BLOOMINGTON, Ill., – Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder asked Illinois Wesleyan University students to be more inspired than he was in his youth.
“Now, I’m 61, it’s too late for me,” joked Kidder, addressing the IWU President’s Convocation on Wednesday, Sept. 26, in a speech punctuated with humor and a message – do what you love and use it to change the world. “For most of you the question of what you’re going to do with your lives has not been answered, though it is the one question you cannot stop asking yourself.”
Kidder’s speech, titled “One Way to Live a Meaningful Life,” followed the subject of his novel Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Could Cure the World. The book was the focus of Illinois Wesleyan’s 2007 Summer Reading Program, which all first-year students were assigned.
“Dr. Farmer’s message, it would seem to me, is a plea that we pay attention to the world as it really is,” said Kidder, who followed Farmer for several months as the world-renown physician worked tirelessly to fight illness and establish “poverty with dignity” for people in Haiti, Moscow and Peru with clean water, livable housing and medical attention. “If we see a bag lady or a drunk sleeping in a doorway, our first reaction is to get as far away from them as we can,” said Kidder. “Farmer’s message is don’t do that. Don’t join what seems to be America’s collective amnesia to human suffering.”
Telling stories of Farmer’s adventures, Kidder spoke of his eclectic upbringing, his days among the wealthy at Duke University and his struggles to create Partners In Health, a not-for-profit organization. Contending that Farmer, with his boundless energy and determination, is unique, Kidder still believes he is an inspiration to guide students not to “forget the forgotten people” of the world.