Arnold Schwarzenegger - 'None of us can make it alone', University of Houston - 2017

12 May 2017, University of Houston, Texas, USA

Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Wow. I am now a cougar. Whose house? Who's house? Whose house? Let me try that. It is wonderful.

Thank you so much for the wonderful introduction, President Khator. It is a wonderful day to be here at the University and thank you also for the great work that you are doing on behalf of all of those students. Let's give a big, big hand for the wonderful work that your president is doing here at University.

I tell you, When I read her bio, I am so proud of her. What a great immigrant. How many great contributions she makes to this university, to this state, and to this country. When I heard that she was the first Indian immigrant to lead a comprehensive university in the United States, I say to myself, I'm going to hit it off really well with her. The reason is because I love going to places where I'm not the only one with an accent.

But seriously, I'm proud to be introduced by a fellow immigrant. And the students are very lucky here to have such a fantastic and talented leader. I also want to say thank you to the faculty. You have spent years teaching the students, inspiring them, and occasionally even arguing with them. But none of them will be here without you, so big hand to the faculty.

Finally, I would like to say thank you to the parents and to the families that are here today. You shaped the students from the beginnings of their lives, way before they became proud cougars. You have been there for them every step of the way, giving them advice and giving them affection, love, and pushing them along, and probably sometimes even worried about them. But thank you very much for all of the great work that you have done. Let's give the parents and the families a big hand of applause.

Now, to the students; This is a big day for all of you and I know some of you are going to say, 'Wait a minute, this is our day. Why is Schwarzenegger thanking everyone here in Houston? When is he going to get to us?'

Well, first of all, congratulations to all of you. I know that it took a huge vision, great vision, and a lot of work and a lot of studying and there is no one that can study for you. You have to do that yourself. So I want you all to know that I am very, very proud of all of you. Thank you for the great work that you have done.

Now, the diplomas — there will only be one name and this is yours, but I hope it doesn't confuse you and you think that maybe you made it that far by yourself. No, you didn't. It took a lot of help. None of us can make it alone. None of us. Not even the guy that is talking to you right now, that was the greatest bodybuilder of all times. Not even me, that has been the Terminator and went back in time to save the human race. Not even me that fought and killed predators with his bare hands.

I always tell people that you can call me anything that you want. You can call me Arnold. You can call me Schwarzenegger. You can call me the Austrian oak. You can call me Schwarzy. You can call me Arnie. But don't ever, ever call me the self‑made man.

But this is so important for you to understand. I didn't make it that far on my own. I mean, to accept that credit or that medal, would discount every single person that has helped me get here today, that gave me advice, that made an effort, that lifted me up when I fell. And it gives the wrong impression that we can do it all alone. None of us can. The whole concept of the self‑made man or woman is a myth.

Now, I know you are going to say, look, we have read so many stories about you and we saw documentaries where they talk about that you are the model of the American dream and that you're the perfect example of the self‑made man. Well, let me tell you, I have seen, and heard, and read those stories myself. Enjoyed reading them, but the fact of the matter is, it is not the whole story.

I didn't just materialize out of nowhere like the Terminator through a fireball in the streets of Los Angeles, and then all of a sudden I was there. No. I would have never made it in my life without the help. I happen to be someone, for instance, that believes in God. That we were created by God, but let's assume for a second that you are not into that, then you must also believe in — at least believe in a biological aspect, that parents creating us. I wouldn't be here without my parents creating me, nurturing me, feeding me, changing my diapers, loving me, hugging me, and all of that.

And then later on when I went to school there were the teachers, and then there where mentors, the coaches, and then my mother was there in the afternoon helping me do my homework and be tutoring. And then in the evening my father was there helping me in sports, coaching us in soccer and in the winters skiing, sledding, ice skating, ice curling, and all those kinds of things. My father taught me about discipline and my love and appreciation for sports. And he gave me my first great advice, by saying, 'Whatever you do, Arnold, be useful.'

So, you also read so many times that I decided from one day to the next to become a bodybuilding champion and I started training 5 hours a day and then I became the youngest Mr. Universe ever. Well, it is true, but the fact of the matter is, it is not the whole story, because if I wouldn't have met a lifeguard at the lake where I grew up and some bodybuilders that introduced me to weight training and taught me the first chin‑up on a branch of a tree of that lake, and that eventually introduced me also to a weightlifting club locally, where the coaches taught me powerlifting and weightlifting and bodybuilding. They helped me and they nurtured me. They pushed me.

And then eventually I saw a magazine with Reg Park on the cover. It said, Mr. Universe becomes Hercules. There was Reg Park in a Hercules pose on the cover. I bought that magazine. I read the story from the front to the end cover and let me tell you something. I read exactly how he trained; 5 hours a day. And how he became a champion, Mr. Universe three times, and how he went to America. And then discovered in the movies — Hercules' movies. Well, when I read that, I found my vision.

And let me tell you the most important thing in life is to have vision, to know exactly where you're vision. I found my vision and that magazine, Reg Park, gave me my blueprint for my life, and five years later, after training 5 hours a day, just like him and doing his exercises, I became, through his help and his inspiration, the youngest Mr. Universe ever.

And this is what made then Joe Weider the father of bodybuildings, the owner of a giant food supplement empire, the editor of Muscle and Fitness invited me to America. So, it was Joe Weider that brought me to America, to the greatest country in the world, to give me the opportunity to train in Gold's Gym and to get me a little apartment. I came over here with absolutely nothing. It was his help. I had $20 in the pocket and some sweaty clothes in the gym bag. I had this one little apartment and on Thanksgiving, the bodybuilders from Gold's Gym came to my apartment and they brought me pillows, dishes, silverware, all of those things I didn't have.

And even a black and white TV and the transistor radio, which I still have today on the end table next to my bed. The generosity I saw. The amount of help that I got when I came to America was absolutely extraordinary, saw firsthand how generous the American people are. And then in Gold's Gym, there was a magical place with all of the champions, Mr. Americas, Mr. World, Mr. Universe, everyone was training, powerlifters, Olympic champions and so on. And they helped me change from an amateur champion to a professional champion.

And after that, I won champion after championship, Seven times Mr. Olympia. You heard it all. And became the greatest bodybuilder of all times according to the bodybuilding magazine in 1975. Now this is just — with all of the help, I would not have made any of that by myself.

So, this is why I don't believe in the self‑made man and even when it comes to show business, it was the same thing. I mean — you read the stories that Schwarzenegger decided from one day to the next to retire from bodybuilding and to go and become an actor. And in no time, he did Conan the Barbarian and Terminator and Commander and so on. Well, it is true, but it is only half of the story because the reality of it is without a lot of help I wouldn't have made it.

First of all, it would have been fun to make it that easy and to be that easy, but it was very, very difficult to get into the movies. Very difficult. And only because I had help, I could get in because in the beginning every agent, every manager, every studio executive said, you will never become a leading man. Look at your body. You look like a monster.

I was upset about that because I trained so hard and for so long and all of a sudden they call me monsters, but the bottom line is, they said, 'This is the 70's. Twenty years they did Hercules. Movies today, the little guys are in; Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Woody Allen. Those are the sex symbols of the 70's. Don't you understand it?' I said, 'Oh, my God. Who are they?' But they even belittled me with my accent.

They said, 'Look, the way you talk. I have to be very honest. I don't want to offend you, but you give me the creeps with your accent, with that German accent. It's scary.' They said, 'Maybe we can get you a job in Hogan's Heroes, in that TV show, to play a Nazi officer. And plus your name, Schwarzen, Schmitzl, or whatever it is, I can see that already up there on billboard, and people running in because of the name.'

The bottom line is, it was very, very difficult but only because I decided not to listen to the nay‑sayers and because I decided to work as hard as I did in bodybuilding, to take acting lessons, to take voice lessons, English lessons, speech lessons and accent removal lessons.

Now, I know you are going to say: 'Get your money back, Arnold.' But the bottom line is I ran around, 'The fine wine grows on a vine,' because the Germans always had difficulties with the F, W, and the V. The fine wine grows on a vine. And then, 'The sink is made out of zinc' and all those kinds of things. So, I did this thousands of time and eventually it worked. I started getting little parts and then I started getting bigger parts, and then eventually, even though it was very difficult, it was Dino De Laurentiis and Ed Pressman that came to me with Conan the Barbarian.

And if they wouldn't have helped me to get that part, I would not have broken through and become a leading man.

This movie came out — they spent $20 million, which in today's terms is around $200 million on that movie. It was number 1 in the box office. That was, for me, the big breakthrough. And at the press conference, the director even said, if we wouldn't have Schwarzenegger, we would have to build one because I was the only one that could act and had a body like that for Conan the Barbarian.

And then, of course, there was James Cameron that directed Terminator. When Terminator came out, James Cameron said, the reason why Terminator worked is because Schwarzenegger talks like a machine. Now, I don't know if I should take this as a compliment or what, but the bottom line is, it was the two things that the studio executives said would be big liability, became big, big assets and my career took off.

And this is why I always say thank you to the people that helped me along the way and not ever think that I'm a self‑made man because, not only was the producer and directors that are helpful, and the studio executives are helpful, but every person that works in a movie. As a matter of fact, when we have a wrap party, which is the party at the end of the movie, I always make sure every person gets invited to that wrap party, to say thank you to them at the wrap party. And go to the microphone and you say thank you to the cameraman because without him, I wouldn't look as great on the screen; to the makeup person; to the visual effects person; to the stunt people; the stunt coordinator; the cable pullers; craft services; and the list goes on and on and on. There's 280 people that work in a movie that make you look great on that screen so how can I say I'm a self‑made man?

So, this is why it is important for all of us to recognize and this is why I tell you, on every step of the way I had help. Even when I ran for governor, people say, 'One day he decided to run for governor and to take over the sixth largest economy in the world.' No, this is not the way it was.

Yes, I took over and yes, I won the governorship, but if it wouldn't have been for Jay Leno, who hosted the tonight show, who I called a week before and I said, 'I want to announce my candidacy on your show, on the Tonight Show because I want to sell myself as an outsider because the people in California are sick and tired of the typical politician.' So, he said to me, and he was a great friend, he said 'Yes. I'm going to help you with you that.'

And I announced, without anyone knowing, on August 6th, on the Tonight Show, my candidacy. And he even organized 100 journalists from politics to sit in the back when I announced my candidacy. So, this is the kind of help I got. Then, of course, I didn't even have a team yet. People came out of nowhere and just started helping organizing the campaign, and with fundraising, and with communication, and with all of those things. And I became, two months later, the governor of the state of California, but it took a lot of help.

And I have to say that it is important to acknowledge that because people make it always sound that you did all this yourself. I didn't. I did it with a lot of help. Yes, I was determined. Yes, I never listened to the nay‑sayers. Yes, I had a great vision. Yes, I had the fire in the belly and all of those things, but I didn't do it without the help.

And even when you then say, Schwarzenegger did the most unbelievable environmental laws in California, well guess how laws are done? It took the legislators — 120 legislators to negotiate for weeks and months at a time, and then to send down legislation and then you sign that. So you need help too.

I had a lot of help along the way and this is why it is so important for all of you to recognize that. And the biggest help, of course, was from America.

If I wouldn't have come to the United States, if I would have come to any other country, I would not have had the success. I mean, America has proven not only to the be the land of opportunity image‑wise, but America has proven to be the greatest country in the world. Anyone can make it!

This is why I always tell people, none of my careers would have happened if it wouldn't have been for the United States of America. I could have gone to the Middle East. Do you think I would stand here today? I could have gone to Africa. Do you think I would stand here today Or to Australia or to Asia, to any other country in Europe, it makes no difference. This place has given me the opportunity, step after step, all the way through all my three careers and the millions and millions of dollars I've made all because of America.

So, thank you, America, for the great thing that you're doing for immigrants that come over here.

And the reason why I want you to understand that is because as soon as you understand that you are here because of a lot of help, then you also understand that now is time to help others. That's what this is all about. You got to help others. Don't just think about yourself. Help others.

As my father‑in‑law, sergeant Shriver said, at Yale university commencement speech, just like I'm speaking right now here, except I speak to a better university, but he said — Sergeant Shriver said — you know he was the guy that created the Peace Corps, the Job Corps, Legal Aid to the poor and an extraordinarily human being under the Johnson and Kennedy administration.

So, he said to those students, he said, 'Tear down this mirror. Tear down this mirror that makes you always look at yourself and you will be able to look beyond this mirror and see the millions of people that need your help.'

And let me tell you something, when I heard that, it all made sense to me, that we have to go out and help. And this is why I got involved in special Olympics, to be the international coach of special Olympics, and then eventually became the chairman of the president's council on physical fitness and sports. I was appointed by President Bush, my favorite Houstonian and — I should not say the only one, but Barbara. I should add Barbara because I see them later on. I don't want to leave out Barbara here because otherwise, she gets really mad. Yeah, so anyway, So both of them.

And then drive through around all 50 states to promote health and fitness and then eventually started after‑school programs and now we are in 40 different — 48 different cities providing after‑school programs for over 100,000 kids and all this.

So, i mean it is — to me, it was very important to give back and also to go — every time I travel around the world, to go military bases and to visit our brave men and women that save us, that protect us, to say, thank you, thank you, thank you to them, anywhere in the world that I travel. So it is important to recognize that. So all I'm saying is, it is my challenge to you today to go ahead and to celebrate your accomplishment. You should.

This commencement is a great success and each of you earned your diplomas, but at some point, take a break from the celebration, away from the Instagrams and snapchats, and think about all of the people that help you. Make sure to go and to recognize President Khator and to say thank you to her for the great work that she has done. Say thank you to the deans of this university that are responsible to make this university so great.

Say thank you to the professors and associate professors, everyone that taught you and everyone that's responsible for you to be here today, and go to your parents and give them a big, big hug and tell them that you love them and thank you for everything that you have done to get me here today.

do that, And give something back to your community and to your state and to this country because remember, in the end, we are not going to be remembered for how much we made but for how much we have given.

Make sure that it is not about me. That it is about 'we.' Turn the 'me' into 'we,' and I guarantee you that you can change the world.

Thank you very much all of you cougars. Thank you.

And now I'm going to do a snapchat with my glasses. Let's hear it. Fantastic. Hasta La Vista, baby. I'll be back.

Will Ferrell: 'Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind', Harvard, 2003

June 4, 2003, Harvard, Boston, USA

This is not the Worcester, Mass Boat Show, is it? I am sorry. I have made a terrible mistake. Ever since I left “Saturday Night Live,” I mostly do public speaking now. And I must have made an error in the little Palm Pilot. Boy. Don’t worry. I got it on me. I got the speech on me. Let’s see. Ah, yes. Here we go.

You know, when Bill Gates first called me to speak to you today, I was honored. But when he wanted me to be one of the Roxbury guys, I — Sorry, that’s Microsoft. I’m sorry about that. Star Trek Convention. No. NRA. NAACP. Dow Chemical. No. But that is a good one. That is a good speech. The University of Michigan Law. Johns Hopkins Medical School. I’m sorry. Are you sure this is not the boat show? No, I have it. I do have it on me. I do. It’s here. Thank you.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Faculty, Administrators, Friends and Family and, of course, the graduating Class of 2003, I wish to say hello and thank you for bestowing this honor upon me as your Class Day speaker. After months of secret negotiations, several hundred secret ballots, and a weekend retreat with Vice President Dick Cheney in his secret mountain bunker, a Class Day speaker was chosen, and it was me. You obviously have made a grave error. But it’s too late now. So let’s just go with it.

Today’s speech is going to be a little different, a little unorthodox. Some of you may find it to be shocking. I’m not going to stand up here and try to be funny. Because even though I am a professional comedian of the highest caliber, I’ve decided to do one thing that a lot of people are probably afraid to do, and that’s give it to you straight.

As most of you are probably aware, I didn’t graduate from Harvard. In fact, I never even got a call back from Admissions. Damn you, Harvard! Damn you! I told myself I would not get emotional today. But damn it, I’m here, and sometimes it’s just good to cry.

I’m not one of you. Okay? I can’t relate to who you are and what you’ve been through. I graduated from the University of Life. All right? I received a degree from the School of Hard Knocks. And our colors were black and blue, baby. I had office hours with the Dean of Bloody Noses. All right? I borrowed my class notes from Professor Knuckle Sandwich and his Teaching Assistant, Ms. Fat Lip Thon Nyun. That’s the kind of school I went to for real, okay?

So my gift to you, Class of 2003, is to tell you about the real world through my eyes, through my experiences. And I’m sorry, but I refuse to sugarcoat it. I ain’t gonna do it. And I probably shouldn’t use the word “ain’t” during this day in which we celebrate education. But that’s just the way I play it, Homes.

Graduates, if you will indulge me for a moment, let me paint a picture of what it’s like out there. The last four or, for some of you, five years you’ve been living in a fantasyland, running around, talking about Hemingway, or Clancy, or, I don’t know, I mean whatever you read here at Harvard. The Novelization of the Matrix, I don’t know. I don’t know what you do here.

But I do know this. You’re about to enter into a world filled with hypocrisy and doublespeak, a world in which your limo to the airport is often a half-hour late. In addition to not even being a limo at all; often times it’s a Lincoln Towncar. You’re about to enter a world where you ask your new assistant, Jamie, to bring you a tall, non-fat latte. And he comes back with a short soy cappuccino. Guess what, Jamie? You’re fired. Not too hard to get right, my friend.

A world where your acting coach, Bob Leslie-Duncan — yes, the Bob Leslie-Duncan — tells you time and time again that you will never, ever be considered as a dramatic actor because you don’t play things real, and are too over the top. Amazing! Simply amazing!

I’m sorry, graduates. But this is a world where you aren’t allowed to use your cell phone in airplanes, during live theater, at the movies, at funerals, or even during your own elective surgery. Apparently, the Berlin Wall went back up because we now live in Russia. I mean just try lighting up a cigar in a movie theater or paying for a dinner for 20 friends with an autograph. It ain’t that easy. Strong words, I know. Tough talk. But more like tough love. Because this is where my faith in you guys comes into play, Harvard University’s graduating Class of 2003, without a doubt, the finest, most talented group of sexual beings this great land has to offer.

Now I know I blew some of your minds with my depiction of what it’s really like out there. But if anyone can handle the ups and downs of this crazy blue marble we call Planet Earth, it’s you guys. As I stare out into this vast sea of shining faces, I see the best and brightest. Some of you will be captains of industry and business. Others of you will go on to great careers in medicine, law and public service. Four of you — and I’m not at liberty to say which four — will go on to magnificent careers in the porno industry. I’m not trying to be funny. That’s just a statistical fact.

One of you, specifically John Lee, will spend most of your time just hanging out in your car eating nachos. You will all come back from time to time to this beautiful campus for reunions, and ask the question, “Does anyone ever know what happened to John Lee?” At that point, he will invariably pop out from the bushes and yell, “Nachos anyone?!” At first, it will scare the crap out of you. But then you’ll share a laugh with your classmates and ultimately look forward to John jumping out of the bushes as a yearly event.

I’d like to change gears here, if I could. Talk a little bit about “Saturday Night Live.” Now, during my 18-year stint on the show, I had the chance to play or impersonate some very interesting people, none more interesting than our current President, Mr. George W. Bush. Now in some cases, you actually have contact with some of the people you play. As a byproduct of this former situation, the President and myself have become quite good friends. In fact, I might even call him a father figure of sorts, granted a dim-witted father figure who likes to take a lot of naps and start wars, but a father figure nonetheless.

When I told the President that I’d be speaking here today, he wondered if I would express some sentiments to you. And I said I’d do my best. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to read this message from the President of the United States.

Students, Faculty, Families and Distinguished Guests, I just want to take time to congratulate you on your outstanding achievement as graduates of the Class of 2002. The great thing about being the Class of 2002 is that you can always remember what year you graduated because 2002 is a palindrome which, of course, is a word or number that is the same read backwards or forwards. I’ll bet you’re surprised I know that word, but I do. So you can suck on it.

Make no mistake, Harvard University is one of the finest in the land. And its graduates are that fine as well. You’re young men and women whose exuberance exude a confident confidence of a bygone era. I believe it was Shakespeare who said it best when he said, “Look yonder into the darkness for knowledge onto which I say go onto that which thou possess into thy night for thee have come with only a single sword and vanquished thee into darkness.”

I’m going to be honest with you, I just made that up. But I don’t know how to delete it from the computer. Tomorrow’s graduation day speaker is former President of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo. Ernie’s a good man, a deeply religious man, and one of the original members of the Latino boy band Menudo. So listen up to Ernie. He was at the beginning of the whole boy band explosion.

As you set off into the world, don’t be afraid to question your leaders. But don’t ask too many questions at one time or that are too hard because your leaders get tired and/or cranky. All of you sitting here have the brightest of futures ahead. Many of you will go on to stellar careers and various pursuits. And four of you — and I’m not at liberty to say which four — will go on to star in the porno industry.

One of the challenges you will be faced with is finding a job in our depressed economy. In fact, the chances of landing a decent job are about as good as finding weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi desert. Slim and none. And Slim just left the building. In fact, the closest thing I found to looking like a weapon of mass destruction is the turd that Dick Cheney left in the Oval Office toilet about an hour ago. Man, that thing is a WMD if I’ve ever seen one. On that note, God bless and happy graduation.

You know, I sincerely hope you enjoy this next chapter of your life because it’s really going to be great, as long as you pay your taxes. And don’t just take a year off because you think Uncle Sam is snoozing at the wheel because he will descend upon you like a hawk from hell. Let’s just put it this way. After some past indiscretions with the IRS, my take-home pay last year was $9,000.

I figured I’d leave you today with a song, if you will. So, Jeff, if you could come up here. Jeff Heck, everyone. Please welcome one of your fellow graduates. Jeff is, of course, from Eliot House. You know what you guys? You guys at Eliot House, give yourselves a nice round of applause because you had the head lice scare this year, and it shut you down for most of last semester. But you didn’t mind the tents they set up for you, and you were just troopers. You really were.

Anyway, here’s a song that I think really captures the essence of the Harvard experience. It goes a little like this.

[SINGING]
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment’s gone,
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity.
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea,
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see.
Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.

Okay, you know what? I’m just realizing that this is a terrible graduation song. Once again, I’m sorry. This is the first time I’ve actually listened to the lyrics. Man, it’s a downer. It’s bleak.

Boy, I want to finish this. Just give me a minute, and let me figure out how to fix this thing. Okay. I think I got it.

[SINGING]
Now don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the Harvard alumni endowment fund.
It adds up, has performed at 22 percent growth over the last six years.
Dust in the wind, you’re so much more than dust in the wind.
Dust in the wind, you’re shiny little very smart pieces of dust in the wind.

Thank you. Good luck. And have a great day tomorrow.

Amy Poehler: 'I don't have many answers, just questions. Specifically, when I use Facetime ...' Harvard, 2011

25 May, 2011, Harvard, Massachusetts, USA

Friends, Romans, countrymen: lend me your beers.

I am honored that you chose me to help you celebrate your graduation today. I can only assume I am here today because of my subtle and layered work in a timeless classic entitled "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo". And for that I say, you're welcome.

I'm truly, truly delighted to be her at Harvard . I graduated from Boston College. Which some call the Harvard of Boston. But we all know that Harvard is the Harvard of Harvard. And you can quote me on that.

I have to admit I am very surprised to be here because like so many of you, I was pretty convinced the Rapture was going to happen. Show of hands, how many of you woke up on Sunday and thought, "You're kidding me! I sold all of my belongings, I told my boss to shove it and we are still here?" I understand how you feel. I am so mad at Heaven right now.

So I tried to write today's speech the way I wrote everything in College. Stayed up all night, typing on a Canon word processor while listening to Sir Mix-a-lot. To be fair, first I took a nap, I ate a large pretzel, I cried a little bit and then I went to see that movie, Fast Five.

And I am here to tell you, life is like a heist that requires good drivers, an explosives expert, a hot girl who doubles as a master of disguise and this is a hard and fast rule. If the Rock shows up, they're on to you.

But the class of 2011 did not invite me here to tell jokes. They invited me here to talk about the recent tensions between oil traders regulators of the commodities futures trading commission. I'm sure we all read the New York Times this morning which posited that there may be a complex scheme that relied on the close relationships between physical oil prices and the prices of financial futures, which of course, as we all know, moves in parallel. Hilarious.

What do I know about Harvard? I know it is the oldest American university. I know it provides the ultimate experience in higher learning and according to the movies, I know it is filled with people who get rich either by inventing things or suing the people who they claim stole their invention. Let me be clear. I believe everything I see in movies. And if you remember anything I say today, remember this. Every single thing you see in movies is real.

So, what do the fine students of 2011 need to hear from me? If I wanted to give you advice as a Bostonian, I would remind you that: "Just because you're wicked smart it doesn't mean you are better than me."

And I would also want to say: "Good for you for working so hard. You graduated from 'Hahvahd' -- it must be nice."

If I wanted to give you advice as a New Yorker, I'd tell you, "Excuse me, ma'am, could you move please? Don't walk in the bike lane -- get off the bike lane please." And I would also like to take a moment to inform you as a New Yorker and as my cab driver did recently that Bloomberg pretends to take the subway, but we all know that's a bunch of baloney.

And if I wanted to give you advice as an actor, I would tell you this: Don't do it. Don't be one. There are too many. I have a lot of talented friends who aren't working. Sorry, no more room at the inn. I bet you are great, but just work with the human genome instead.

You're all smart and sophisticated people. You know the world in a way that my generation never did. Because of that, I realize I don't have much advice to give to you. In many ways, I learned from you. I don't have many answers, just questions. Specifically, when I use Facetime on my iPad and I'm talking to someone and I take a picture, sometimes the screen freezes. How do I fix that?

All I can tell you today is what I have learned. What I have discovered as a person in this world. And that is this: you can't do it alone. As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people's ideas are often better than your own.

Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life. No one is here today because they did it on their own. Okay, maybe Josh, but he's just a straight up weirdo. You're all here today because someone gave you strength. Helped you. Held you in the palm of their hand. God, Allah, Buddha, Gaga -- whomever you pray to.

They have helped you get here, and that should make you feel less alone. And less scared. Because it has been a scary ten years. You were young children when you watched planes hit the World Trade Center. You quickly understood what it was like to feel out of control. Your formative teenage years were filled with orange alerts and rogue waves and unaccomplished missions.

For my generation, it was AIDS. We all grow up afraid of something. Your generation had to get used to taking off your shoes at the airprot. My generation had to get used to awkward PSAs from Boyz2men telling us to use protection. But during those tough times, we realized how wonderful it felt to be part of a group.

But more about me.

I moved to Chicago in the early 1990s and I studied improvisation there. I learned some rules that I try to apply still today: Listen. Say "yes." Live in the moment. Make sure you play with people who have your back. Make big choices early and often. Don't start a scene where two people are talking about jumping out of a plane. Start the scene having already jumped. If you are scared, look into your partner's eyes. You will feel better.

This advice has come in handy and it would often be something I would think about when I would perform on Saturday Night Live. Live television can be very nerve-wracking and I remember one time being nervous, looking into the eyes of the host and feeling better. I should point out I was wearing a chicken suit at the time. The host was Donald Trump. He was wearing a bigger, more elaborate chicken suit. I looked into his eyes, I saw that he looked really stupid, and I instantly felt better.

See how that works? I should point out that that sketch was written by a Harvard graduate and also a graduate from Northwestern -- but who cares about that. Am I right?

I cannot stress enough that the answer to a lot of your life's questions is often in someone else's face. Try putting your iPhones down every once in a while and look at people's faces. People's faces will tell you amazing things. Like if they are angry or nauseous, or asleep.

I have been lucky to be a part of great ensembles. My work with the upright citizens brigade led me to my work on Saturday Night Live, and when I graduated from that comedy college, I was worried about what came next. Then Parks and Recreation came along, a show I am proud of where I get to work with people I love. You never know what is around the corner unless you peek. Hold someone's hand while you do it. You will feel less scared. You can't do this alone. Besides it is much more fun to succeed and fail with other people. You can blame them when things go wrong. Take your risks now. As you grow older, you become more fearful and less flexible. And I mean that literally. I hurt my knee on the treadmill this week and it wasn't even on. Try to keep your mind open to possibilities and your mouth closed on matters that you don't know about. Limit your "always" and your "nevers." Continue to share your heart with people even if its been broken. Don't treat your heart like an action figure wrapped in plastic and never used. And don't try to give me that nerd argument that your heart is a batman with a limited edition silver battering and therefore if it stays in its original package it increases in value. Watch it Harvard, you're not better than me.

Even though, as a class, you are smart, you are still allowed to say, "I don't know." Just because you are in high demand, you are still allowed to say, "Let me get back to you." This will come in handy when your parents ask when you plan to move out of their basement and you answer, "I don't know. Let me get back to you." Which leads me to my final thought: would it kill you to be nicer to your parents? They have sacrificed so much for you, and all they want you to do is smile and take a picture with your weird cousins. Do that for them. And with less eye-rolling, please. And so, class of 2011, it is time to leave. Oprah has spoken.

So I will end with this quote: Heyah, Heyah, Heyah, Heyah, Heyah, heyah, heyah, heyah, alright alright alright, alright, alright. The group: Outcast; the song: Heyah. The lyrics: nonsense. I'm sorry it was really late when I wrote this.

This is what I want to say: When you feel scared, hold someone's hand and look into their eyes. And when you feel brave, do the same thing. You are all here because you are smart. And you are brave. And if you add kindness and the ability to change a tire, you almost make up the perfect person. I thank you for asking me to speak to you today. As you head out into the world I wish you love and light, joy, and much laughter. And as always, please don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Thank you very much.

Jim Carrey: 'Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you', Maharishi University of Management, 2014

24 May, 2014, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, USA

Thank you Bevan, thank you all!

I brought one of my paintings to show you today. Hope you guys are gonna be able see it okay. It’s not one of my bigger pieces. You might wanna move down front — to get a good look at it. (kidding)

Faculty, Parents, Friends, Dignitaries… Graduating Class of 2014, and all the dead baseball players coming out of the corn to be with us today. (laughter) After the harvest there’s no place to hide — the fields are empty — there is no cover there! (laughter)

I am here to plant a seed that will inspire you to move forward in life with enthusiastic hearts and a clear sense of wholeness. The question is, will that seed have a chance to take root, or will I be sued by Monsanto and forced to use their seed, which may not be totally “Ayurvedic.” (laughter)

Excuse me if I seem a little low energy tonight — today — whatever this is. I slept with my head to the North last night. (laughter) Oh man! Oh man! You know how that is, right kids? Woke up right in the middle of Pitta and couldn’t get back to sleep till Vata rolled around, but I didn’t freak out. I used that time to eat a large meal and connect with someone special on Tinder. (laughter)

Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you. How do I know this? I don’t, but I’m making sound, and that’s the important thing. That’s what I’m here to do. Sometimes, I think that’s one of the only things that are important. Just letting each other know we’re here, reminding each other that we are part of a larger self. I used to think Jim Carrey is all that I was…

Just a flickering light

A dancing shadow

The great nothing masquerading as something you can name

Dwelling in forts and castles made of witches – wishes! Sorry, a Freudian slip there

Seeking shelter in caves and foxholes, dug out hastily

An archer searching for his target in the mirror

Wounded only by my own arrows

Begging to be enslaved

Pleading for my chains

Blinded by longing and tripping over paradise – can I get an “Amen”?! (applause)

You didn’t think I could be serious did ya’? I don’t think you understand who you’re dealing with! I have no limits! I cannot be contained because I’m the container. You can’t contain the container, man! You can’t contain the container! (laughter)

I used to believe that who I was ended at the edge of my skin, that I had been given this little vehicle called a body from which to experience creation, and though I couldn’t have asked for a sportier model, (laughter) it was after all a loaner and would have to be returned. Then, I learned that everything outside the vehicle was a part of me, too, and now I drive a convertible. Top down wind in my hair! (laughter)

I am elated and truly, truly, truly excited to be present and fully connected to you at this important moment in your journey. I hope you’re ready to open the roof and take it all in?! (audience doesn’t react) Okay, four more years then! (laughter)

I want to thank the Trustees, Administrators and Faculty of MUM for creating an institution worthy of Maharishi’s ideals of education. A place that teaches the knowledge and experience necessary to be productive in life, as well as enabling the students, through Transcendental Meditation and ancient Vedic knowledge to slack off twice a day for an hour and a half!! (laughter) — don’t think you’re fooling me!!! — (applause) but, I guess it has some benefits. It does allow you to separate who you truly are and what’s real, from the stories that run through your head.

You have given them the ability to walk behind the mind’s elaborate set decoration, and to see that there is a huge difference between a dog that is going to eat you in your mind and an actual dog that’s going to eat you. (laughter) That may sound like no big deal, but many never learn that distinction and spend a great deal of their lives living in fight or flight response.

I’d like to acknowledge all you wonderful parents — way to go for the fantastic job you’ve done — for your tireless dedication, your love, your support, and most of all, for the attention you’ve paid to your children. I have a saying, “Beware the unloved,” because they will eventually hurt themselves… or me! (laughter)

But when I look at this group here today, I feel really safe! I do! I’m just going to say it — my room is not locked! My room is not locked! (laughter) No doubt some of you will turn out to be crooks! But white-collar stuff — Wall St. ya’ know, that type of thing — crimes committed by people with self-esteem! Stuff a parent can still be proud of in a weird way. (laughter)

And to the graduating class of 2017 — minus 3! You didn’t let me finish! (laughter) — Congratulations! (applause) Yes, give yourselves a round of applause, please. You are the vanguard of knowledge and consciousness; a new wave in a vast ocean of possibilities. On the other side of that door, there is a world starving for new leadership, new ideas.

I’ve been out there for 30 years! She’s a wild cat! (laughter) Oh, she’ll rub up against your leg and purr until you pick her up and start pettin’ her, and out of nowhere she’ll swat you in the face. Sure it’s rough sometimes but that’s OK, ‘cause they’ve got soft serve ice cream with sprinkles! (laughter) I guess that’s what I’m really here to say; sometimes it’s okay to eat your feelings! (laughter)

Fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about your pathway to the future, but all there will ever be is what’s happening here, and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear.

So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it. I’m saying, I’m the proof that you can ask the universe for it — please! (applause) And if it doesn’t happen for you right away, it’s only because the universe is so busy fulfilling my order. It’s party size! (laughter)

My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant, and when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could to survive.

I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love. (applause)

That’s not the only thing he taught me though: I watched the affect my father’s love and humor had on the world around me, and I thought, “That’s something to do, that’s something worth my time.”

It wasn’t long before I started acting up. People would come over to my house and they would be greeted by a 7 yr old throwing himself down a large flight of stairs. (laughter) They would say, “What happened?” And I would say, “I don’t know — let’s check the replay.” And I would go back to the top of the stairs and come back down in slow motion. (Jim reenacts coming down the stairs in slow-mo) It was a very strange household. (laughter)

My father used to brag that I wasn’t a ham — I was the whole pig. And he treated my talent as if it was his second chance. When I was about 28, after a decade as a professional comedian, I realized one night in LA that the purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern, like my dad. When I realized this, I dubbed my new devotion, “The Church of Freedom From Concern” — “The Church of FFC”— and I dedicated myself to that ministry.

What’s yours? How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That’s all you have to figure out. As someone who has done what you are about to go do, I can tell you from experience, the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. (applause)

Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart. My choosing to free people from concern got me to the top of a mountain. Look where I am — look what I get to do! Everywhere I go – and I’m going to get emotional because when I tap into this, it really is extraordinary to me — I did something that makes people present their best selves to me wherever I go. (applause) I am at the top of the mountain and the only one I hadn’t freed was myself and that’s when my search for identity deepened.

I wondered who I’d be without my fame. Who would I be if I said things that people didn’t want to hear, or if I defied their expectations of me? What if I showed up to the party without my Mardi Gras mask and I refused to flash my breasts for a handful of beads? (laughter) I’ll give you a moment to wipe that image out of your mind. (laughter)

But you guys are way ahead of the game. You already know who you are and that peace, that peace that we’re after, lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, beyond invention and disguise, even beyond effort itself. You can join the game, fight the wars, play with form all you want, but to find real peace, you have to let the armor fall. Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory. (A sheet drops and reveals Jim’s painting. Applause.)

(Re: the painting) It’s not big enough! (kidding) This painting is big for a reason. This painting is called “High Visibility.” (laughter) It’s about picking up the light and daring to be seen. Here’s the tricky part. Everyone is attracted to the light. The party host up in the corner (refers to painting) who thinks unconsciousness is bliss and is always offering a drink from the bottles that empty you; Misery, below her, who despises the light — can’t stand when you’re doing well — and wishes you nothing but the worst; The Queen of Diamonds who needs a King to build her house of cards; And the Hollow One, who clings to your leg and begs, “Please don’t leave me behind for I have abandoned myself.”

Even those who are closest to you and most in love with you; the people you love most in the world can find clarity confronting at times. This painting took me thousands of hours to complete and — (applause) thank you — yes, thousands of hours that I’ll never get back, I’ll never get them back (kidding) — I worked on this for so long, for weeks and weeks, like a mad man alone on a scaffolding — and when I was finished one of my friends said, “This would be a cool black light painting.” (laughter)

So I started over. (All the lights go off in the Dome and the painting is showered with black light.) Whooooo! Welcome to Burning Man! (applause) Some pretty crazy characters right? Better up there than in here. (points to head) Painting is one of the ways I free myself from concern, a way to stop the world through total mental, spiritual and physical involvement.

But even with that, comes a feeling of divine dissatisfaction. Because ultimately, we’re not the avatars we create. We’re not the pictures on the film stock. We are the light that shines through it. All else is just smoke and mirrors. Distracting, but not truly compelling.

I’ve often said that I wished people could realize all their dreams of wealth and fame so they could see that it’s not where you’ll find your sense of completion. Like many of you, I was concerned about going out in the world and doing something bigger than myself, until someone smarter than myself made me realize that there is nothing bigger than myself! (laughter)

My soul is not contained within the limits of my body. My body is contained within the limitlessness of my soul — one unified field of nothing dancing for no particular reason, except maybe to comfort and entertain itself. (applause) As that shift happens in you, you won’t be feeling the world you’ll be felt by it — you will be embraced by it. Now, I’m always at the beginning. I have a reset button called presence and I ride that button constantly.

Once that button is functional in your life, there’s no story the mind could create that will be as compelling. The imagination is always manufacturing scenarios — both good and bad — and the ego tries to keep you trapped in the multiplex of the mind. Our eyes are not only viewers, but also projectors that are running a second story over the picture we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script and the working title is, ‘I’ll never be enough.’

You look at a person like me and say, (kidding) “How could we ever hope to reach those kinds of heights, Jim? How can I make a painting that’s too big for any reasonable home? How do you fly so high without a special breathing apparatus?” (laughter)

This is the voice of your ego. If you listen to it, there will always be someone who seems to be doing better than you. No matter what you gain, ego will not let you rest. It will tell you that you cannot stop until you’ve left an indelible mark on the earth, until you’ve achieved immortality. How tricky is the ego that it would tempt us with the promise of something we already possess.

So I just want you to relax—that’s my job—relax and dream up a good life! (applause) I had a substitute teacher from Ireland in the second grade that told my class during Morning Prayer that when she wants something, anything at all, she prays for it, and promises something in return and she always gets it. I’m sitting at the back of the classroom, thinking that my family can’t afford a bike, so I went home and I prayed for one, and promised I would recite the rosary every night in exchange. Broke it—broke that promise. (laughter)

Two weeks later, I got home from school to find a brand new mustang bike with a banana seat and easy rider handlebars — from fool to cool! My family informed me that I had won the bike in a raffle that a friend of mine had entered my name in, without my knowledge. That type of thing has been happening ever since, and as far as I can tell, it’s just about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it might come to pass. (applause)

Your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen for you, but to open the door in your head and when the doors open in real life, just walk through it. Don’t worry if you miss your cue. There will always be another door opening. They keep opening.

And when I say, “life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you.” I really don’t know if that’s true. I’m just making a conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial so that I can deal with them in the most productive way. You’ll come up with your own style, that’s part of the fun!

Oh, and why not take a chance on faith as well? Take a chance on faith — not religion, but faith. Not hope, but faith. I don’t believe in hope. Hope is a beggar. Hope walks through the fire. Faith leaps over it.

You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world and after you walk through those doors today, you will only ever have two choices: love or fear. Choose love, and don’t ever let fear turn you against your playful heart.

Thank you. Jai Guru Dev. I’m so honored. Thank you.

Full transcript

Zadie Smith: 'Don't let your fellow humans be alien to you', Many Hands, The New School - 2014

23 May, 2014, New School University, New York

Welcome graduating class of 2014 and congratulations. You did it! You made it! How do you feel?

I guess I can only hazard a guess which means thinking back to my own graduation in England in 1997, and extrapolate from it. Did I feel like you? I should say first that some elements of the day were rather different.  I wasn’t in a stadium listening to a speech. I was in an eighteenth century hall, kneeling before the dean who spoke Latin and held one of my fingers. Don’t ask me why.

Still the essential facts were the same.

Like you I was finally with my degree and had made of myself - a graduate. Like you I now had two families, the old boring one that raised me, and an exciting new one consisting of a bunch of freaks I’d met in college.

But part of the delightful anxiety of graduation day was trying to find a way to blend these two tribes, with their differing haircuts and political views, and hygiene standards and tastes in music.  I felt like a character in two different movies. And so old! I really believed I was ancient. Impossibly distant in experience from the freshmen only three years below. I was as likely to befriend a squirrel as a freshman. Which strange relationship with time is perhaps unique to graduates and toddlers. Nowadays at aged 38, if I meet somebody who’s 41, I don’t conclude that friendship is impossible between us. But when I was 21, the gap between me and an 18 year old seemed insurmountable. Just like my four year old daughter, who’d rather eat sand than have a play date with a one year old.

And what else? Oh the love dramas. So many love dramas. Mine, other people’s. They take up such a large part of college life it seems unfair not to have them properly reflected in the transcript. Any full account of my university years should include the fact that I majored in English literature, with a minor in drunken discussions on the difference between loving somebody and being ‘in love’ with that person. What can I tell you, it was the 90s. We were really into ourselves. We were into self curation. In the 90s, we even had a year called ‘Year of Trousers’ which signified any kind of ethnic or exotic pants one wore back home from a distant (ideally third world) country. And these trousers were meant to alert to a passing stranger that we’d been somewhere fascinating, and thus adding further colour to our unique personalities.

Personally I couldn’t afford the year off but I was very compelled by those trousers.

In short,  the thing I wanted most in the world was to be an individual.  I thought that’s what my graduation signified, that I had gone from being one of the many, to one of the few. To one of the ones who would have ‘choices’ in life. After all my father didn’t have many choices, his father had none at all. Unlike them, I had gone to university. I was a special individual.  Looking back it’s easy to diagnose a case of self-love. People are always accusing students of self-love, or self obsession. And this is a bit confusing because college surely encourages the habit.  You concentrate on yourself in order to improve yourself. Isn’t that the whole idea? And out of this process hopefully, emerge strikingly competent individuals, with high self esteem, prepared for personal achievement.

When we graduate, though, things can get a little complicated. For how are meant to think of this fabulous person, we’ve taken such care of creating. If university made me special did that mean I was worth more than my father, more than his father before him?

Did it mean that I should expect more from life than them? Did I deserve more? 

What does it really mean to be one of ‘the few’?

Are the fruits of our education a sort of gift, to be circulated generously through the world, or are we to think of ourselves as pure commodity, on sale to the highest bidder? Well let’s be honest you’re probably feeling pulled in several direction right now. And that’s perfectly natural.

In the 90s the post graduation dilemma was usually presented to us as a straight ethical choice, between working for the banks, and doing selfless charitable work. The comical extremity of the choice I now see was perfectly deliberate.  It meant you didn’t have to take it too seriously. And so we peeled off from each other. Some of us, many of us, joined the banks. But those that didn’t had not special cause to pat ourselves on the back. With rare exceptions, we all pursue self interest more or less. It wasn’t a surprise. We’d been raised that way. Born in the seventies, we did not live through austerity, did not go to war like my father, or his father. For the most part we did not join large political or ideological movements. We simply inherited the advantages for which a previous generation had fought.

And the thing that so many of us feared was the idea of being subsumed back into the collective from which we’d come. Of being returned to the world of the many.  Or doing any work at all in that world.

In my case this new attitude was particularly noticeable. My own mother was a social worker, and I had teachers in my rowdy state school who had themselves been educated at precisely the elite institution I would later join. But amongst my college friends, I know of no one who made that choice. For the most part, we were uninterested in what we considered to be ‘unglamorous pursuits’. We valued individuality above all things. You can thank my generation for the invention of the word ‘supermodel’, and the popularisation of ‘celebrity’ and ‘lifestyle’, often used in conjunction with each other. Reality TV - that was us. Also televised talent shows. Also ug boots - you’re welcome, millennials! And when the fussier amongst us detected in these visions of prestigious individuality something perhaps a little crass and commericalised, our solution was to go in some ways further down the same road, to out individuate a celebrated individual.

We became hipsters. Defined by the ways we weren’t like everybody else. One amusing, much commented upon consequence of this was that we all ended up individuals of the same type. Not one-of-a-kind, but one ... of-a kind.

But there was another aspect I now find melancholic. We isolated ourselves. It took us the longest time to work out that we needed each other. You may have noticed that even now we seem somewhat stunned by quite ordinary human pursuits, like having children or living in a neighbourhood, or getting ill. We are always writing lifestyle articles about such matters in the Sunday papers. That's because, until very recently, we thought we were going to get through this whole life thing purely on our own steam. Even if we were no fans of the ex-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, we had unwittingly taken her most famous slogan and embedded it deep within our own lives. 'There is no such thing as society,' she said. We were unique individuals. What did we need with society? But then it turned out that the things that have happened to everybody since the dawn of time also happened to us. Our parents got old and ill. Our children needed schools and somewhere to play. We wanted trains that ran on time. We needed each other. It turned out we were just human — like everybody.

Now I might have this completely backward, but I get the sense that something different is going on in your generation. Something hopeful. You seem to be smarter sooner. Part of these smarts is surely born out of crisis. In the '90s we had high employment and a buoyant economy. We could afford to spend weeks worrying about the exact length and shape of our beards, or whether Kurt Cobain was a sell-out. Your situation is more acute. You have so many large, collective tasks ahead, and you know that. We had them too, but paid little attention, so now I’m afraid it falls to you. The climate, the economy, the sick relationship between the individual prestige of the first world and the anonymity of the third —these are things only many hands can fix working together. You are all individuals but you are also part of a generation and generations are defined by the projects they take on together.
 

Even at the level of slogan you decided to honour the contribution of the many over the few, that now famous ’99 Percent’. As far as slogans go, which is not very far, yours still sounds more thoughtful to me than the slogans of my youth which were fatally effected by advertising. Be strong. Be fast. Be bold. Be different. Be you ... be you, that was always the take away. And when my peers grew up, and went into advertising, they spread that message far and wide. ‘Just be you,’ screams the label on the shampoo bottle. ‘Just be you,’ cries your deodorant. Because you’re worth it. You get about fifty commencement speeches a day, and that’s before you’ve even left the bathroom.

I didn’t think you’d want any more of that from me. Instead I want to speak in favour of recognising our place within ‘the many’. Not only as a slogan, much less as a personal sacrifice, but rather as a potential source of joy in your life.

Here is a perhaps silly example. It happened to me recently at my mother’s birthday. Around midnight it came time to divide out the rum cake, and I, not naturally one of life’s volunteers, was press ganged into helping. A small circle of women surrounded me, dressed in West African wraps and headscarves, in imitation of their ancestors. ‘Many hands make short work,’ said one, and passed me a stack of paper plates. It was my job to take the plated slices through the crowd. Hardly any words passed between us as we went about our collective tasks, but each time we set a new round upon a tray, I detected a hum of deep satisfaction at our many hands forming this useful human chain.  Occasionally as I gave out each slice of cake, an older person would look up and murmur, ‘Oh you’re Yvonne’s daughter,’ but for the most part it was the cake itself that received the greeting or a little nod or a smile, for it was the duty of the daughter to hand out cake and no further commentary was required. And it was while doing what I hadn't realised was my duty that I felt what might be described as the exact opposite of the sensation I have standing in front of you now. Not puffed up with individual prestige, but immersed in the beauty of the crowd. Connected if only in gesture to an ancient line of practical women working in companionable silence in the service of their community. It's such a ludicrously tiny example of the collective action and yet clearly still so rare in my own life that even this minor instance of it struck me.

Anyway my point is that it was a beautiful feeling, and it was over too soon. And when I tried to look for a way to put it into this speech, I  was surprised how difficult it was to find the right words to describe it. So many of our colloquial terms for this ‘work of many hands’ are sunk in infamy. ‘Human chain’ to start with; ‘cog in the machine; ‘brick in the wall’. In such phrases we sense the long shadow of the twentieth century, with its brutal collective movements.

We do not trust the collective, we’ve seen what submission to it can do. We believe instead in the individual, here in America, especially. Now I also believe in the individual, I’m so grateful for the three years of college that helped make more or less of an individual out of me — teaching me how to think, and write. You may well ask, who am I to praise the work of many hands, when I myself chose the work of one pair of hands, the most isolated there is.

I can’t escape that accusation. I can only look at my own habit of self love and ask, ‘what is the best use I can make of this utterly human habit?’  Can I make a gift of myself in some other way? I know for sure I haven’t done it half as much as I could or should have. I look at the fine example of my friend, the writer and activist Dave Eggers, and see a man who took his own individual prestige and parlayed it into an extraordinary collective action — 826 National, in which many hands work to create educational opportunities for disadvantaged kids all over this country.

And when you go to one of Dave’s not for profit tutoring centres, you don’t find selfless young people grimly sacrificing themselves for others. What you see is joy. Dave’s achievement is neither quite charity or simple individual philanthropy. It’s a collective effort that gets people involved in each other’s lives.

I don’t mean to speak meanly of philanthropy. Generally speaking, philanthropy is always better than no help at all, but it is also in itself a privilege of the few. And I think none of us want communities to rise or fall dependent upon the whims of the very rich. I think we would rather be involved in each other’s lives and that what stop us, most often, is fear.

We fear that the work of many hands will obscure the beloved outline of our individual selves. But perhaps this self you’ve been treasuring for so long is itself the work of many hands. Speaking personally, I owe so much to the hard work of my parents, the education and health care systems in my country, to the love and care of my friends.

And even if one’s individual prestige, such as it is, represents an entirely solo effort, the result of sheer hard work, does that everywhere and always mean that you deserve the largest possible slice of the pie?

These are big questions, and it is collectively that you’ll  have to decide them. Everything from the remuneration of executives to the idea of the commons itself, depends on it. And at the core of the question, is what it really means to be the ‘the few’ and ‘the many’. Throughout your adult life your going to have a daily choice to throw your lot in with one or the other. And a lot of people, most people, even people without the luxury of your choices, are going to suggest to you, over and over, that only an idiot chooses to join the many, when he could be one of the few.

Only an idiot chooses public over private, shared over gated, communal over unique. Mrs Thatcher, who was such a genius at witty aphorisms, one said, ‘a man who beyond the age of twenty-six, finds himself on a bus, can count himself a failure.’

I’ve always been fascinated by that quote. By its dark assumption that even something as natural as sharing a journey with another person represents a form of personal denigration. The best reply to it that I know is that famous line of Terence, the Roman playwright. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. ‘I am a human being. I consider nothing that is human alien to me.’

Montaigne like that so much he had carved into the beams of his ceiling. Some people interpret it as a call to toleration. I find it stronger than that, I think it’s a call to love. Now full disclosure, most of the time I don’t find it easy to low my fellow humans. I’m still that solipsistic 21 year old. But the times I’ve been able to get over myself and get involved at whatever level, well what I’m trying to say is those have proved the most valuable moments of my life.

And I never would have guessed that back in 1997. Oh I would have paid lip service to it, as a noble idea, but I wouldn’t have believed it. And the thing is, it’s not even a question of ethics or self sacrifice or moral high ground, it’s actually totally selfish.  Being with people, doing for people, it’s going to bring you joy. Unexpectedly, it just feels better.

It feels good to give your unique and prestigious selves a slip every now and then and confess your membership in this unwieldy collective called the human race.

For one thing, it’s far less lonely, and for another thing contra to Mrs Thatcher, some of the best conversations you’ll ever hear will be on public transport. If it weren’t for the New York and London subway systems, my novels would be books of blank pages.

But I'm preaching to the converted. I see you, gazing into your phones as you walk down Broadway. And I know solipsism must be a constant danger, as it is for me, as it has been for every human since the dawn of time, but you’ve also got this tremendous, contrapuntal force propelling you into the world.

For aren’t you always connecting to each other? Forever communicating, rarely scared of strangers, wildly open, ready to tell anyone everything? Doesn’t online anonymity tear at the very idea of a prestige individual? Aren't young artists collapsing the border between themselves and their audience? Aren’t young coders determined on an all access world in which everybody is an equal participant? Are the young activists content just to raise the money and run? No. They want to be local, grassroots, involved. Those are all good instincts. I'm so excited to think of you pursuing them. Hold on to that desire for human connection. Don’t let anyone scare you out of it.

Walk down these crowded streets with a smile on your face. Be thankful you get to walk so close to other humans. It's a privilege. Don't let your fellow humans be alien to you, and as you get older and perhaps a little less open than you are now, don’t assume that exclusive always and everywhere means better. It may only mean lonelier. There will always be folks hard selling you the life of the few: the private schools, private planes, private islands, private life. They are trying to convince you that hell is other people. Don't believe it. We are far more frequently each other's shelter and correction, the antidote to solipsism, and so many windows on this world.

Thank you.

J K Rowling: 'So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships', The Fringe Benefits of Failure - Harvard 2008

Jun 5th, 2008, Harvard University, Boston, USA

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank-you very much.