Et in Arcadia Ego

You had me at memento mori . . . and lost me at "Follow your heart."

This commencement speech by Steve Jobs was flowing along quite nicely when -- BAM!! -- it hit me with my least favorite piece of advice:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

I don't want to pick on Steve Jobs. As commencement speeches go, this is a great one (and the passage I've quoted is only a part of it). But I can't help thinking that part of the original purpose of the memento mori -- the remembrance of death's inescapability -- was to get people not to follow their hearts. Like Jobs, I believe all that's superfluous about human existence falls away in the face of death, but isn't it a bit anticlimactic to insist that what remains, what abides, is "following our hearts"? I know, I know, it all depends on how one defines "following your heart," but for the life of me I can't think of any way to define it that doesn't ultimately diminish the idea of the memento mori. "Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return" -- that's not about following your heart; it's about death as the darkbright dividing line between the ephemeral and the eternal, between man's purposes and judgments in time and God's purposes and judgments in eternity. But people aren't into the eternal -- and heaven knows they aren't into judgment -- like they used to be, so when they are confronted with the finality of death, the best they can come up with to suggest what's "truly important" is the exhortation to "follow your heart." As anyone who's familiar with Woody Allen's sublimely absurd self-justification knows, however, "the heart wants what it wants." According to Jobs's formulation, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, the Dalai Lama, Tom and Katie, Pope Benedict XVI, Brad and Angelina, and Jobs himself are all equally pursuing what's "truly important" (assuming that they are all following their hearts). Jobs apparently meant to offer a serious insight about the meaning of human existence in the context of death's inevitability, and he got halfway there, but then his memento mori morphed into follow your heart, life is not a dress rehearsal, be true to yourself, yada yada yada.

I'll end by offering my own very brief commencement address, in the style of Jack Smith, the great Los Angeles Times columnist, whose writing I read and admired in my callow youth. At the beginning of every new year, Smith would write a column in which he quoted various psychics' predictions for the coming year. To the prediction that a statue of Elvis would be found on Mars, Smith would respond, "I counter-predict." [He had an amazingly high rate of correct predictions.]

So without further ado:

President So-and-So, faculty, parents, and graduates, Mr. Jobs stands before you today and reminds you to follow your hearts. I counter-advise. Thank you and good afternoon.

P.S. On the other hand, that part about remembering death is excellent.

P.P.S. And feel free to consult your heart. Just don't, under any circumstances, follow it anywhere, especially if it asks you to help find a lost puppy.