have come to take for granted, that all Americans take for granted, is, in many ways, resting on your shoulders to uphold. You represent those who will affect change. And more than any of the others graduating this week from Harvard, what you decide to do with the next five to ten years of your life will affect the rights of people in this country in a fundamental way.

I’m now at the part of my speech where I am supposed to give you advice. I was wondering what advice I would have to give. Then I thought, You know what? Celebrities give too much advice. And people listen to it too much. In Hollywood, we all think we are sage advice givers and many of us have no education whatsoever. Actresses can become nutritionists, experts in baby care and environmental policy. Actors can become governors or high-ranking officials in religions made up sixty years ago! For two years I have played an obstetrician and gynecologist on a network TV show, and damned if I don’t think I can deliver a baby.

So I was thinking, Well, then, who
should
be giving advice? And the answer is: people like
you
. You’re better educated and you’re going to be out there in the world, and people are going to do what you say, whether you’re good or evil.

That probably scares you. Because some of you look really young. A couple of you are probably evil. To be honest, it scares me a little too. You look like tweens. This is ridiculous.

So be the people who give advice to celebrities, please.

You are entering a profession where, no matter what the crime, you
have
to defend the alleged perpetrator. Across the campus right now, Harvard Business School graduates are receiving diplomas, and you will need to defend them. For insider trading or possession of narcotics, or maybe both, if
The
Wolf of Wall Street
is to be believed.

And most of all: it is you who are responsible for the language of justice. For the careful and precise wording in all those boring contracts I sign while I watch
Real Housewives
. You wrote the Terms and Conditions that I scroll through quickly when I download the update for Candy Crush. Terms and Conditions are the only thing keeping us from
The Purge
. I don’t read them; I just hit “accept.” iTunes may own my ovaries, for all I know. Meticulous research and careful wording is the gift you give to humanity.

“Employees Must Wash Their Hands Before Returning to Work.”
A lawyer wrote that!

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
A lawyer wrote that!

“Mindy Kaling may not come within a thousand feet of Professor Noah Feldman.”
A lawyer wrote that!

These are the protections we take for granted. Like a medieval monk, you have analyzed every word, dissected every sentence, evaluated every statement for loopholes. Your dedication to tedium is astounding and admirable. You take words and turn them into the infrastructure that keeps our world stable.

The seductive Southern lawyers in John Grisham novels get all the glory. Your Noah Feldmans, if you will. But the rest of you form the foundation of our day-to-day lives. It’s backbreaking and often there’s not much glory in it, and, in that way, you will be the quiet heroes for our country.

However, those of you who are working for Big Pharma and Philip Morris—you will be loud antiheroes, and someone is certain to make an AMC series glamorizing you.

But basically, either way, you can’t go wrong. I look at all of you and see America’s future: attorneys, corporate lawyers, public prosecutors, judges, politicians, maybe even the president of the United States. Those are all positions of great influence. Understand that one day you will have the power to make a difference. Use it well.

Thank you, graduates; thank you, faculty, parents, and families; and thank you MovingCommencementSpeeches.com. Congratulations.

¹
To research this speech, I asked some law students for some prevailing campus-wide gossip. More than one person told me that all of the female law students were obsessed with Noah Feldman, a dashing professor who specialized in constitutional studies and who was also a recent divorcé. Dubious, I Googled him, and man, Noah Feldman is handsome. Believe the hype!

4 A.M. WORRIES

I
SHOULD START OFF
by saying that I am one of the only television writers I know who is not depressed. I’m not saying this to brag. God knows I have my own issues. For instance, I’m almost certain I suffer from undiagnosed cases of paranoia, irrational snacking, abrupt rage, and borderline clinical-level superficiality. I’m just bringing it up because depression is something that I’ve come to accept from my creative community and I realize that’s probably alien to most people. I don’t know why the funniest people I know are also depressed. In my mind I’ve romanticized it as the tragic price you pay to be gifted, like Mozart dying at thirty-five. It’s sad that so many of my friends suffer this way.

I am grateful that I am a naturally cheerful person. That said, I am also a very anxious and high-strung person. Remember that kid who showed up forty-five minutes early to the SATs with eleven pencils and a huge black coffee? That was me. When I was a writer on season 1 of
The Office
I probably slept an average of three hours a night because I was so worried about being fired.

In my thirties, I gained a sense of calm that came from professional stability and, although this is not backed by science, a general slowing of my metabolism, which is why I can gain seven pounds from eating one heavy dinner. As calm as I might be, still, about once a month, I wake up at four a.m. and lie in the dark worrying about the same handful of things. I thought I would share them with you.

1. Did I leave my flat iron on?

2. Why was there so much hair in the shower drain? Am I going bald? Will I need to invest in a wig?

3. Where will I even keep my wigs? I have no room left! I keep shoes in my oven!

4. Why are my legs covered in small itchy bites? Do I have bed bugs? Do I not wash my sheets enough? Am I gross?

5. I have no idea if I am getting ripped off financially. I pay bills without reading any of the fine print. How much should a gas bill be? What does gas cost? Is gas the same as gasoline?

6. I am living beyond my means. Why did I buy that stupid photo at that charity auction? I’m not so rich that I can be buying photos! I don’t even understand photography! I only bought it because I had wanted to seem classy and had two glasses of wine!

7. Do I have a drinking problem?

8. What if that young stranger who wrote me asking me to coffee to “pick my brain,” and whom I declined because I was too busy, ends up being the next Alexander Payne and never forgives me?

9. When I watch movies and TV I am looking for things to dislike rather than things to like.

10. I will never have a husband and all my female acquaintances will.

11. I
will
have a husband and he will be like my female acquaintances’ husbands.

12. What if I will never be one of the “greats”? What if I’m only one of the “fines”?

13. What if that commenter on the message boards who posts constantly that I’m an “ugly fat Indian girl who looks like a turd” is someone I know socially?

14. I am too cavalier about the crazy things I say out loud and someone will write about them in a tell-all.

15. I will never be famous enough for someone to write a tell-all about me.

16. People at work laugh at the things I say only because I pay them.

17. People at work don’t laugh enough. Don’t they know I’m paying them?!

18. What if I have an early-stage cancer that has not been detected?

19. Is my father lonely? Would he tell me if he was?

20. What if my kids are really young when I die because I waited too long to have them?

21. What if no one loves me except my blood relatives?

22. What if I forget the sound of my mother’s voice?

23. What if God is not really out there?

24. What if I have nothing to say?

25. Do I have too much to say and not enough time?

They’re awful fears. They’re sweat-through-your-nightgown-into-your-sheets fears. I don’t wish them on any of you. But if you have them too, that makes me feel better. And if you feel better knowing that I have them, I’m happy.

Then, miraculously, after agonizing in the dark, my eyelids get heavy, my body un-tenses, and a rolling wave of sleep passes over me. I fall asleep, my fears evaporating like the water in the humidifier by my bed.

WHY NOT ME?