Speaking at a college known for its emphasis on the arts and individual expression, Monk made an argument that connected artistic practice to broader human flourishing. She observed that modern society tends to rationalize and commodify experience, treating emotions as inefficiencies to be managed rather than as essential dimensions of human life. As someone whose entire artistic practice was built on exploring the full range of human vocal expression — from wordless singing to ritualistic performance — Monk saw the suppression of feeling as both a personal and political problem. Her hope that graduates would 'fight for' their feelings was a call to treat emotional authenticity as something worth defending, not merely indulging. It was a distinctly artistic perspective on resistance: the battlefield was internal as much as external.