Standing here, it occurs to me that each of you will walk away today with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree. There will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.

Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at your job, or in a car, or at the computer, or even at home. Not your titles or your bank account, but the life of your mind and the life of your heart. Not your career, but your soul.

People don’t talk about the soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to craft a resume than it is to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on winter night, when you’re sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you’ve gotten back the test results and they’re not so good.

Here’s my resume. I am a good husband to my wife, and our marriage has lived up to our vows. It is too soon to say whether I succeeded, but I have genuinely tried to be a good father to my daughter and my son. I take good care of my parents. After more than 40 years, I no longer consider myself to be the center of the Universe. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I continue to hope in a God of love who will triumph over evil in the end, and I try to live according to that hope. I may be late sometimes, but I show up. I listen. I still have a sense of humor. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me, and we have been that way for a long time.

Without those people, without those relationships, I would have nothing to say to you today. I would be an empty man, no matter how long my list of other accomplishments. But the fact is that I call those people on the telephone and we talk. I meet them for breakfast. I worry about their problems. I love them.

So here is what I wanted to tell you today, on the grand occasion of your college graduation: Get a life. Get a real life, not just the manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger payday, the nicer car, the better house. (Do you think you would care about those things if you had a heart attack one afternoon, or if you found a lump in your breast?) Get a deep life, not just the relentless comfort of consumer goods and mass entertainments. Get a life filled with relationships, not just a collection of things and accomplishments. Or perhaps I should not say get a life, when what I really mean is for you to build well the one you and you alone already possess.

Some will say it is wrong, but I say you should by all means take your life for granted, so long as you do so in the best sense of the word. After all, whether you do or do not yet believe in the Giver, your particular life is the greatest gift you will ever receive. No matter how difficult it becomes, life is always the best thing ever.

So take and cherish your life as a gift, and show your gratitude by spending it lavishly on the world around you, and especially on those whose lives are difficult already. Trust me, the day will come when you are one of them, and when it comes you will realize that all that lavish spending was the best investment you ever made.

Above all, build a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love and who will love you back, and remember that love is not a kind of leisure, but rather the highest kind of work. Ask older people or read good books about things like listening and forgiveness. Whatever you think of his divinity, memorize Jesus’ story of The Prodigal Son. Pick up the telephone. Send an email. Invite someone out or have them in for a talk. Think about your friends’ problems. Pray for them. Encourage them to build their own lives well, too.

It is so easy to waste time, one day, one hour, one minute at a time. It is so easy to stop noticing the color of our spouse’s eyes, or the smell of the ocean, or the way a baby scowls when she’s trying to pick up a Cheerio. It is so easy to stop fighting for justice for all, and to settle instead for comfort for me. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.