Daily Speech: Recent Episodes
Tipping Point
Let me start by offering you a quote. It’s not mine, but I think it goes to the heart of your time here, and your time to come: “I choose to live, not just exist.”
See, you come from a long line—a rich history—of people who have come to this campus and decided to live, not just existto stand up and speak out and act and do and make and build and create.
In the digital age, analysis and interpretation are even more important than factual knowledge. As graduates of Virginia Tech, you are better poised than anyone to both understand this, and to bring it to bright, gleaming life.
Graduates, you made it! You’ve got your families and loved ones – people who have been in your corner for as long as you have been breathing – here to hail you. Some even up in the cheap seats. You’re surrounded by some of the greatest friends you will ever make – people who will have your backs for decades to come. I’m reminded of the William Butler Yeats poem, which ends beautifully: “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends. And say my glory was I had such friends.” In many ways, these bonds are every bit as great an achievement as the diploma you may frame.
Now, looking back on all you’ve done to get to this point, you should feel a great wind at your backs. And you’re going to need it. Because, class of 2015, the world outside Penn’s walls leaves a lot to be desired. That is diplomatic speak for: things are really screwed up!
“Class of 2015, there is a point to this,” she said. “When you have a great passion to do something, to be someone, as I’m sure all of you do, there is nothing that can keep you from achieving it. In fact, if you are breathing you are unstoppable.”
“There are three things I want to share with you today,” she said. “One: The elevator to success is broken. Take the stairs. Two: It’s when you are hardest hit that you mustn’t quit. Three: Love yourself so love will not be a stranger when it comes.”
In making your mind up on these issues, I hope you’ll remember your time at Dickinson and the novels you may have read here. It would prompt you, I hope, in the direction of mental freedom. The novel as a literary form was born out of the Enlightenment, out of curiosity about and respect for the individual. Its traditions impel it towards pluralism, openness, a sympathetic desire to inhabit the minds of others. There is no man, woman or child, on earth whose mind the novel cannot reconstruct. Totalitarian systems are right with regard to their narrow interests when they lock up novelists. The novel is, or can be, the ultimate expression of free speech.
I hope you’ll use your fine liberal education to preserve for future generations the beautiful and precious but also awkward, sometimes inconvenient and even offensive culture of freedom of expression we have. Take with you these celebrated words of George Washington: “If the freedom of speech is taken away then, dumb and silent, we may be led like sheep to the slaughter.”
I wish I could tell you the key to life beyond Wesleyan is, Wait for it, wait for it, wait. To be like Burr, to wait for the perfect opportunity to present itself. But in reality, I wrote In the Heights my sophomore year because I NEEDED to write it. I was bursting with ideas, inspired by my housemates at La Casa, and I couldn’t set them to music fast enough. Because I was nearing the end of a four-year relationship that had begun in high school. When she left to study abroad, I found myself with all this time and angst, and I used it as rocket fuel to write that first Heights draft in about three weeks.
In reality, you’re always going to be rushing and waiting at the same time. You will pack your things to leave tomorrow while savoring every moment of today. You’ll chase down your friends to say goodbye, but know that the ones who matter the most will be in your life for the rest of your life. You picture where you’ll be in five years, but the world might change around you while you’re buying a Bob Dylan album. You take out a second mortgage and work seven days a week so four years later, you can cheer the loudest when they call your child’s name at graduation. You hold the present in your hand as tight as you can, while your other hand reaches out for more.
"You can surf uncertainty. You'll keep your balance, stay agile. Expect the unexpected bumps," he said. "It's harder to do when uncertainty comes at you like a tsunami, but it's a good principle to live by."
All around the country today, distinguished men and women are looking at graduates like you from the heights of our achievements and spraying advice at you. It’s an indignity you have to suffer before they lift the latch and release you into the wild.
In settings like this today, you’re going to hear all over the country, many of the same themes. “Be true to yourself. Follow your passion. You are the future. Don’t make a mess of the world the way we did.” And I know these words because I’ve said many of them myself, often, and they’re good ideas. The only thing is they’re a little vague, I think, and every time I’m tempted to make a speech like that, I wish instead I could just give you a few good tips on how just to get through life.
It had been my intention this morning to parcel out some good advice at the end of these remarks — the “goodness” of that being of course subjective in the extreme — but then I realized that this is the land of Mark Twain, and I came to the conclusion that any commentary today ought to be framed in the sublime shadow of this quote of his: “It’s not that the world is full of fools, it’s just that lightening isn’t distributed right.” More on Mr. Twain later.
Remember: Black lives matter. All lives matter.
Reject fundamentalism wherever it raises its ugly head. It’s not civilized. Choose to live in the Bedford Falls of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” not its oppressive opposite, Pottersville.
Do not descend too deeply into specialism. Educate all your parts. You will be healthier.
“What I mean by heart,” Smith said, “is not just love and kindness. I mean wonder and discovery, it’s openness, it’s inclusivity, creativity, passion, obsession, service.”
Smith said a second aspect of heart is kindness, which she described as being “as important as knowledge.” Speaking of the importance of listening to ideas with an open mind, she said, “It isn’t just a moral point, it’s a practical point.” What if, she asked, the half-formed idea shot down in a meeting was “the first half of the cure for cancer?”
“My hope for you,” Smith said, “is that you bring your technical skills to the things you love.” Citing a UN program that aims to address 17 global challenges in the next 15 years, she said, “If you bring not only your ideas, but also your networks of the technical people that are out here, I think we’ll solve many of these challenges faster than 15 years.”
“How desperately we need wisdom in our time to learn how to tackle the socially, monumentally and divisive issues to be able to give an answer that is clear, but to do it in love so the person understands not just the conviction, but the compassion from which this voice comes and speaks to them,” Zacharias told the Class of 2015.
“You can be confident that if you follow His will, He will not only surprise you, He will enthrall you and show the glories of His anointing and the marvels of His power, as He will use you to bring honor to His name.”
“ORU gave me the tools and education necessary to step into my calling on a greater level,” said 2015 ORU graduate Katie Cole. “Upon graduating, I was equipped to pursue my passion with greater understanding and purpose.”
Like I said yesterday, no one makes it to graduation alone. For that reason, I’d like to ask all of the graduates to stand, turn toward the audience, and give a round of applause to those who helped them on this journey.
I want to talk about the sin of omission as it relates to your professional lives, your personal lives, and more broadly to education itself.
But before we get knee deep in sin, let me take a moment to reassure you about the careers ahead of you. Here’s the most important point I have to relay: you are all going to rock. That is a technical educational term for achieving advanced proficiency. You have spent your time here learning to change the world through education in ways large and small, you have begun to understand what it takes to fulfill the promise of diversity, and you have engaged with the world beyond Appian Way during an exceptionally tragic year of racial injustice.
I am here to tell you my story, and let you know that the possibilities for you in this world are as limitless as your imagination allows them to be. My hope is you will all leave here, inspired and ready to take on the world. That you’ll choose to pay attention to that impulse you thought was impossible, or too ambitious... and go after it with every fiber of your being...…. But, OF COURSE, I have learned, AS YOU WILL, that dreams have to be accompanied by an unbelievable amount of work and follow through.
I also developed an INTENSE and PASSIONATE love for feathered waterfowl with webbed feet and I found my love for a cappella music. I was a voice major at the school of music and I wanted to sing with an a cappella group. I discovered many like-minded students and eventually co-founded the University of Oregon’s first acappella group, On the Rocks. I’LL BET SOME OF YOU HAVE HEARD THEM SING. We went on to place IN THE top THREE, two years in a row at the International Championship of Collegiate A cappella. Without the support of The university and especially the late, great president Dave Frohnmayer, who let us have rehearsals weekly at his home— a cappella at the University of Oregon may never have DEVELOPED INTO THE INSTITUTION IT HAS BECOME.
I’m just a guy who thinks he can change the world.
And I believe that each one of you has the ability to do so too.
"Just add bravery," she said, noting a three-word command that has guided her since childhood. "Bravery allows us to push beyond the boundaries that pulled us back from living the lives that we want. ... Your bravest self will be your best self."
The chairwoman of DreamWorks Animation, who is also a director of Estee Lauder and Starbucks Corporation, first asked the graduates to put themselves in the shoes of Felix Baumgartner, who set the world record for skydiving in October 2012, at an estimated 24 miles, and also became the first person to break the sound barrier without vehicular power on his descent.
"Sitting 24 miles up is not that different from where you're sitting now," she told the graduating class. "You're probably feeling eager, excited and, like Felix, scared. The world may look bigger than it's ever looked, and you may feel smaller than you've ever felt." Of whatever hesitation Felix had in letting go of his gear at the time, she said, "It wasn't because he was not brave; it was because you cannot be brave without fear. Despite a racing heart, extremely sweaty palms, Felix did disconnect the oxygen, and he put his faith in his preparation and parachute, and just like you're doing today, he jumped into the great unknown."
For the rest of you, this is your life. First, you’re going to graduate today. Parts of the next year will be amazing, and parts are really going to suck. Very few will have jobs as exciting as being a college senior. From now on, no one will be paid to read your writing or your fascinating seminar interventions. You won’t have a social life pre-organized right there in front of you the way it is here at Dartmouth.
All of us love certain things: certain friends, certain subjects, certain dreams, certain professional goals. But you don’t really know the nature of your love until you’ve tested it with reality.
When I graduated from college, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I knew I wanted to do some teaching. I thought I wanted to be a playwright or a novelist, go into politics, have a spouse, children.
But I didn’t know exactly what order my loves came in. So like everyone in their 20s, I got to test my loves and I got to sample some new loves. It was like trying on clothes at the mall. After ten years, some of my loves, like playwriting, just didn’t fit or faded away. Some new ones came into view. But most important, over the next ten really formless years, my heart developed some contours and I learned what I loved most—writing was more important to me than politics. I could write out a priority list on a piece of paper of the things I loved, and I could rank them and I could devote my best energies to my highest loves.
On discovering what you want to do What Lasseter told his five sons says it all: “Choose something that you love to do and you will never work a day in your life.” He shared with the graduates that the core of his success is a love for cartoons and a profound desire to make animation for everyone, not just children.
On getting fired for what you want to do Coexisting with Lasseter’s passion for cartoons was a strong conviction that the future of the industry was computer animation. But during his first stint with Disney, as a young animator, Lasseter’s enthusiasm for this new approach wasn’t reciprocated and it cost him his job. Seemingly a set back, this unanticipated development actually freed him to pursue his vision and led to the formation of Pixar.
On finding partners to help you do what you want to do Attracted to his ideas, pioneers Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs embraced Lasseter. His desire to innovate was a beacon for like-minded partners who encouraged and challenged him to achieve what audiences had never seen before, movies like Toy Story, the number one film at the box office upon its released in 1995.
“It’s about finding your values, and committing to them. It’s about finding your North Star. It’s about making choices. Some are easy. Some are hard. And some will make you question everything.”
We believe that a company that has values and acts on them can really change the world. And an individual can too. That can be you. That must be you.
Graduates, your values matter. They are your North Star. Otherwise it’s just a job — and life is too short for that.
You don’t have to choose between doing good and doing well. It’s a false choice, today more than ever. Your challenge is to find work that pays the rent, puts food on the table, and lets you do what is right and good and just.
Find your North Star. Let it guide you in life and work and in your life’s work.
You’ve got the knowledge and the skills honed here on this hallowed campus. You’ve got families up in the stands who will support you every step of the way. And most of all, you’ve got yourselves -- and all of the heart, and grit, and smarts that got you to this day.
And if you rise above the noise and the pressures that surround you, if you stay true to who you are and where you come from, if you have faith in God’s plan for you, then you will keep fulfilling your duty to people all across this country. And as the years pass, you’ll feel the same freedom that Charles DeBow did when he was taking off in that airplane. You will feel the bumps smooth off. You’ll take part in that “never-failing miracle” of progress. And you’ll be flying through the air, out of this world -- free.
And you, because you now have your beautiful Wellesley degree, have become privileged, no matter what your background. That degree, and the experience of being here, is a privilege. Don’t let it blind you too often. Sometimes you will need to push it aside in order to see clearly.
If there is a lesson in this anecdote, apart from just telling you a story about my mother to make her happy that I spoke about her at Wellesley, then it is this: Your standardized ideologies will not always fit your life. Because life is messy.
We can not always bend the world into the shapes we want but we can try, we can make a concerted and real and true effort. And you are privileged that, because of your education here, you have already been given many of the tools that you will need to try. Always just try. Because you never know.
“Keep a positive attitude. You will have problems and difficulties in life. Don’t tell people about your problems. Ninety percent don’t care and the other 10 percent will blame everything on God. Don’t let people tear you down. Don’t let other people control your attitude.”
“Everyone can be the best they are capable of. You have the right to fail. Every part of life has obligations to do the best you can do,” Holtz said in reference to marriage, parenthood and professional life,” he said.
“If you follow those three rules you will make right choices. If you do the right thing, people will always be on your side. You will be successful and make a lot of money and then you will die and it will be over. Hopefully (your life) will be significant. Significant is when you make other people successful,” he said.
"You discovered a talent, developed an ambition and recognized your passion. When you feel that, you can't fight it — you just go with it," he explained. "When it comes to the arts, passion should always trump common sense. You aren't just following dreams, you're reaching for your destiny. ... You're an artist — yeah, you're f—d. The good news is that's not a bad place to start."
The actor and Tribeca Film Festival co-founder continued his frank speech by clarifying what's ahead. "Now that you've made your choice — or, rather, succumbed to it — your path is clear. Not easy, but clear. You have to keep working, it's that simple. You got through Tisch, that's a big deal. Or, to put it another way, you got through Tisch? Big deal!
"A new door is opening for you — a door to a lifetime of rejection. It's inevitable," he warned of post-graduate life. "How do you cope? I hear that Valium and Vicodin work! ... You don't want to block the pain too much. Without the pain, what would we talk about?"
Back in January when the University asked me to make today’s commencement speech I was delighted. So when I started writing it this morning back at the hotel, the first thing I did was go online and look up other commencement speeches. And then I got tired, so I took a nap. I woke up, cried a little bit. Ordered some Huevos Rancheros from Room Service. Then I cried a little bit more. And then I picked myself up by the bootstraps and decided to go back to sleep. And after I hit that snooze button four or five times I got up again and I did what all of you probably did while you were pushing through finals week. I made sure all the apps on my phone were updated, because that felt like the most important thing. And then I checked Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. I Periscoped my breakfast, I took 4 quizzes on Buzzfeed and I watched Game of Thrones.
My Dad did what any great teacher would do — he looked at me unfazed and said, “Great. And how do you plan to support yourself while you figure that out? And when are you going to wash your feet?” He was realistic, supportive, deflected the responsibility back to me and subtly showed his support for his daughters pursuit of a life in Fart Jokes.
So hold on to your old friends. Kiss your Mama. Admit what your dreams are. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t know what you’re gonna do tomorrow. But work hard and don’t be lazy. And put away your damn phone once in a while. And be nice to jerks because we still don’t know the criteria for getting into heaven yet.
"And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made--that you made," McRaven said, "and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better."
"For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle. You can't change the world alone--you will need some help-- and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them."
"They assure you ... that no student has ever been eaten by a shark--at least not recently," McRaven said. "But, you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position--stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid. And if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you ... punch him in the snout and he will turn and swim away."
“It’s game time,” he said. “It’s time for you to display your heart, to find teams, to go for it and to expect great things.”
“Attitude, belief, preparation and then the coolest thing is to execute,” he said. “Execute what you’ve just had a great attitude about... and as a result you’ll probably hit something that you never could’ve before.”
So I can sincerely tell you this: You will leave here with knowledge and a diploma, but what will endure the longest are your friends. I am so close to the people I went to Northwestern with. I can tell you it’s great to be 42 and still be friends with people you knew when you were 18.
So today is the day to look around your group of friends and identify the people you want to be around the rest of your lives. Also, while you’re at it, look around and identify the friend who is kind of a dud because today is as good a time as any to cut ties. And trust me every group of college friends has a dud. If you’re looking around and saying ‘not my group of friends,’ that’s probably because you’re the dud. That’s just real talk.
This day is ostensibly about education but it’s really about families and everything they did to help you get to this point. As you move on in life, family will mean more to you than you can possibly imagine.
“From that day forward, that became my mantra, and I’ve tried in everything I do to be excellent,” Winfrey said. “ ’Cause even if you flippin’ fries at McDonald’s, if you are excellent, everybody wants to be in your line. Whatever you do that is excellent, people notice you, and they talk about you, and they say, ‘Did you see that girl over there?’ ”
But “every stumble is not a fall, and every fall does not mean failure,” she said. “Prepare yourself for what you’re going to do, how you will ‘get still’ (she’d earlier defined that, essentially, as stop, listen, find clarity, seek answers from God) and know the next right move when the mistake happens. Because being human means you will make mistakes. And you will make mistakes, because failure is God’s way of moving you in another direction.”
“You make me proud,” Winfrey said, smiling into the crowd, “and your future’s so bright, JCSU, it burns my eyes. Go with God.”
No, here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other. Because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.
And here in America, we don’t give in to our fears. We don’t build up walls to keep people out because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people who were born elsewhere but sought out this country and made it their home -– from innovations like Google and eBay to inventions like the artificial heart, the telephone, even the blue jeans; to beloved patriotic songs like “God Bless America,” like national landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and, yes, the White House -– both of which were designed by architects who were immigrants.
You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I'll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes.
Now it’s your turn. And the good news is, you’re ready. And when your journey seems too hard, and when you run into a chorus of cynics who tell you that you’re being foolish to keep believing or that you can’t do something, or that you should just give up, or you should just settle -- you might say to yourself a little phrase that I’ve found handy these last eight years: Yes, we can.
Actor and filmmaker tells graduates: "There’s more at stake today than in any story ever told."
The world wants to hear your ideas — good and bad. But today’s not the day you switch from “receive” to “transmit.” Once you do that, your education is over. And your education should never be over. Even outside your work, there are ways to keep challenging yourself. Listen to online lectures. I just retook a philosophy course online that I took at Harvard when I was nineteen. Or use MIT OpenCourseWare. Go to Wait But Why ... or TED.com.
"My intention became, 'how do I serve other people?' and 'how do I lift other people up?' That's when I realized that everything in my life began to fall into place. Keep your intentions no matter what pressure comes your way. I am telling you this because it is time to stop running from where we come from to look for someone else to approve us," said Perry.
“Because I’ve pursued what interests me and what excites me, my life is mine to control. And that’s my little bit of wisdom to you,” Franco said. “Don’t be afraid to be beginners. Don’t think that this marks the end of your learning – this should be the start.
“Find your gang. Life is better when it is in the company of others. If you’re a loner, that’s fine – I was a loner once, too. But you will only get better at whatever it is you do if you have a group of similarly engaged people. They will give you feedback, inspire you, and hopefully do better work than you, and push you to rise to their level.”
Instead of choosing to read or to listen only to the people whose views make you the most comfortable – which is becoming easier and easier to do – choose instead to study those who make you the most upset.
Instead of surrounding yourself with friends whose experiences are similar to yours, reach out to people whose life stories are unknown.
Instead of repeating over and over again the opinions you have expressed in the past, stop venting for awhile, ask yourself why you believe as you do, and submit your own conceptions of truth to the rigorous standards of critical thinking.
Above all, I ask you to understand that there is an enormous difference between entering into an argument for the purpose of proving how smart you already are – and engaging in research and discussion for the purpose of stretching your mind and giving free rein to your conscience.
"We are at a very crucial moment in history in these United States of America," he began. "And the way I'm looking at it today, to tell you the truth, things are looking dicey. "I wish you could be graduating into a world of peace, light, and love, but that's not the case," he added. "After you leave here today, it's going to be real life, and real life is no joke."