Michelle Obama and Justice David Souter Stand Up for Singles

Did you see Michelle Obama's commencement address at UC Merced? I was on my way out the door when she started speaking, remote in hand with my finger on the off button, and I just couldn't press it. Good thing. Because toward the end, right after she offered the usual advice to graduates to thank all their family members who had sacrificed for them, she added this:

"And think about the friends who never got the chance to go to college but were still invested in your success -- friends who talked you out of dropping out, friends who kept you out of trouble so that you could graduate on time, friends who forced you to study when you wanted to procrastinate."

That's how Michelle Obama honored single people in her commencement address. Anyone who recognizes that the important people in our lives are not just marital partners or nuclear family members is acknowledging something significant about the personal communities of people who are single.

Note, too, her acknowledgment of the positive role of friendships in youth, as she addressed a graduating class that was about 70% minority students. No stereotype of the no-good trouble-making peer-group here.

She's right, too. Her focus was on the friends who are not there in school with you, but those who are right beside you in academic settings can be good for you, too. A national study of more than 9,000 adolescents showed that students who had friends who either liked school or did well in school were less likely to have academic problems than were those without such friends.

David Souter's contribution to the place of singles in society may seem self-evident - he is a Supreme Court Justice and he has been single all his life. That's not the only reason I like him. It is amusing (if sad) to watch writers and pundits get tangled in singlism as they try to figure out this unusual guy who has never been married. In Singled Out, I made fun of what was written about him when he was first nominated for his position. Now, as he prepares to retire, they're at it again.

Souter really is unusual, and not because he has been single all his life. When court is not in session, he lives in a centuries-old New Hampshire farmhouse where he watches no television and has no access to e-mail. Every day, he has the same thing for lunch - a yogurt and an apple. Plus, as the New York Times noted, "he's leaving one of the most powerful positions on earth because he wants more time to hike in his beloved New Hampshire mountains."

I see two singles-relevant contributions here. First, "work-life balance" has all to often been interpreted as the juggling that married people do - especially wives who are also mothers. In Justice Souter's decision to step down at the tender (for a Supreme Court Justice) age of 69, there is a statement about the importance of balance in the lives of single people, too. Souter loves hiking and reading books next to the fireplace in his cabin, and he's not too enamored of Washington, D.C.

Second, Souter doesn't need a TV or an internet connection to realize that people find him odd. He seems to care not a wit. Anyone who wants to live single - fully and unapologetically - in this society of ours that still can't seem to get its collective head around such an aspiration, could use a bit of Souter's bite-me attitude.