GUEST POSTING

     PLEASE NOTE THAT I WILL BE TRAVELING TODAY AND WILL POST MY OWN POSTING LATER ON IN THE AFTERNOON. IN THE MEANWHILE HERE IS THE FIRST PART OF A FASCINATING SPEECH THAT WAS GIVEN BY A SPEAKER AT A COMMENCEMENT ANDFITS INWELL WITH WHA I HAVE WRITTEN BEFORE.

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of “Lean In,’’ delivered the commencement speech at the University of California, Berkeley, on Saturday. Below is an edited version of her remarks.

I am not here to tell you all the things I’ve learned in life. Today I will try to tell you what I learned in death.

One year and 13 days ago, I lost my husband, Dave. His death was sudden and unexpected. We were at a friend’s 50th birthday party in Mexico. I took a nap. Dave went to work out. What followed was the unthinkable — walking into a gym to find him lying on the floor. Flying home to tell my children that their father was gone. Watching his casket being lowered into the ground.

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For many months afterward, and at many times since, I was swallowed up in the deep fog of grief — what I think of as the void — an emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even to breathe.
Dave’s death changed me in profound ways. I learned about the depths of sadness and the brutality of loss. But I also learned that when life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again. I learned that in the face of the void — or in the face of any challenge — you can choose joy and meaning.
I’m sharing this with you in the hope that today, as you take the next step in your life, you can learn the lessons that I learned only in death. Lessons about hope, strength, and the light within us that will not be extinguished.

You will almost certainly face deep adversity. There’s loss of opportunity: the job that doesn’t work out, the illness or accident that changes everything in an instant. There’s loss of dignity: the sharp sting of prejudice when it happens. There’s loss of love. And sometimes there’s loss of life itself.
The question is not if some of these things will happen to you. They will. Today I want to talk about what happens next. About the things you can do to overcome adversity, no matter what form it takes or when it hits you. The easy days ahead of you will be easy. It is the hard days — the times that challenge you to your very core — that will determine who you are. You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive.

A few weeks after Dave died, I was talking to my friend Phil about a father-son activity that Dave was not here to do. We came up with a plan to fill in for Dave. I cried to him, “But I want Dave.” Phil put his arm around me and said, “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.”
We all at some point live some form of option B. The question is: What do we do then?

PART TWO WILL FOLLOW LATER THIS WEEK.