Commencement speeches usually send graduates off with the same advice: dream big, aim high, be the best. Strangeweather's speaker steps up to the podium and says the opposite, so softly that it takes a moment to register. "Maybe we should strive to be average." The central idea is that a good life might begin by leaving the race altogether and being "okay with yourself and where you are" instead of measuring yourself against everyone nearby.
The first line contains the poem's main tension. "Strive" is a word of effort and ambition, while "average" is usually an insult. Pairing them makes a small paradox: even the rebellion against ambition borrows ambition's vocabulary. The hedge "Maybe" matters too. Real commencement speakers sound certain, but this one offers a suggestion, and the inclusive "we" puts the speaker among those who need to hear it.
The poem is free verse, with no rhyme and no regular meter. The lines sound like speech, and the stanzas are short, often a single fragment, as if the speaker pauses after each thought to let it settle. After the opening sentence the grammar loosens into fragments: "No pressure…", "To be okay…", "To abide rather than win." The "To" lines can be read as continuing the first sentence, a list of what we might strive for. The repeated "No pressure… No pressure… No desperation" works as anaphora, and each repetition feels like an exhale. The move from "pressure" to "desperation" hints that the weight being lifted is heavier than it first sounds.
Much of the vocabulary comes from competition and machinery: "excel," "shine brighter," "faster, more efficient," "behind," "win." The list "neighbors, coworkers, and competitors" quietly slides from the people beside us to our rivals, as if comparison turns everyone into an opponent. "Behind" implies a race nobody remembers agreeing to run.
The most striking moment is the poem's only typographic trick: "wealthy, wealthier, / wealthie$$$t." The word swells with each repetition, and then its letters are swapped for dollar signs, as though the craving for money were eating the spelling. The line break makes the final form arrive alone, like a punchline, and the poem sounds briefly breathless and frantic.
After that the poem comes down to human scale. "To clock out at five and spend the rest of the day / not caring" leaves "not caring" stranded on its own line, which is a jolt in a speech meant to tell people to care passionately. The context suggests a particular kind of not caring: about rankings, promotions and being ahead, rather than about people. But the poem leaves some ambiguity, and a skeptical reader may hear indifference there.
The ending is the shortest line, "To abide rather than win." "Abide" is an older, slower word meaning to stay, endure or dwell, and among the poem's plain modern diction it sounds almost biblical. It gives the last line a quiet dignity. It is also telling that the line ends on "win." The rejected word gets the final syllable, as if the pull of winning never fully lets go of the speaker.
The poem matters because it takes a form designed to inspire and uses it to give permission. Details like "clock out" and "coworkers" suggest it speaks to people whose lives are already shaped by work and constant comparison. Its style practices what it preaches: it is brief, unshowy and free of poetic fireworks. It also leaves a question for the reader to argue with. Is being content with the average a wise freedom, or a luxury? Is "average" itself just another goal to strive for? A poem that sends you off arguing is doing what a good graduation speech should.