Lin-Manuel Miranda: 'Every story you choose to tell, omits others from the larger narrative', University of Pennsylvania - 2016

16 May 2016, University Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, USA

Thank you President Gutmann, MC Provost, Board Of Trustees, Faculty, Family, Mister Vice President, Undergrads of the 4 Penn schools of Hufflepuff, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, and dear exhausted, exhilarated, terrified graduates of the class of 2016.

I begin with an apology.

I am the writer of Hamilton: An American Musical. Every word in the show—and there are over 22,000 words in the show—were chosen and put in a really specific order by me. So I am painfully aware that neither Philly nor the great state of Pennsylvania is mentioned in Hamilton, with the exception of ONE couplet in the song Hurricane, where Hamilton sings:

“I WROTE MY WAY OUT OF HELL

I WROTE MY WAY TO REVOLUTION,

I WAS LOUDER THAN THE CRACK IN THE BELL.”

That’s it! One blink and you miss it Liberty Bell reference!

I am also painfully aware that this commencement address is being livestreamed and disseminated all over the world instantly. In fact, “painfully aware” is pretty much my default state. “Oh yeah, that’s Lin, he’s…PAINfully aware.”

So, with the eyes of the world and history on us all, I’d like to correct the record and point out that a few parts in Hamilton: An American the Musical actually took place in Pennsylvania.

The Battle of Monmouth, wherein General Charles Lee, in our show, “S’ed the Bed” and retreated against Washington’s orders. According to Lafayette, this was the only time he ever heard George Washington curse out loud. That’s right, the father of our country dropped his choicest profanity and F-bombs in Pennsylvania.

The Constitutional Convention, wherein Alexander Hamilton spoke extemporaneously for 6 hours in what is surely the most un-Tweet-able freestyle of all time, happened right here in Philly.

In fact, Alexander Hamilton lived at 79 South 3rd Street when he began his extramarital affair with Mariah Reynolds, creating the time-honored precedent of political sex scandals and mea culpas.

You guys, The Good Wife wouldn’t even EXIST if Hamilton hadn’t gotten the ball rolling on this dubious American tradition, right on South 3rd street, right near the Cosí.

Finally, I need to apologize on behalf of the historical Alexander Hamilton, because if he hadn’t sat down to dinner with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, desperate for support for his financial plan, Philadelphia might well still be the U.S. Capitol.

Hamilton traded Philly away in the most significant backroom deal in American history. As the guy who plays Hamilton every night, let me get into character for a moment and say, “My bad, Philadelphia.” Thank you.

But take the long view, Motown Phillly. Who really won that deal in the end? Look at D.C: it’s synonymous with institutional dysfunction, partisan infighting and political gridlock. YOU are known as the birthplace of Louisa May Alcott, Rocky Balboa, Boyz II Men, Betsy Ross, Will Smith, Isaac Asimov, Tina Fey, Cheesesteaks, and you can have SCRAPPLE, SOFT PRETZELS, and Wawa HOAGIES WHENEVER YOU WANT.

YOU WIN, PHILLY. YOU WIN EVERY TIME. WATER ICE.

The simple truth is this: Every story you choose to tell, by necessity, omits others from the larger narrative. One could write five totally different musicals from Hamilton’s eventful, singular American life, without ever overlapping incidents. For every detail I chose to dramatize, there are ten I left out. I include King George at the expense of Ben Franklin. I dramatize Angelica Schuyler’s intelligence and heart at the expense of Benedict Arnold’s betrayal. James Madison and Hamilton were friends and political allies, but their personal and political fallout occurs right on our act break, during intermission. My goal is to give you as much as an evening as musical entertainment can provide, and have you on your way at home slightly before Les Mis lets out next door.

This act of choosing—the stories we tell versus the stories we leave out—will reverberate across the rest of your life. Don’t believe me? Think about how you celebrated this senior week, and contrast that with the version you shared with the parents and grandparents sitting behind you.

Penn, don’t front. You’re a Playboy Magazine ranked Party school—you KNOW you did things this week that you’re never mentioning again. I know what you did this summer!

I’m going to tell you a story from my twenties today—a story I’ve never told in public before. I’ll tell you two stories actually. It’s my hope that it’ll be of use to you as you stare down the quarter life marker.

I am 20 years old, finishing my sophomore year at Wesleyan, and my girlfriend of four and a half years is home from her semester abroad. I cannot wait to see her again—she is my first love. I dread seeing her again—I’ve grown into my life without her. In her absence, with time and angst to spare, I have developed the first draft of my first full-length musical, an 80-minute one-act called In The Heights. I have also developed a blinding pain in my right shoulder, which I can’t seem to stop cracking. My girlfriend comes home. I am so happy to see her, even as my shoulder worsens. My mother takes me to a back specialist, ranked in New York Magazine, so you know he’s good.

He examines me, looks me dead in the eyes, and says, “There’s nothing wrong with your back. There will be if you keep cracking it, but what you have a nervous tic. Is there anything in your life that is causing you stress?” I burst into tears, in his office. He looks at me for a long time, as I’m crying, and get this—you’ll appreciate this Renee—he tells me the story of Giuseppe Verdi. A 19th century Italian composer of some note, who, in the space of a few short years, lost his wife and two young children to disease. He tells me that Verdi’s greatest works—Rigoletto, La Traviata—came not before, but after this season of Job, the darkest moments of his life. He looks me in the eyes and tells me, “You’re trying to avoid going through pain, or causing pain. I’m here to tell you that you’ll have to survive it if you want to be any kind of artist.”

I break up with my girlfriend that night.

I spend the summer in therapy. I tell a lot of stories I’ve never told before.

My father asks my mother, “What the hell kind of back doctor…Verdi? Really?”

I stop cracking my shoulder.

The story I had been telling myself—happy guy in a long-distance relationship with his high school sweetheart—was being physically rejected by my body via my shoulder. I’d never broken up with anyone before—in my head, I was a “good guy,” and “good guys” don’t break up with their significant others when one of them goes off to study abroad. I was trying to fit my life into a romantic narrative that was increasingly at odds with how I really felt. In retrospect, we both were.

What about her story? Well, it’s not mine to tell, but I can share this much: she began dating one of her good friends the following year of college. Fast-forward to present day: She is happily married to that same good friend, with two beautiful kids. In her story, I am not the angsty, shoulder-cracking tortured artist. I’m the obstacle in the way of the real love story. For you Office fans: They’re Jim and Pam, and I’m Roy.

Story #2: I am out of college, I am 23 years old, and Tommy Kail and I are meeting with a veteran theater producer. To pay rent I am a professional substitute teacher: at my old high school. Tommy is Audra McDonald’s assistant. Tommy is directing In The Heights, and with his genius brain in my corner, my 80-minute one-act is now two acts. This big deal theater producer has seen a reading we put on in the basement of The Drama Book Shop in mid-Manhattan, and he is giving us his thoughts. We hang on his every word, this is a big deal theater producer, and we are kids, desperate to get our show on. We are discussing the character of Nina Rosario, home from her first year at Stanford, the first in her family to go to college.

The big deal theater producer says:

“Now I know in your version Nina’s coming home with a secret from her parents: she’s lost her scholarship. The song is great, the actress is great. What I’m bumping up against, fellas, is that this doesn’t feel high STAKES enough. Scholarship? Big deal. What if she’s pregnant? What if her boyfriend at school hit her? What if she got caught with drugs? It doesn’t have to be any of those things, you’re the writer—but do you see what I’m getting at guys, a way to ramp up the stakes of your story?”

I resist the urge to crack my shoulder.

We get through the meeting and Tommy and I, again alone, look at each other. He knows what I’m going to say before I say it.

“Pregnant—“

“I know.”

“Nina on drugs—“

“I was there.”

“But he wants to put our show up.”

Tommy looks at me.

“That’s not the story you want to tell and that’s not the show I want to direct. There are ways to raise the stakes that are not THAT. We’ll just keep working.”

If I could get in a time machine and watch any point in my life, it would be this moment. The moment where Tommy Kail looked at uncertain, frazzled me, desperate for a production and a life in this business, tempted, and said no for us. I keep subbing, he continues working for Audra, we keep working on In The Heights for five years until we find the right producers in Jill Furman and Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller. Until Philly native Quiara Hudes becomes my co-writer and reframes our show around a community instead of a love triangle. Until Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman take my songs and made them come to life through their orchestrations. It will be another five years before Heights reaches Broadway, exactly as we intended it.

And then the good part: Nina’s story that we fought to tell, keeps coming back around in my life. It comes around in letters, or in the countless young men and women who find me on the subway or on college campuses and take my hand and say, “You don’t understand. I was the first in my family to go to college, when I felt out of place like I was drowning I listened to “Breathe,” Nina’s song, and it got me through.” And I think to myself as these strangers tell me their Nina stories, “I do understand. And that sounds pretty high stakes to me.”

I know that many of you made miracles happen to get to this day. I know that parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and family behind you made miracles happen to be here. I know because my family made miracles happen for me to be standing here talking to you, telling stories.

Your stories are essential. Don’t believe me?

In a year when politicians traffic in anti-immigrant rhetoric, there is also a Broadway musical reminding us that a broke, orphan immigrant from the West Indies built our financial system. A story that reminds us that since the beginning of the great unfinished symphony that is our American experiment, time and time again, immigrants get the job done.

My dear, terrified graduates—you are about to enter the most uncertain and thrilling period of your lives.

The stories you are about to live are the ones you will be telling your children and grandchildren and therapists.

They are the temp gigs and internships before you find your passion.

They are the cities you live in before the opportunity of a lifetime pops up halfway across the world.

They are the relationships in which you hang on for dear life even as your shoulder cracks in protest.

They are the times you say no to the good opportunities so you can say yes to the best opportunities.

They are what Verdi survived to bring us La Traviata.

They are the stories in which you figure out who you are.

There will be moments you remember and whole years you forget.

There will be times when you are Roy and times when you are Jim and Pam.

There will be blind alleys and one-night wonders and soul-crushing jobs and wake-up calls and crises of confidence and moments of transcendence when you are walking down the street and someone will thank you for telling your story because it resonated with their own.

I feel so honored to be a detail, a minor character in the story of your graduation day.

I feel so honored to bear witness to the beginning of your next chapter.

I’m painfully aware of what’s at stake.

I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Thank you and congratulations to the Class of 2016.

Maria Popova: 'Strive to be uncynical, to be a hope-giving force', Annenberg School, UPenn, 2016

15 May 2016, Annenberg School for Communication, UPenn, Pennsylvania, USA

I want to talk to you today about the soul. Not the soul as that immortal unit of religious mythology, for I am a nonbeliever. And not the soul as a pop-culture commodity, that voracious consumer of self-help chicken soup. I mean the soul simply as shorthand for the seismic core of personhood from which our beliefs, our values, and our actions radiate.

I live in New York, where something extraordinary happens every April. In the first days of spring, those days when the air turns from blistering to balmy, a certain gladness envelops the city — people actually look up from their screens while walking and strangers smile at each other. For a few short days, it’s like we remember how we can live and who we’re capable of being to one another.

I also practically live on my bike — that’s how I get everywhere — and the other week, on one of those first days of spring, I was riding from Brooklyn to Harlem. I had somewhere to be and was pedaling pretty fast — which I like doing and must admit I take a certain silly pride in — but I was also very much enjoying the ride and the river and the spring air that smelled of plum blossoms. And then, I sensed someone behind me in the bike path, catching up, going even faster than I was going. It suddenly felt somehow competitive. He was trying to overtake me. I pedaled faster, but he kept catching up. Eventually, he did overtake me — and I felt strangely defeated.

But as he cruised past me, I realized the guy was on an electric bike. I felt both a sort of redemption and a great sense of injustice — unfair motorized advantage, very demoralizing to the honest muscle-powered pedaler. But just as I was getting all self-righteously existential, I noticed something else — he had a restaurant’s name on his back. He was food delivery guy. He was rushing past me not because he was trying to slight me, or because he had some unfair competitive advantage in life, but because this was his daily strife — this is how this immigrant made his living.

My first response was to shame myself into gratitude for how fortunate I’ve been — because I too am an immigrant from a pretty poor country and it’s some miraculous confluence of choice and chance that has kept me from becoming a food delivery person on an electric bike in order to survive in New York City. And perhaps the guy has a more satisfying life than I do — perhaps he had a good mother and goes home to the love of his life and plays the violin at night. I don’t know, and I never will. But the point is that the second I begin comparing my pace to his, my life to his, I’m vacating my own experience of that spring day and ejecting myself into a sort of limbo of life that is neither mine nor his.

I grew up in Bulgaria and my early childhood was spent under a communist dictatorship. But for all its evils, communism had one silver lining — when everyone had very little, no one felt like somebody else was cruising past them motorized by privilege.

I came to Penn straight from Bulgaria, through that same confluence of chance and choice (and, yes, a lot of very, very hard work — I don’t want to minimize the importance of that, but I also don’t want to imply that people who end up on the underprivileged end of life haven’t worked hard enough, because this is one of our most oppressive cultural myth and reality is so much more complex). In any case: When I came to Penn, I had an experience very different from my childhood. Suddenly, as I was working four jobs to pay for school, I felt like everybody else was on an electric bike and I was just pedaling myself into the ground.

This, of course, is what happens in every environment densely populated by so-called peers — self-comparison becomes inevitable. Financial inequality was just my particular poison, but we do it along every imaginable axis of privilege and every dimension of identity — intelligence, beauty, athleticism, charisma that entrances the Van Pelt librarians into pardoning your late fees.

But here’s the thing about self-comparison: In addition to making you vacate your own experience, your own soul, your own life, in its extreme it breeds resignation. If we constantly feel that there is something more to be had — something that’s available to those with a certain advantage in life, but which remains out of reach for us — we come to feel helpless. And the most toxic byproduct of this helpless resignation is cynicism — that terrible habit of mind and orientation of spirit in which, out of hopelessness for our own situation, we grow embittered about how things are and about what’s possible in the world. Cynicism is a poverty of curiosity and imagination and ambition.

Today, the soul is in dire need of stewardship and protection from cynicism. The best defense against it is vigorous, intelligent, sincere hope — not blind optimism, because that too is a form of resignation, to believe that everything will work out just fine and we need not apply ourselves. I mean hope bolstered by critical thinking that is clear-headed in identifying what is lacking, in ourselves or the world, but then envisions ways to create it and endeavors to do that.

In its passivity and resignation, cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of its ligaments, a limber reach for something greater.

You are about to enter the ecosystem of cultural production. Most of you will go into journalism, media, policy, or some blurry blob of the increasingly amorphous Venn diagram of these forces that shape culture and public opinion. Whatever your specific vocation, your role as a creator of culture will be to help people discern what matters in the world and why by steering them away from the meaningless and toward the meaningful. E.B. White said that the role of the writer is to lift people up, not to lower them down, and I believe that’s the role of every journalist and artist and creator of culture.

Strive to be uncynical, to be a hope-giving force, to be a steward of substance. Choose to lift people up, not to lower them down — because it is a choice, always, and because in doing so you lift yourself up.

Develop an inner barometer for your own value. Resist pageviews and likes and retweets and all those silly-sounding quantification metrics that will be obsolete within the decade. Don’t hang the stability of your soul on them. They can’t tell you how much your work counts for and to whom. They can’t tell you who you are and what you’re worth. They are that demoralizing electric bike that makes you feel if only you could pedal faster — if only you could get more pageviews and likes and retweets — you’d be worthier of your own life.

You will enter a world where, whatever career you may choose or make for yourself — because never forget that there are jobs you can get and jobs you can invent — you will often face the choice of construction and destruction, of building up or tearing down.

Among our most universal human longings is to affect the world with our actions somehow, to leave an imprint with our existence. Both construction and destruction leave a mark and give us a sense of agency in the world. Now, destruction is necessary sometimes — damaged and damaging systems need to be demolished to clear the way for more enlivening ones. But destruction alone, without construction to follow it, is hapless and lazy. Construction is far more difficult, because it requires the capacity to imagine something new and better, and the willingness to exert ourselves toward building it, even at the risk of failure. But that is also far more satisfying in the end.

You may find your fate forked by construction and destruction frequently, in ways obvious or subtle. And you will have to choose between being the hammer-wielding vandal, who may attain more immediate results — more attention — by tearing things and people and ideas down, or the sculptor of culture, patiently chiseling at the bedrock of how things are to create something new and beautiful and imaginative following a nobler vision, your vision, of how things can and should be.

Some active forms of destruction are more obvious and therefore, to the moral and well-intentioned person, easier to resist. It’s hard not to notice that there’s a hammer before you and to refuse to pick it up. But there are passive forms of destruction far more difficult to detect and thus to safeguard against, and the most pernicious of them is cynicism.

Our culture has created a reward system in which you get points for tearing down rather than building up, and for besieging with criticism and derision those who dare to work and live from a place of constructive hope. Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively, in yourself and in those you love and in the communication with which you shape culture. Cynicism, like all destruction, is easy, it’s lazy. There is nothing more difficult yet more gratifying in our society than living with sincere, active, constructive hope for the human spirit. This is the most potent antidote to cynicism, and it is an act of courage and resistance today.

It is also the most vitalizing sustenance for your soul.

But you — you — are in a very special position, leaving Annenberg, because your courage and resistance are to be enacted not only in the privacy of your inner life but in your outer contribution to public life. You are the creators of tomorrow’s ideas and ideals, the sculptors of public opinion and of culture. As long as we feed people buzz, we cannot expect their minds to produce symphonies. Never let the temptation of marketable mediocrity and easy cynicism rob you of the chance to ennoble public life and enlarge the human spirit — because we need that badly today, and because you need it badly for the survival of your soul.

So as you move through life, pedal hard — because that’s how you get places, and because it’s fun and so incredibly gratifying to propel yourself forward by your own will and power of intention. But make sure the pace of your pedaling answers only to your own standards of vigor. Remain uncynical and don’t waste any energy on those who pass you by on their electric bikes, because you never know what strife is driving them and, most of all, because the moment you focus on that, you vacate your own soul.

Instead, pedal forth — but also remember to breathe in the spring air and to smile at a stranger every once in a while. Because there is nothing more uncynical than being good to one another.

Thank you and congratulations.

Denzel Washington: 'And when you fall throughout life—and maybe even tonight after a few too many glasses of champagne—fall forward', UPenn - 2011

16 May 2011, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, USA

President Gutmann; Provost Price; Board Chair Cohen; fellow honorees; and today’s graduates:

I’m honored and grateful for the invitation today. 

It’s always great to be on the Penn campus. I’ve been to a lot of basketball games at the Palestra because my son played on the team. Coach didn’t give him enough playing time, but we’ll talk about that later. No, I’m very pleased with the progress Coach Allen has made and I wish them success in the future.

I’d always get a warm welcome here—except on the few occasions when I’d wear my Yankees cap. 

It’s like taking your life in your hands. People would say: “We love you Denzel. But you walking around with that hat on…we don’t care who you are.”

So you’ll be happy to see that I’m not wearing my Yankees cap today. 

But I am wearing my Yankees socks, my Yankees t-shirt, and my Yankees underwear.

Still, I’ll be honest with you: I’m a little nervous. Speaking at a graduation of this magnitude is a little overwhelming. 

This is out of my comfort zone.

Dress me up in army fatigues. Throw me on top of a moving train.  Ask me to play Malcolm X, Rubin Hurricane Carter, Alonzo from Training Day: I can do all that. 

But a commencement speech? It’s a very serious affair. Different ballgame. There’s literally thousands and thousands of people here.

And for those who say—you’re a movie star, millions of people watch you speak all the time…

… Yes, that’s technically true.  But I’m not actually there in the theater—watching them watching me.

I’m not there when they cough… or fidget… or pull out their iPhone and text their boyfriend… or scratch their behinds.

From up here: I can see every single one of you. And that makes me uncomfortable. 

So please, don’t pull out your iPhone and text your boyfriend until after I’m done.  

But if you need to scratch your behinds, go right ahead. I’ll understand.

Thinking about the speech, I figured the best way to keep your attention would be to talk about some really, juicy Hollywood stuff.

I thought I could start with me and Russell Crowe getting into some arguments on the set of American Gangster…

… but no. You’re a group of high-minded intellectuals. You’re not interested in that.

Or how about that “private” moment I had with Angelina Jolie half naked in her dressing room backstage at the Oscars?… Who wants to hear about that?

I don’t think so. This is an Ivy League school. Angelina Jolie in her dressing room…?

No, this is Penn. That stuff wouldn’t go over well here. Maybe at Drexel—but not here. I’m in trouble now.

I was back to square one—and feeling the pressure. 

So now you’re probably thinking—if it was gonna be this difficult, why’d I even accept today’s invitation in the first place?

Well, you know my son goes here. That’s a good reason. And I always like to check to see how my money’s being spent.

And I’m sure there’s some parents out there who can relate to what I’m talking about!

And there were other good reasons for me to show up.

Sure, I got an Academy Award… but I never had something called “Magic Meatballs” after waiting in line for half an hour at a food truck.

True, I’ve talked face-to-face with President Obama… but I never met a guy named “Kweeder” who sings bad cover songs at Smokes on a Tuesday night.

Yes, I’ve played a detective battling demons… but I’ve never been to a school in my life where the squirrel population has gone bananas, breaking into the dorm rooms and taking over campus. I think I’ve even seen some carrying books on the way to class!

So I had to be here. I had to come… even though I was afraid I might make a fool of myself.

In fact… if you really want to know the truth: 

I had to come… exactly because I might make a fool of myself.

What am I talking about?

Well, here it is:

I’ve found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks.

Nothing.

Nelson Mandela said:

“There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that’s less than the one you’re capable of living.”

I’m sure in your experiences—in school… in applying to college… in picking your major… in deciding what you want to do with life—people have told you to make sure you have something to “fall back on.”

But I’ve never understood that concept, having something to fall back on.

If I’m going to fall, I don’t want to fall back on anything, except my faith. I want to fall… forward. 

At least I figure that way I’ll see what I’m about to hit.

Fall forward.

Here’s what I mean: 

Reggie Jackson struck out twenty-six-hundred times in his career—the most in the history of baseball. 

But you don’t hear about the strikeouts. People remember the home runs.

Fall forward.

Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments. Did you know that?  

I didn’t either—because #1,001 was the light bulb.

Fall forward.

Every failed experiment is one step closer to success. 

You’ve got to take risks. And I’m sure you’ve probably heard that before.

But I want to talk about why it’s so important.

I’ve got three reasons—and then you can pick up your iPhones.

First… you will fail at some point in your life. Accept it. You will lose.  You will embarrass yourself. You will suck at something. There is no doubt about it.

That’s probably not a traditional message for a graduation ceremony.  But, hey, I’m telling you—embrace it.

Because it’s inevitable.

And I should know: In the acting business, you fail all the time.

Early in my career, I auditioned for a part in a Broadway musical. A perfect role for me, I thought—except for the fact that I can’t sing.

So I’m in the wings, about to go on stage but the guy in front of me is singing like Pavarotti and I am just shrinking getting smaller and smaller...

So I come out with my little sheet music and it was “Just My Imagination” by the Temptations, that’s what I came up with.

So I hand it to the accompanist, and she looks at it and looks at me and looks at the director, so I start to sing and they’re not saying anything. I think I must be getting better, so I start getting into it.

But after the first verse, the director cuts me off: “Thank you. Thank you very much, you’ll be hearing from me.”

The next part of the audition is the acting part. I figure, I can’t sing, but I know I can act.

But the guy I was paired with to do the scene couldn’t be more overdramatic and over-the top.

Suffice to say, I didn’t get the part.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t quit. I didn’t fall back.

I walked out of there to prepare for the next audition, and the next audition, and the next one. I prayed and I prayed, but I continued to fail, and I failed, and I failed.

But it didn’t matter. Because you know what? You hang around a barbershop long enough—sooner or later you will get a haircut.

You will catch a break.

Last year I did a play called Fences on Broadway and I won a Tony Award. And I didn’t have to sing for it, by the way. 

And here’s the kicker—it was at the Court Theater, the same theater where I failed that first audition 30 years prior.

The point is, every graduate here today has the training and the talent to succeed.

But do you have guts to fail?

Here’s my second point about failure: 

If you don’t fail… you’re not even trying.

My wife told me this expression: “To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.”

Les Brown, a motivational speaker, made an analogy about this.

Imagine you’re on your deathbed—and standing around your bed are the ghosts representing your unfilled potential.

The ghosts of the ideas you never acted on. The ghosts of the talents you didn’t use.

And they’re standing around your bed. Angry. Disappointed. Upset. 

“We came to you because you could have brought us to life,” they say.  “And now we go to the grave together.”

So I ask you today: How many ghosts are going to be around your bed when your time comes?

You invested a lot in your education. And people invested in you.

And let me tell you, the world needs your talents. 

Man, does it ever.

I just got back from four months of filming in South Africa—beautiful country, but there are places with terrible poverty that need help.
And Africa is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Middle East needs your help. Japan needs your help. Alabama and Tennessee need your help. Louisiana needs your help. Philadelphia needs your help.

The world needs a lot—and we need it from you, the young people.  

So get out there. Give it everything you’ve got—whether it’s your time, your talent, your prayers, or your treasure.

Because remember this: You’ll never see a U-haul behind a hearse. 

You can’t take it with you. The Ancient Egyptians tried it—and all they got was robbed!

So what are you going to do with what you have? And I’m not talking how much you have.

Some of you are business majors. Some of you are theologians, nurses, sociologists. Some of you have money. Some of you have patience. Some have kindness.  Some have love. Some of you have the gift of long-suffering.

Whatever it is… what are you going to do with what you have?

Now here’s my last point about failure:

Sometimes it’s the best way to figure out where you’re going.

Your life will never be a straight path.

I began at Fordham University as a pre-med student. That lasted until I took a course called “Cardiac Morphogenesis.” 

I couldn’t pronounce it… and I couldn’t pass it.

Then I decided to go pre-law. Then journalism.

With no academic focus, my grades took off in their own direction: down.

My GPA was 1.8 one semester, and the university very politely suggested it might be better to take some time off. 

I was 20 years old, at my lowest point.

And then one day—and I remember the exact day: March 27th, 1975—I was helping out in the beauty shop my mother owned in Mount Vernon. 
An older woman who belonged to my mother’s church, one of the elders of the town, was in there getting her hair done and kept giving me these strange looks.

She finally took the drier off her head and said something to me I’ll never forget:

“Young boy,” she said. “I have a spiritual prophecy: you are going to travel the world and speak to millions of people.”

Like a wise-ass, I’m thinking to myself: “Does she got anything in that crystal ball about me getting back to college in the fall?”

But maybe she was on to something. Because later that summer, while working as a counselor at a YMCA camp in Connecticut, we put on a talent show for the campers. 

After the show, another counselor came up to me and asked: “Have you ever thought of acting? You should. You’re good at that.”

When I got back to Fordham that fall I changed my major once again —for the last time.

And in the years that followed—just as that woman getting her hair done predicted—I have traveled the world and I have spoken to millions of people through my movies. 

Millions who—up ‘till today—I couldn’t see while I was talking to them.

But I do see you today. And I’m encouraged by what I see. I’m strengthened by what I see. I love what I see.

Let me conclude with one final point. Many years ago I did this movie called Philadelphia. We actually filmed some scenes right here on campus.

Philadelphia came out in 1993, when most of you were probably still crawling around in diapers. Some of the professors, too.

But it’s a good movie. Rent it on Netflix. I get 23 cents every time you do. Tell your friends, too!

It’s about a man, played by Tom Hanks, who’s fired from his law firm because he has AIDS. 

He wants to sue the firm, but no one’s willing to represent him until a homophobic, ambulance-chasing lawyer—played by yours truly—takes on the case.

In a way, if you watch the movie, you’ll see everything I’m talking about today.

You’ll see what I mean about taking risks or being willing to fail.

Because taking a risk is not just about going for a job. 

It’s also about knowing what you know and what you don’t know. It’s about being open to people and ideas.

Over the course of the film, the character I play begins to take risks. He slowly overcomes his fears, and ultimately his heart becomes flooded with love.

And I can’t think of a better message as we send you off today.

To not only take risks, but to be open to life. 

To accept new views and to be open to new opinions.

To be willing to speak at commencement at one of the country’s best universities… even though you’re scared stiff.

While it may be frightening, it will also be rewarding.

Because the chances you take… the people you meet… the people you love...the faith that you have—that’s what’s going to define your life.

So… members of the class of 2011: This is your mission:

When you leave the friendly confines of West Philly: Never be discouraged. Never hold back. Give everything you’ve got.

And when you fall throughout life—and maybe even tonight after a few too many glasses of champagne—fall forward. 

Congratulations, I love you, God bless you, I respect you.

Jodie Foster: 'The journey of your life has a way of sneaking off the starting line', University of Pennsylvania - 2006

15 May, 2006, University of Pennsylvania, USA

My fellow graduates, I’ve got the best seat in the house today, a view of the greatest hearts, minds and talents of this generation. You will undoubtedly hear a lot of that kind of talk here today. There are sayings like “the intellectual elite” or “the hope for this country’s future” or “the responsibility that comes with the privilege of education.” And if you’re anything like I was at my Yale graduation in 1984, you’ll think, what a load of elitist crap. You’ll look around you, at your friends still bleary eyed and silly from last night’s concoctions, the buddies you curl up with, sing stupid songs with, make faces with. These guys? We can’t possibly be the ones they’re talking about…Do we know where we’re going? Hell no! If you’re anything like I was you’ll spend the next six months in bed watching re-runs feeling like a complete idiot.

But somewhere in the middle of free form post-graduation survival, the journey of your life has a way of sneaking off the starting line. That is when your Penn education starts peeking through. You have been given the promise of meaningfulness. You’ve learned the discipline to “just do it,” to apply yourself and lay your guts on the line. You have been inspired and not just by the things you have learned here. (Let’s face it. You won’t remember a single test question in a few months.) You have been inspired by the experiences you have had, the people you’ve held, the blood you have shed, all the growing up surrounded by hopefulness of spirit. You have dared, have stuck your hands in the surf and come up with dripping substance.  All of that fine and delicious matter has a way of becoming the material of your life. You pick up bits and pieces of treasure and trash, pain and pleasure, passions and disappointments and you start stuffing them in your bag...your big bag of experience. You do some dumb things that don’t work out at all. You stumble excitedly on little gems that you never saw coming. And you stuff them all in your bag. You pursue the things you love and believe in. You cast off the images of yourself that don’t fit. And suddenly you look behind you and a pattern emerges. You look in front of you and the path makes sense. There is nothing more beautiful than finding your course as you believe you bob aimlessly in the current. Wouldn’t you know that your path was there all along, waiting for you to knock, waiting for you to become. This path does not belong to your parents, your teachers, your leaders, or your lovers. Your path is your character defining itself more and more everyday like a photograph coming into focus, like a color that becomes more vivid in contrast with its surroundings. And who is this shiny penny rolling towards that bright future, our graduating cliché? Is he or she so shiny? Is the future truly bright? Well, that is only for you to know and for you to find out. You are standing on a freeway and things will happen. How you duck, weave and balance, how you push, twist and choose, well, that is up to you.

My freshman Fall in 1980 marked the election of Ronald Reagan for his first term in office and the subsequent 12 years we all know too much about. It was also when HIV/AIDS started to touch our landscape. So much sadness and grief became a part of our lives in that time and the years to come. Like my friends, I protested apartheid in South Africa, the CIA’s presence in Central America. I bailed my friends out of jail. I stayed up nights talking, talking, talking, endlessly poring over the ruminations of our consciousness. Finally my graduation procession in 1984 angled through the rainy streets of New Haven, all of the students greeted with smiles and buttons from hundreds of striking and picketing university workers. College campuses stung with the excitement of activism. If only I could find that connection to move our country towards change, to serve. But I was never comfortable being front and center with my political opinions. It just wasn’t me. It wasn’t my way...What was my way? I wanted to be relevant, significant. I wanted my life to be meaningful. All I really loved was to tell stories, to find the hidden truths in the details of people’s lives. Well, what difference could that possibly make? I had no idea at the time how much of a difference it can make. Yes, I tell stories and those stories have changed me, have cut me open and spilled me out and connected me with the world around me in ways I could never have imagined. I have learned so much from them. What I have learned lives on in the food I make, in the way I treat my kids, the laws I uphold, the hand I outstretch, the rituals I cling to and pass along. Like the characters I have played, those women who endure terrible adversity and survive intact, victorious, heroic, I want to become better instead of worse, deeper, stronger, more truthful. With every choice I make in my lifetime I come a little closer to that goal. And perhaps in the process other women will be inspired by these portrayals to do the same. This is my way. How could I have possibly known that my freshman year in college?

I’m sure all of you remember your freshman year of 2002. On the anniversary of the worst September in our nation’s history we were all glued to those burning buildings, the screaming confusion, the fiery chaos of the 9/11 attacks set against a painful drumbeat for war. And there were the stories. The immigrant window washer working on the Twin Towers that day. How he’d had breakfast that morning with one of those happy grins. “It’s gonna be sunny.” The pre-schoolers holding hands as they were hurried down Greenwich Street away from the explosions. The teachers would shout, “If you see their parents tell them they’re okay.” Firemen climbing up, climbing up into the smoke of fear as the world we’d come to believe in crumbled below them. Grief, unending grief, too hard for one nation to bear. And in that one instant of deep sorrowful mourning the world was with us. We reached out our arms as the world reached out its arms. A terrible moment. A moment of wonder. A moment so true and so beautiful and so exquisitely sad, one that we shared with humankind…And then the moment was gone, in my belief, squandered. So many lives lost, for what? And where are we now? Your senior year witnessed the terrible wake of Hurricane Katrina, a mark so devastating on our country that words just cannot describe. (Not just the natural disaster but our leader’s equally disastrous and shameful reaction.) How do you live down that mark, a scar that will haunt America and the fabric of its communities for decades to come? No, this country is not better now than it was four years ago. The world is not better now than it was four years ago. That will be part of your story, graduates of the class of 2006. Not your parents’ story, not your teachers’, your friends’, your lovers’ or your leaders’. Where will your story take you? How will your experience pave the way for a new voice in America? I hope it will take you out of these doors, out into the open air. You will breathe it in your lungs and say, “From now on this life will be what I stand for, dammit. Move over. This is my story now.”

You will find on your diplomas, and my diploma,  the motto of the University of Pennsylvania, which in Latin reads: “Leges sine moribus vanae.” “Laws without morals are useless.” I would add that morals without commitment are empty. Your Penn education has given you a two-by-four. You may build a building or hit someone over the head. The choice is yours. How lucky to find you have the option of filling your life with your passions. And no, not everyone does. You have the privilege of creating meaning in your life so that others might also come to enjoy that privilege. Do not waste it trying to become someone you’re not. Use it to become who you are already. Class of 2006, I’ll leave you with a quote you all know by heart. Feel free to chime in. I’m going to say it twice.  From Eminem...

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment,
You own it. You better never let it go.
One shot! Do not miss your chance to blow.
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.

Class of 2006, congratulations and welcome.

Bono: 'That's Not a Cause. That's an Emergency', UPenn - 2004

May 17, 2004, University of Pennsylvania, USA

My name is Bono and I am a rock star. Don’t get me too excited because I use four letter words when I get excited. I’d just like to say to the parents, your children are safe, your country is safe, the FCC has taught me a lesson and the only four letter word I’m going to use today is PENN. Come to think of it, Bono is a four-letter word. The whole business of obscenity – I don’t think there’s anything certainly more unseemly than the site of a rock star in academic robes. It’s a bit like when people put their King Charles spaniels in little tartan sweats and hats. It’s not natural, and it doesn’t make the dog any smarter.

It’s true we were here before with U2 and I would like to thank them for giving me a great life, as well as you. I’ve got a great rock and roll band that normally stand in the back when I’m talking to thousands of people in a football stadium and they were here with me I think it was seven years ago. Actually then I was with some other sartorial problems. I was wearing a mirror ball suit and I emerged from a forty-foot high revolving lemon. It was a cross between a space ship, a disco and a plastic fruit. I guess it was at that point when your Trustees decided to give me their highest honor.

Doctor of Laws, wow! I know it’s an honor, and it really is an honor, but are you sure? Doctor of Law, all I can think about is the laws I’ve broken. Laws of nature, laws of physics, laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and on a memorable night in the late seventies, I think it was Newton’s law of motion sickness. No, it’s true, my resume reads like a rap sheet. I have to come clean. I’ve broken a lot of laws, and the ones I haven’t I’ve certainly thought about. I have sinned in thought, word, and deed and God forgive me; actually God forgave me, but why would you? I’m here getting a doctorate, getting respectable, getting in the good graces of the powers that be, I hope it sends you students a powerful message: Crime does pay.

So I humbly accept the honor, keeping in mind the words of a British playwright, John Mortimer it was, “No brilliance is needed in the law, nothing but common sense and relatively clean fingernails.” Well, at best I’ve got one of the two. But no, I never went to college, I’ve slept in some strange places, but the library wasn’t one of them. I studied rock and roll and I grew up in Dublin in the ’70s; music was an alarm bell for me, it woke me up to the world. I was 17 when I first saw The Clash, and it just sounded like revolution. The Clash were like, “This is a public service announcement  - with guitars.” 

I was the kid in the crowd who took it at face value. Later I learned that a lot of the rebels were in it for the t-shirt. They’d wear the boots but they wouldn’t march. They’d smash bottles on their heads but they wouldn’t go to something more painful, like a town hall meeting. By the way I felt like that myself until recently. I didn’t expect change to come so slow. So agonizingly slow. I didn’t realize that the biggest obstacle to political and social progress wasn’t the Free Masons, or the Establishment, or the boot heal of whatever you consider the man to be, it was something much more subtle.

As the Provost just referred to, a combination of our own indifference and the Kafkaesque labyrinth of those you encounter as people vanish down the corridors of bureaucracy. So for better or worse that was my education. I came away with a clear sense of the difference music could make in my own life, in other peoples lives if I did my job right, which if you’re a singer in a rock band means avoiding the obvious pitfalls, like say a mullet hairdo. If anyone here doesn’t know what a mullet is, by the way, your education’s certainly not complete. I’d ask for your money back. For a lead singer like me, a mullet is, I would suggest, arguably more dangerous than a drug problem. Yes, I had a mullet in the ’80s.

Now this is the point where the faculty start smiling uncomfortably and thinking maybe they should have offered me the honorary bachelors degree instead of the full blown (“He should have been the bachelor’s one; he’s talking about mullets and stuff…”); and if they’re asking what on earth I’m doing here, I think it’s a fair question: what am I doing here? More to the point: what are you doing here? Because if you don’t mind me saying so, this is a strange ending to an Ivy League education. Four years in these historic halls thinking great thoughts and now you’re sitting in a stadium better suited for football listening to an Irish rock star give a speech that is so far mostly about himself. What are you doing here?

Actually I saw something in the paper last week about Kermit the Frog giving a commencement address somewhere. One of the students was complaining, “I worked my ass off for four years to be addressed by a sock?” You have worked your ass off for this. For four years you’ve been buying, trading, and selling, everything you’ve got in this marketplace of ideas. The intellectual hustle. Your pockets are full, even if your parents’ are empty, and now you’ve got to figure out what to spend it on. Well, the going rate for change is not cheap. Big ideas are expensive. The University has had its share of big ideas. Benjamin Franklin had a few, so did Justice Brennen and in my opinion so does Judith Rodin. What a gorgeous girl. They all knew that if you’re gonna be good at your word if you’re gonna live up to your ideals and your education, it’s gonna cost you. So my question, I suppose, is: What’s the big idea? What’s your big idea? What are you willing to spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital, your cash, your sweat equity in pursuing outside of the walls of the University of Pennsylvania?

There’s a truly great Irish poet; his name is Brendan Kennelly, and he has this epic poem called the Book of Judas, and there’s a line in that poem that never leaves my mind: “If you want to serve the age, betray it.” What does that mean to betray the age? Well to me betraying the age means exposing its conceits, its foibles, its phony moral certitudes. It means telling the secrets of the age and facing harsher truths. Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. Slavery was one of them and the people who best served that age were the ones who called it as it was, which was ungodly and inhuman. Ben Franklin called it when he became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Segregation. There was another one. America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age. And 50 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court betrayed the age May 17, 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education came down and put the lie to the idea that separate can ever really be equal. Amen to that. 

Fast forward 50 years May 17, 2004, what are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind spots of our age? What’s worth spending your post-Penn lives trying to do or undo? It might be something simple. It might be something as simple as our deep down refusal to believe that every human life has equal worth. Could that be it? Could that be it?

Each of you will probably have your own answer, but for me that is it. And for me the proving ground has been Africa. Africa makes a mockery of what we say, at least what I say, about equality. It questions our pieties and our commitments because there’s no way to look at what’s happening over there and it’s effect on all of us and conclude that we actually consider Africans as our equal before God. There is no chance.

An amazing event happened here in Philadelphia in 1985, Live Aid, that whole ‘We Are The World’ phenomenon, the concert that happened here.  Well after that concert I went to Ethiopia with my wife, Ali; we were there for a month and an extraordinary thing happened to me. We used to wake up in the morning and the mist would be lifting; we’d see thousands and thousands of people who’d been walking all night to our food station were we were working. One man  –  I was standing outside talking to the translator  –  had this beautiful boy and he was saying to me in Amharic, I think it was, I said I can’t understand what he’s saying; and this nurse who spoke English and Amharic said to me, he’s saying will you take his son. He’s saying please take his son; he would be a great son for you. I was looking puzzled and he said, “You must take my son because if you don’t take my son, my son will surely die. If you take him he will go back to where he is and get an education.” (Probably like the ones we’re talking about today.) I had to say no; that was the rules there and I walked away from that man.
I’ve never really walked away from it. But I think about that boy and that man and that’s when I started this journey that’s brought me here into this stadium. Because at that moment I became the worst scourge on God’s green earth, a rock star with a cause. Christ! Except it isn’t the cause. Seven thousand Africans dying every day of preventable, treatable disease like AIDS? That’s not a cause. That’s an emergency. And when the disease gets out of control because most of the population lives on less than one dollar a day? That’s not a cause. That’s an emergency.

And when resentment builds because of unfair trade rules and the burden of unfair debt (they are debts, by the way, that keep Africans poor)? That’s not a cause. That’s an emergency.  So  –  We Are The World, Live Aid, Start Me Off, it was an extraordinary thing and really that event was about charity. But 20 years on I’m not that interested in charity. I’m interested in justice. There’s a difference. Africa needs justice as much as it needs charity. Equality for Africa is a big idea. It’s a big expensive idea. I see the Wharton graduates now getting out the math on the back of their programs; numbers are intimidating aren’t they, but not to you! 

But the scale of the suffering and the scope of the commitment, they often numb us into a kind of indifference. Wishing for the end to AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa is like wishing that gravity didn’t make things so damn heavy.  We can wish it, but what the hell can we do about it? Well, more than we think. We can’t fix every problem  –  corruption, natural calamities are part of the picture here  –  but the ones we can, we must. The debt burden, as I say, unfair trade, as I say, sharing our knowledge, the intellectual copyright for lifesaving drugs in a crisis; we can do that. And because we can, we must. Because we can, we must. Amen.

This is the straight truth. The righteous truth. It’s not a theory; it’s a fact. The fact is that this generation  –  yours, my generation  –  we’re the first generation that can look at poverty and disease, look across the ocean to Africa and say with a straight face, we can be the first to end this stupid extreme poverty, where, in a world of plenty, a child can die for lack of food in it’s belly. We can be the first generation. It might take a while, but we can be that generation that says no to stupid poverty. It’s a fact, the economists confirm it. It’s an expensive fact but cheaper than say the Marshall Plan that saved Europe from communism and fascism. And cheaper I would argue than fighting wave after wave of terrorism’s new recruits. That’s the economics department over there, very good. It’s a fact. So why aren’t we pumping our fists in the air and cheering about it? Well probably because when we admit we can do something about it, we’ve got to do something about it. For the first time in history we have the know-how, we have the cash, we have the lifesaving drugs, but do we have the will?

Yesterday, here in Philadelphia, at the Liberty Bell, I met a lot of Americans who do have the will. From arch religious conservatives to young secular radicals, I just felt an incredible overpowering sense that this was possible. We’re calling it the ONE campaign, to put an end to AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa. They believe we can do it; so do I. I really, really do believe it. I just want you to know, I think this is obvious, but I’m not really going in for the warm fuzzy feeling thing; I’m not a hippy; I do not have flowers in my hair; I come from punk rock, all right. The Clash wore army boots not Birkenstocks. I believe America can do this! I believe that this generation can do this. In fact I want to hear an argument about why we shouldn’t.

I know idealism is not playing on the radio right now; you don’t see it on TV; irony is on heavy rotation, the knowingness, the smirk, the tired joke. I’ve tried them all out but I’ll tell you this, outside this campus, and even inside it, idealism is under siege beset by materialism, narcissism and all the other isms of indifference. Baggism, Shaggism. Raggism. Notism. Graduationism. Chismism; I don’t know. Where’s John Lennon when you need him?

But I don’t want to make you cop to idealism, not in front of your parents, or your younger siblings. But what about Americanism? Will you cop to that at least? It’s not everywhere in fashion these days. Americanism. Not very big in Europe, truth be told. No less on Ivy League college campuses. But it all depends on your definition of Americanism. Me, I’m in love with this country called America. I’m a huge fan of America, I’m one of those annoying fans, you know the ones that read the CD notes and follow you into bathrooms and ask you all kinds of annoying questions about why you didn’t live up to that. I’m that kind of fan.

I read the Declaration of Independence and I’ve read the Constitution of the United States, and they are some liner notes dude. As I said yesterday I made my pilgrimage to Independence Hall, and I love America because America is not just a country, it’s an idea. You see my country, Ireland, is a great country, but it’s not an idea. America is an idea, but it’s an idea that brings with it some baggage, like power brings responsibility. It’s an idea that brings with it equality, but equality, even though it’s the highest calling, is the hardest to reach. The idea that anything is possible, that’s one of the reasons why I’m a fan of America. It’s like hey, look there’s the moon up there, lets take a walk on it, bring back a piece of it. That’s the kind of America that I’m a fan of.

In 1771 your founder, Mr. Franklin, spent three months in Ireland and Scotland to look at the relationship they had with England to see if this could be a model for America, whether America should follow their example and remain a part of the British Empire. Franklin was deeply, deeply distressed by what he saw. In Ireland he saw how England had put a stranglehold on Irish trade, how absentee English landlords exploited Irish tenant farmers and how those farmers in Franklin’s words, “lived in retched hovels of mud and straw, were clothed in rags and subsisted chiefly on potatoes.”  Not exactly the American dream.

So instead of Ireland becoming a model for America, America became a model for Ireland in our own struggle for independence. When the potatoes ran out, millions of Irish men, women and children packed their bags got on a boat and showed up right here. And we’re still doing it. We’re not even starving anymore. Loads of potatoes! In fact if there’s any Irish out there, I’ve breaking news from Dublin: the potato famine is over you can come home now. But why are we still showing up? Because we love the idea of America. We love the crackle and the hustle, we love the spirit that gives a finger to fate, the spirit that says there’s no hurdle we can’t clear and no problem we can’t fix… [sound of helicopter above the stadium] Oh, here comes the Brits! Only joking. No problem we can’t fix.

So what’s the problem that we want to apply all this energy and intellect to? Every era has its defining struggle and the fate of Africa is one of ours. It’s not the only one, but in the history books it’s easily going to make the top five, what we did or what we did not do. It’s a proving ground, as I said earlier, for the idea of equality. But whether it’s this or something else, I hope you’ll pick a fight and get in it. Get your boots dirty; get rough; steel your courage with a final drink there at Smoky Joe’s, one last primal scream and go. Sing the melody line you hear in your own head; remember, you don’t owe anybody any explanations; you don’t owe your parents any explanations; you don’t owe your professors any explanations.

You know, I used to think the future was solid or fixed, something you inherited like an old building that you move into when the previous generation moves out or gets chased out. But it’s not. The future is not fixed; it’s fluid. You can build your own building, or hut or condo, whatever; this is the metaphor part of the speech by the way. But my point is that the world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape. Now if I were a folksinger I’d immediately launch into “If I Had a Hammer” right now, get you all singing and swaying. But as I say I come from punk rock, so I’d rather have the bloody hammer right here in my fist. That’s what this degree of yours is, a blunt instrument. So go forth and build something with it. Remember what John Adams said about Ben Franklin, “He does not hesitate at our boldest Measures but rather seems to think us too irresolute.” Well this is the time for bold measures and this is the country and you are the generation.

Thank you.