Mark Zuckerberg: 'Finding your purpose isn't enough', Harvard University - 2017

25 May 2017, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

President Faust, Board of Overseers, faculty, alumni, friends, proud parents, members of the ad board, and graduates of the greatest university in the world. I’m honored to be with you today because, let’s face it, you accomplished something I never could. If I get through this speech, it’ll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard. Class of 2017, congratulations!

I’m an unlikely speaker, not just because I dropped out, but because we’re technically in the same generation. We walked this yard less than a decade apart, studied the same ideas and slept through the same Ec10 lectures. We may have taken different paths to get here, especially if you came all the way from the Quad, but today I want to share what I’ve learned about our generation and the world we’re building together.

But first, the last couple of days have brought back a lot of good memories.

How many of you remember exactly what you were doing when you got that email telling you that you got into Harvard? I was playing Civilization and I ran downstairs, got my dad, and for some reason, his reaction was to video me opening the email. That could have been a really sad video. I swear getting into Harvard is still the thing my parents are most proud of me for.

What about your first lecture at Harvard? Mine was Computer Science 121 with the incredible Harry Lewis. I was late so I threw on a t-shirt and didn’t realize until afterwards it was inside out and backwards with my tag sticking out the front. I couldn’t figure out why no one would talk to me—except one guy, KX Jin, he just went with it. We ended up doing our problem sets together, and now he runs a big part of Facebook. And that, Class of 2017, is why you should be nice to people.

But my best memory from Harvard was meeting Priscilla. I had just launched this prank website Facemash, and the ad board wanted to “see me”. Everyone thought I was going to get kicked out. My parents came to help me pack. My friends threw me a going-away party. As luck would have it, Priscilla was at that party with her friend. We met in line for the bathroom in the Pfoho Belltower, and in what must be one of the all-time romantic lines, I said: “I’m going to get kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly.”

Actually, any of you graduating can use that line.

I didn’t end up getting kicked out—I did that to myself. Priscilla and I started dating. And, you know, that movie made it seem like Facemash was so important to creating Facebook. It wasn’t. But without Facemash I wouldn’t have met Priscilla, and she’s the most important person in my life, so you could say it was the most important thing I built in my time here.

We’ve all started lifelong friendships here, and some of us even families. That’s why I’m so grateful to this place. Thanks, Harvard.

Today I want to talk about purpose. But I’m not here to give you the standard commencement about finding your purpose. We’re millennials. We’ll try to do that instinctively. Instead, I’m here to tell you finding your purpose isn’t enough. The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

One of my favorite stories is when John F. Kennedy visited the NASA space center, he saw a janitor carrying a broom and he walked over and asked what he was doing. The janitor responded: “Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness.

You’re graduating at a time when this is especially important. When our parents graduated, purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community. But today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs. Membership in communities is declining. Many people feel disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void.

As I’ve traveled around, I’ve sat with children in juvenile detention and opioid addicts, who told me their lives could have turned out differently if they just had something to do, an after-school program or somewhere to go. I’ve met factory workers who know their old jobs aren’t coming back and are trying to find their place.

To keep our society moving forward, we have a generational challenge—to not only create new jobs, but create a renewed sense of purpose.

I remember the night I launched Facebook from my little dorm in Kirkland House. I went to Noch’s with my friend KX. I remember telling him I was excited to connect the Harvard community, but one day someone would connect the whole world.

The thing is, it never even occurred to me that someone might be us. We were just college kids. We didn’t know anything about that. There were all these big technology companies with resources. I just assumed one of them would do it. But this idea was so clear to us—that all people want to connect. So we just kept moving forward, day by day.

I know a lot of you will have your own stories just like this. A change in the world that seems so clear you’re sure someone else will do it. But they won’t. You will.

But it’s not enough to have purpose yourself. You have to create a sense of purpose for others. I found that out the hard way. You see, my hope was never to build a company, but to make an impact. And as all these people started joining us, I just assumed that’s what they cared about too, so I never explained what I hoped we’d build.

A couple years in, some big companies wanted to buy us. I didn’t want to sell. I wanted to see if we could connect more people. We were building the first News Feed, and I thought if we could just launch this, it could change how we learn about the world.

Nearly everyone else wanted to sell. Without a sense of higher purpose, this was the startup dream come true. It tore our company apart. After one tense argument, an advisor told me if I didn’t agree to sell, I would regret the decision for the rest of my life. Relationships were so frayed that within a year or so every single person on the management team was gone.

That was my hardest time leading Facebook. I believed in what we were doing, but I felt alone. And worse, it was my fault. I wondered if I was just wrong, an imposter, a 22 year-old kid who had no idea how the world worked.

Now, years later, I understand that is how things work with no sense of higher purpose. It’s up to us to create it so we can all keep moving forward together.

Today I want to talk about three ways to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose: by taking on big meaningful projects together, by redefining equality so everyone has the freedom to pursue purpose, and by building community across the world.

First, let’s take on big meaningful projects.

Our generation will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks. But we have the potential to do so much more together.

Every generation has its defining works. More than 300,000 people worked to put a man on the moon—including that janitor. Millions of volunteers immunized children around the world against polio. Millions of more people built the Hoover Dam and other great projects.

These projects didn’t just provide purpose for the people doing those jobs, they gave our whole country a sense of pride that we could do great things.

Now it’s our turn to do great things. I know, you’re probably thinking: I don’t know how to build a dam, or get a million people involved in anything.

But let me tell you a secret: No one does when they begin. Ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started.

If I had to understand everything about connecting people before I began, I never would have started Facebook.

Movies and pop culture get this all wrong. The idea of a single eureka moment is a dangerous lie. It makes us feel inadequate since we haven’t had ours. It prevents people with seeds of good ideas from getting started.

Oh, you know what else movies get wrong about innovation? No one writes math formulas on glass. That’s not a thing.

It’s good to be idealistic. But be prepared to be misunderstood. Anyone working on a big vision will get called crazy, even if you end up right. Anyone working on a complex problem will get blamed for not fully understanding the challenge, even though it’s impossible to know everything upfront. Anyone taking initiative will get criticized for moving too fast, because there’s always someone who wants to slow you down.

In our society, we often don’t do big things because we’re so afraid of making mistakes that we ignore all the things wrong today if we do nothing. The reality is, anything we do will have issues in the future. But that can’t keep us from starting.

So what are we waiting for? It’s time for our generation-defining public works. How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet, and getting millions of people involved manufacturing and installing solar panels? How about curing all diseases and asking volunteers to track their health data and share their genomes? Today we spend 50x more treating people who are sick than we spend finding cures so people don’t get sick in the first place. That makes no sense. We can fix this. How about modernizing democracy so everyone can vote online, and personalizing education so everyone can learn?

These achievements are within our reach. Let’s do them all in a way that gives everyone in our society a role. Let’s do big things, not only to create progress, but to create purpose. So taking on big meaningful projects is the first thing we can do to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

The second is redefining equality to give everyone the freedom they need to pursue purpose. Many of our parents had stable jobs throughout their careers. Now we’re all entrepreneurial, whether we’re starting projects or finding or role. And that’s great. Our culture of entrepreneurship is how we create so much progress.

Now, an entrepreneurial culture thrives when it’s easy to try lots of new ideas. Facebook wasn’t the first thing I built. I also built games, chat systems, study tools and music players. I’m not alone. JK Rowling got rejected 12 times before publishing Harry Potter. Even Beyonce had to make hundreds of songs to get “Halo.” The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail.

But today, we have a level of wealth inequality that hurts everyone. When you don’t have the freedom to take your idea and turn it into a historic enterprise, we all lose. Right now our society is way over-indexed on rewarding success and we don’t do nearly enough to make it easy for everyone to take lots of shots.

Let’s face it. There is something wrong with our system when I can leave here and make billions of dollars in 10 years while millions of students can’t afford to pay off their loans, let alone start a business.

Look, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, and I don’t know a single person who gave up on starting a business because they might not make enough money. But I know lots of people who haven’t pursued dreams because they didn’t have a cushion to fall back on if they failed.

We all know we don’t succeed just by having a good idea or working hard. We succeed by being lucky too. If I had to support my family growing up instead of having time to code, if I didn’t know I’d be fine if Facebook didn’t work out, I wouldn’t be standing here today. If we’re honest, we all know how much luck we’ve had.

Every generation expands its definition of equality. Previous generations fought for the vote and civil rights. They had the New Deal and Great Society. Now it’s our time to define a new social contract for our generation.

We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics like GDP, but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things. We’re going to change jobs many times, so we need affordable child care to get to work and health care that aren’t tied to one company. We’re all going to make mistakes, so we need a society that focuses less on locking us up or stigmatizing us. And as technology keeps changing, we need to focus more on continuous education throughout our lives.

And yes, giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn’t free. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well and you should too.

That’s why Priscilla and I started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and committed our wealth to promoting equal opportunity. These are the values of our generation. It was never a question of if we were going to do this. The only question was when.

Millennials are already one of the most charitable generations in history. In one year, three of four US millennials made a donation and seven out of ten raised money for charity.

But it’s not just about money. You can also give time. I promise you, if you take an hour or two a week—that’s all it takes to give someone a hand, to help them reach their potential.

Maybe you think that’s too much time. I used to. When Priscilla graduated from Harvard she became a teacher, and before she’d do education work with me, she told me I needed to teach a class. I complained: “Well, I’m kind of busy. I’m running this company.” But she insisted, so I taught a middle-school program on entrepreneurship at the local Boys and Girls Club.

I taught them lessons on product development and marketing, and they taught me what it’s like feeling targeted for your race and having a family member in prison. I shared stories from my time in school, and they shared their hope of one day going to college too. For five years now, I’ve been having dinner with those kids every month. One of them threw me and Priscilla our first baby shower. And next year they’re going to college. Every one of them. First in their families.

We can all make time to give someone a hand. Let’s give everyone the freedom to pursue their purpose—not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because when more people can turn their dreams into something great, we’re all better for it.

Purpose doesn’t only come from work. The third way we can create a sense of purpose for everyone is by building community. And when our generation says “everyone,” we mean everyone in the world.

Quick show of hands: How many of you are from another country? Now, how many of you are friends with one of these folks? Now we’re talking. We have grown up connected.

In a survey asking millennials around the world what defines our identity, the most popular answer wasn’t nationality, religion or ethnicity, it was “citizen of the world”. That’s a big deal. Every generation expands the circle of people we consider “one of us.” For us, it now encompasses the entire world.

We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers—from tribes to cities to nations—to achieve things we couldn’t on our own.

We get that our greatest opportunities are now global—we can be the generation that ends poverty, that ends disease. We get that our greatest challenges need global responses too—no country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.

But we live in an unstable time. There are people left behind by globalization across the world. It’s hard to care about people in other places if we don’t feel good about our lives here at home. There’s pressure to turn inwards.

This is the struggle of our time. The forces of freedom, openness and global community against the forces of authoritarianism, isolationism, and nationalism. Forces for the flow of knowledge, trade and immigration against those who would slow them down. This is not a battle of nations, it’s a battle of ideas. There are people in every country for global connection and good people against it.

This isn’t going to be decided at the UN either. It’s going to happen at the local level, when enough of us feel a sense of purpose and stability in our own lives that we can open up and start caring about everyone. The best way to do that is to start building local communities right now.

We all get meaning from our communities. Whether our communities are houses or sports teams, churches or music groups, they give us that sense we are part of something bigger, that we are not alone; they give us the strength to expand our horizons.

That’s why it’s so striking that for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter. That’s a lot of people who now need to find purpose somewhere else.

But I know we can rebuild our communities and start new ones because many of you already are.

I met Agnes Igoye, who’s graduating today. Where are you, Agnes? She spent her childhood navigating conflict zones in Uganda, and now she trains thousands of law-enforcement officers to keep communities safe.

I met Kayla Oakley and Niha Jain, graduating today, too. Stand up. Kayla and Niha started a nonprofit that connects people suffering from illnesses with people in their communities willing to help.

I met David Razu Aznar, graduating from the Kennedy School today. David, stand up. He’s a former city councilor who successfully led the battle to make Mexico City the first Latin American city to pass marriage equality—even before San Francisco.

This is my story too. A student in a dorm room, connecting one community at a time, and keeping at it until one day we connect the whole world.

Change starts local. Even global changes start small—with people like us. In our generation, the struggle of whether we connect more, whether we achieve our biggest opportunities, comes down to this—your ability to build communities and create a world where every single person has a sense of purpose.

Class of 2017, you are graduating into a world that needs purpose. It’s up to you to create it. Now, you may be thinking: Can I really do this?

Remember when I told you about that class I taught at the Boys and Girls Club? One day after class I was talking to them about college, and one of my top students raised his hand and said he wasn’t sure he could go because he’s undocumented. He didn’t know if they’d let him in.

Last year I took him out to breakfast for his birthday. I wanted to get him a present, so I asked him and he started talking about students he saw struggling and said, “You know, I’d really just like a book on social justice.”

I was blown away. Here’s a young guy who has every reason to be cynical. He didn’t know if the country he calls home—the only one he’s known—would deny him his dream of going to college. But he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. He wasn’t even thinking of himself. He has a greater sense of purpose, and he’s going to bring people along with him.

It says something about our current situation that I can’t even say his name because I don’t want to put him at risk. But if a high-school senior who doesn’t know what the future holds can do his part to move the world forward, then we owe it to the world to do our part too.

Before you walk out those gates one last time, as we sit in front of Memorial Church, I am reminded of a prayer, Mi Shebeirach, that I say whenever I face a challenge, that I sing to my daughter thinking about her future when I tuck her into bed. It goes:”May the source of strength, who blessed the ones before us, help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing.”

I hope you find the courage to make your life a blessing.

Congratulations, Class of ’17! Good luck out there.

Colson Whitehead: 'Welcome to the complications'. Connecticut College - 2017

21 May 2017, Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut

Somehow you did it. You made it through the meat grinder of elementary school, your teenage years, and now college, with most if not all of your limbs intact. That’s quite a feat. I salute you. There’s a great big world out there waiting for you, and all sorts of possibilities. Time for you to follow your star. Find a soulmate. Find yourself, finally.

Or so they say.

Any good story has three parts. Act I, where we meet the protagonist and establish the rules of the world. How do things work? What kind of person is our heroine, and what sort of world has she been born into? What does she want, how does she see herself? The all-important foundation of the narrative.

Then comes Act II – where the complications appear that set our heroine on her journey. These are the unexpected and unforeseen events that upend the rules of Act I. The meteor is on a collision course with Earth - what do we do? There’s an accident, an attack that destroys the peaceful order of everything has come before. A demented con man takes control of the country. That foundation of Act I is undermined, the assumptions of our heroine are tested.

Then we get to Act III, the synthesis of Act I and Act II. All the chaos of the middle section is brought to some kind of resolution. A new heroine is born out of her struggle. The meteor collides, or it doesn’t. Out of the rubble of the attack, a new city rises. The con man is exposed for his swindles and gets his just desserts, or doesn’t.

Thesis – antithesis – synthesis. I guess in college I might have used the analogy of Saturday evening – Saturday night – Sunday morning. Saturday evening is, “I’m sure looking forward to this party tonight!” Act I. Saturday night is the complication of Act II– all sorts of crazy stuff is happening at the party – clowns, chocolate pudding. And Sunday morning, in Act III, a new self awakes and says, “After that whole chocolate pudding thing last night, I’m going to have to reconsider some long-held beliefs about myself.”

The narrative arc of a story, a night. A life.

Like I said, you’ve just finished Act I. You know some things about the world. Have developed a few theories about how things work. Sure, that freshman year seminar on Marx added a wrinkle, and that social justice course really threw you for a loop – who knew all that was going on? — but you recovered splendidly. With the end of Act I, you’re ready to head out into the world, follow your star, find a soulmate. Find yourself. Believe in yourself, you can do anything.

Here come the complications.

“Find a soulmate.” Find the person who really gets you, understands what makes you tick like no other. The one person in the universe who can look past that front you present to the world and see the real you behind it. I’m not the first one to point this out, but in all probability, your soulmate is dead. It’s simple numbers, I’m not trying to be a negative Nelly. Scientists say that 107 billion people have lived on Earth up to this moment, and there are 7 billion people alive on the planet right now. The odds speak for themselves. Perhaps your soulmate was a humble servant in ancient Egypt, washing primitive textiles in the waters of the Nile, or a Christian soldier during the Crusades, trying to wipe out his Muslim brother on the other side of the battlefield. Or, less mundane, someone famous, a maker of history, like Napoleon or Harriet Tubman. Which would have sucked, because Napoleon and Harriet Tubman had to travel a lot for work and you wouldn’t see them that much, between the world conquest thing and Underground Railroad thing, and I don’t even think they had Skype back then.

Maybe your soulmate is not one of the 107 billion who have come before, but one of the 7 billion on Earth right now. And they’re an antique dealer in New Zealand, or a cook in food market in Thailand. Are you going to New Zealand any time soon, or Thailand? What are the chances that you’d run into each other even if you were going – meet eyes over an antique bust of Abraham Lincoln, or visit the kitchen to compliment the cook on the excellent beef larb? Maybe they’re sick that day. You can’t meet everyone. In fact some of you soon-to-be graduates are looking around right now going, “That guy was in my class? I’ve literally never seen him before!” It’s big world, and it conspires against you through numbers.

Maybe they’re 95 years old, and it’s some May – December soulmate situation, but sadly they won't live long enough for you to decide to go to New Zealand. It’s a tragedy. Or they’re not even born yet. You are one of their “107 billion people” who lived on Earth before they showed up. And you’ll never get to have a romantic dinner on that Martian colony where we’ve fled to because of global warming, never get a chance to say, “I’m lucky to have found you, and can you pass the Soylent Green.”

Complications.

“Follow your star.” At least here, you have it better than ancient peoples, and the fact that you live in the 20th century isn’t held against you. Back then, you had to squint at the night sky to find your star. Maybe it was in Ursa Minor, and you had to get up at 4 am to see it - taking into consideration the rotation of the earth - and you couldn’t even set an alarm on your iPhone to wake them up. Sure, nowadays we have light pollution from the cities and you have to go to the desert for a really unspoiled view, but we have telescopes. We have the Hubble telescope, a magnificent scientific achievement, that allows us to see stars as far away as 13 billion light years. And one them, one of those twinkling beauties in the eternal void is the one that speaks to you, guiding your life’s path through the darkness. Your odds have just shot up. Certainly in 10 trillion galaxies, each of which contains a 100 million stars, one of them shines just for you. All you have to do is look.

I hate to burst your Hubble bubble, but there are complications. Given how long it takes for light to travel through the vast and indifferent interstellar cold of the universe, the star you see tonight, beckoning, may have died millions of years ago. It’s light is only just reaching us, but it’s long, long dead, and we only think it is real. I’m sure it’s not the first time something in your life has turned out to be other than what it first seemed. Your freshman year roommate, for example. Maybe that perfect thing in the sky twinkling with promise and meaning has collapsed on itself long ago and become a supermassive black hole, the most deadly force in the universe, sucking up everything that strays into its gravitational field and obliterating it, rending it into atoms. An entity of pure destruction. Like your freshman year roommate.

And speaking of the failure of language and the troublesome problem of relativity, we come to “Find yourself.” By now you know the self is an ever-changing creature, a nebula of spinning gasses, swirling and reforming, seeking a coherent shape. There’s the you of your elementary school years, making your first tentative guesses at how people operate, how you operate. The teenage you, taking a stab at an identity apart from your family and friends, and making some really stupid clothing choices. And then college, finally set free from the home life that has defined, confined, and confounded you for so long. The mutable self. The complications of Act II, which will tip all you have been before into chaos, have been set up and abetted by really clever foreshadowing in Act I, by all those slippery you’s over the years. In some ways, you've always been a creature of chaos.

Complications, complications.

Which brings us to Act III. Synthesis. If you read about Hollywood, they’ll often complain about a script’s “Third Act problems.” The setup is great – Jennifer Lawrence is the spinster schoolteacher who comes back for her high school reunion. Channing Tatum is her long lost childhood sweetheart, he’s a…let's see…a marine biologist Navy Seal, just back from Afghanistan. Ice Cube plays the principal – he’s a riot. The reunion is full of shenanigans -- clowns, chocolate pudding -- but now we have figure out the Third Act. Do these two star-crossed lovers get together? What is this story saying about the world, saying about Love and Possibility? Do we have an uplifting story of triumph on our hands, or a tragedy? We didn’t bother to figure out the ending before we started rolling the cameras.

Act III is everything. No matter the strength of the foundation, the assorted catastrophes of the Second Act, if we don’t have ACT III, we’re really in trouble. Will the heroine pull it out in the end, or does she falter? Justice prevail, or the dull villainy of the world triumph? Here’s the problem of every storyteller – to make sense of the chaos, to gather all the plot strands into dramatic unity. To figure out the ending, no matter what the plot throws at you.

I've talked a lot about numbers, and the indifference of the universe. But maybe here, in Act III, the numbers are on your side, in the Walt Whitman-esque multitude of you. You add up to a lot, over the years -- the 4 year old you apprehending the otherness of other people for the first time, the 14 year old you recognizing yourself in a line of Shakespeare, the you sitting here right now, wondering what comes next. And those future selves, at 25 and 45 and 65, adapting, pratfalling, and picking themselves up. All those shifting, jostling you’s, and all their lessons. The universe may seem like a lonely place sometimes, but there are as many you’s as there are stars in the sky. Maybe one of them will step up at the right time and tell you what to make of it all.

Congratulations again on finishing Act I. Welcome to the complications.

Helen Mirren: 'No good can ever come from tweeting at 3 a.m.!', Tulane University - 2017

20 May 2017, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

President Fitts, Members of the Board, Faculty, Parents, Friends, the brilliant Branford Marsalis, the indomitable Diane Nash, the fascinating Shelley Taylor, RipTide the Pelican, and last but certainly never least, the great graduating class of 2017 – my greetings to you all.

And to all the graduates — the families here, the moms and dads, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and live-in lovers, not just hello, but congratulations! We salute you. And to the students. You did it! All those classes, all those essays, all those discussions and lectures, all those nights at the computer… and perhaps a greater test of endurance, all those nights at the Camellia Grill, the F&M and all those parties. And yet here you are, you finished the race, you made it through. Now you just have to listen to one more person talk — and I will do my best to not make it a lecture.

President Fitts, thank you for that lovely introduction

And I want to assure to you, you can relax, I’m prepared, I’ve done my homework for today.

Whenever I take on a role, I do my research to truly understand the character I’m playing. When I played a secret agent in Red, I learned how to fire a gun; when I played the Queen, I learned how she interacts with her advisers; and when I played a sadistic, horrible teacher in Teaching Mrs. Tingle, I went to observe some professors at LSU.

They taught me everything.

And to prepare for today, I did my research on what people expect from a commencement speaker. There are hundreds of tips out there — but really just three big ones.

First — Keep it short. No one wants to hear a 30-minute speech. So, that’s it, I’m done, see you at the bar. Make mine a vodka martini with a wedge of lime. The lime is because I’m a health fanatic.

The second point about commencements speeches: Talk about your journey and connect it to everything you have in common with the audience. So, today’s speech will contain advice for any of you born in England who decide to become Shakespearean actresses, and end up doing nude scenes in 10 films. I mentioned that just to see if any of your fathers are getting out their cellphones now to Google me. Dads. Stop. Inappropriate. Put it away. I mean the phone!

And number three. Everyone advises a commencement speaker to say one thing that the students will remember 40 years from now. Now that was hard — it took me weeks to come up with it. And then it came to me, something that I believe you will remember in the year 2057 because it is so true. Here it is. Get ready. “Whether you’re in the French Quarter or the Oval Office, no good can ever come from tweeting at 3 a.m.”

Speaking of 3 a.m., it’s great to be back in a city where I never seem to get to bed before 3 a.m.

Spending the past few days reacquainting myself with New Orleans, going to dinner, walking around your campus, I have just one question: Why the hell are you graduating? What possible reason is there to leave here and go find jobs? It makes no sense. It’s not too late, tell the dean to keep your diplomas and go back to your dorm.

Now, I am not a New Orleans virgin. I have loved The Big Easy all the way back to when Taylor brought me here to introduce to the city he loves just as much as he loves his hometown of Los Angeles. In fact, the first words out of my mouth as we turned off the 10 for the quarter and I looked down from the ramp was: “I want to die in this place.”

For a while, we owned a home here, and my stepson Rio started his bar empire here — Pal’s Lounge midtown and One Eyed Jack’s in the Quarter—and thank you for supporting it with your parents' hard-earned money.

So, I am still a tourist here, but one with history. New Orleans is my spiritual, artistic home.

After all, it was inevitable that I would fall for a place where it is virtually obligatory to have at least one feathered costume in your wardrobe at all times, a city where you can walk the streets with a cocktail in your hand, let alone one where you can turn a corner at 5:00 in the morning to find a solitary sax player providing the soundtrack to your morning commute.

It's funky, it's beautiful, it’s raunchy, it's sophisticated and elegant, it’s raw and imaginative and witty — violent and sleepy — believe me – long after you graduate, New Orleans will remain a part of your soul.

Okay, four minutes in. This is the exact moment in a traditional commencement speech where the speaker tries to share some pearls of wisdom.

And I will try to rise to the challenge for today is a big moment in your lives. You arrived as nervous, excited freshmen about to enter the uncertain world of higher education…and you now leave as nervous and excited seniors about to enter the even more uncertain world of adulthood. Hello cell phone bills, hello rent, hello car insurance, hello office politics, hello Netflix subscriptions, hello ambition, hello disappointment, and hello to the nerve-wracking yet heady moments when nothing goes to plan…and also hello to those rare, but more exciting and headier moments when something does actually go to plan.

Some of you have a clear idea of a plan and where adulthood will take you. You have known since you were 5 years old. Others of you have no idea, but don't worry, both ways work. My nephew left school at 16, became a bartender in London and then a plasterer and finished up as a successful writer in Hollywood. I did not go to drama school, as I very much wanted to, but instead went to a teacher's training college, where I didn't want to go. We both, my nephew and I, ended up where we were supposed to be.

The trick is to listen to your instinct, grab the opportunity when it presents itself and then give it your all. You will stumble and fall, you will experience both disaster and triumph, sometimes in the same day, but it's really important to remember that like a hangover, neither triumphs nor disasters last forever. They both pass and a new day arrives. Just try to make that new day count.

And to help you along the way, I want to share a few rules that I picked up during my life of disasters and triumphs. I call them "Helen’s Top 5 Rules for a Happy Life."

Rule number one: Don't need to rush to get married. I married Taylor a lot later in my life and it’s worked out great. And always give your partner the freedom and support to achieve their ambitions.

Number two: just treat people like people. A long, long time ago, an actress friend of mine did the most simple thing that taught me a huge lesson. We were in the backseat of a car being driven to the location where we were filming, and she was a smoker, in the prehistoric days when you could smoke in a car, and she got her cigarettes out and before she lit up, she offered the driver one. So simple, but, you know? Thoughtful. To her, he wasn't a “driver person,” but a “person person” who might want a smoke. Today she would probably be arrested for attempted murder but that’s a lesson I never forgot, and I am grateful to my actress friend to this day. So, remember that every single person, whether they have dominion over your life or not, deserves equal respect and generosity.

And an addendum to rule No. 2. No matter what sex you are, or race, be a feminist. In every country and culture that I have visited, from Sweden to Uganda, from Singapore to Mali, it is clear that when women are given respect, and the ability and freedom to pursue their personal dreams and ambitions, life improves for everyone. I didn't define myself as a feminist until quite recently, but I had always lived like a feminist and believed in the obvious: that women were as capable and as energetic and as inspiring as men. But to join a movement called feminism seemed too didactic, too political. However, I have come to understand that feminism is not an abstract idea but a necessity if we — and really by “we,” I mean you guys — are to move us forward and not backward into ignorance and fearful jealousy. So now, I am a declared feminist and I would encourage you to be the same.

Oh, and addendum to the addendum — never again allow a group of old, rather grumpy, rich white men define the health care of a country that is 50.8% women and 37% other races.

Okay, back to the rules.

Three: Ignore anyone who judges the way you look, especially if he or she is some anonymous creep lurking on the Internet. And if you are that person lurking on the Internet — STOP IT, just stop it, go outside and DO something.

Number Four: don't be afraid of fear. Those words bring me back to my grammar school and our headmistress, Mother Mary Mildred, an ancient Nun — is there any other type? — with one drooping eyelid and a lifetime lived behind the walls of a convent. She said those words to me the moment I walked into her class, a trembling 11 year old about to enter high school. Sixty years later and I will never forget those words or that teacher. I think what she meant was, don't let fear rule you. Now, mind you, sometimes it's wise to be afraid, like when you are about to take a dive into a pool with not enough water in it. Or drive a car drunk. In moments like those — be afraid, be very afraid and absolutely don't do it. And if you want more information on this, please visit a paraplegic ward. But for the moments when you are challenged by other fears – like “Am I good enough?” “Am I smart enough?” “Will I fail?” – throw caution to the winds, look fear straight-away in its ugly face, and barge forward. And when you get past it, turn around and give it a good swift kick in the ass. And thank Mother Mary Mildred.

And Helen’s Rule No. 5 for a happy life? Don’t overcomplicate things. You can navigate each day just by following some very practical dos and don’ts.

Like don't put hot cups on waxed wooden surfaces.

In fact, don’t ever wax wooden surfaces.

Don't procrastinate.

Do say thank you when it is merited.

Don't procrastinate… especially in saying thank you when it is merited.

Don't lose your sense of humor.

Do confront bullies.

Don't procrastinate.

Do open your heart to love.

Don’t confuse sex with love. Love generally lasts longer than two minutes.

Don't smoke tobacco… or chew it.

Don't dive into water if you don't know how deep it is.

And one more thing — don't procrastinate.

Actually, I would have had more dos and don’ts but I waited until the last minute this morning to compile the list.

Wait…one more, do call your parents at least once a week. Tell them you love them. Then ask for money. Not the other way around.

And parents – and I know this is where my speech gets serious — please know that however much your children can shock and horrify you, it’s all in the natural order of things.

My parents’ generation were born at the end of one world war, survived a global economic meltdown, and then fought a second world war. And of course, for their heroic efforts they were rewarded by my generation deciding to reject everything they stood for.

And you know what? We weren't altogether wrong.

The young never are, because they carry intrinsically within them the energy and idealism that will regenerate human life on this planet as it hurtles through time and space.

And we do need you to fix things, to make things right, to answer the big and troubling questions of this extraordinary modern world.

How is it that we have figured out how to put everything from our resting pulse rate to every book or song we’d ever want to read or listen to on our iPhones – and yet for six years we haven’t found a way to stop little children in Syria from being murdered by poisonous gas?

How is it that we have taken diseases like AIDS and turned them into manageable viruses controlled by revolutionary drugs – and yet we look around the world and see millions of people displaced, without homes, more than at any time since after World War II – suffering in teeming refugee camps?

And how is it that we have more billionaires under the age of 40 than ever before – and yet we know that the ravages of poverty which America witnessed here in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina still linger not far from the magnificence of today’s commencement?

And that’s where you guys come in. We’re counting on you. We’re counting on you to be our “Generation Empathy” – our “Generation Cares” …our “Generation Game-changers.”

That’s how I see your generation – as empathetic, caring, game-changers — but also as one that is radical, brave and often making trouble. And I hope you’ll never stop because you are doing the right things at the right time at the right age.

Simply put — your decisions, based on your instincts, are pretty well inevitably correct.

So even if you decide to come home late tonight with a tattoo from Electric Ladyland, that tattoo is right for you… unless it’s a Mike Tyson face tattoo. Those are never right.

Which brings me to something that may actually tie us together: tattoos.

I know, it’s hard to believe, Dame Helen Mirren does have a tattoo. I got my tattoo when only Hells Angels, sailors and convicted felons got them. I’ll share the story.

When I was on my journey through young adulthood, in that glorious and confusing time that was the early 1970’s, I looked in a lot of different places for answers — eastern, western and all over the place.

And when I found one inspiring answer in Mayan wisdom that said so much in so few words, I had it tattooed on my left hand.

It’s a simple phrase: “Inlakesh.”

It means: “You are my other self. We are one. I am Another Yourself.”

The Mayans were on to something.

Because if I’m you – I have a responsibility to you. If you’re me – you have a responsibility to me.

The Mayans just had a more beautiful way of saying “we’re all in this together.”

We’re all in this together — remember that, so that you can make some sense out of and fix this crazy, crazy world.

I know you’ll do it. I know that the world you will build will be so very, very different from that world my parents envisioned. A smart phone to them would have been as alien as a little green man from Mars. For you, it is just the starting point of the tools that will be at your disposal to fix all that is broken. Robotics, computer intelligence, medical advances, the constant restless search for knowledge. Your lives will be exciting, revelatory, awesome, in the truest sense of that word.

And yet, the timeless truths of our common humanity, the ones that Shakespeare, Confucius, Moses, Christ, your grandparents and the Mayans understood, those truths will never change.

You are me and I am you.

So just remember the words we talked about today – in La'kesh.

And Class of 2017 – also remember the five words I know you learned at Tulane: Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Howard Schultz: 'Summon your compassion', Arizona State University - 2017

8 May 2017, Arizona, USA

Howard Schultz is the Executive Chairman, founder and former CEO of Starbucks.

Thank you, President Crow, for that generous introduction. I really appreciate our friendship and everything we are doing together. Thank you to the Arizona Board of Regents, faculty and special guests.

Congratulations to the graduating Class of 2017 and those who are here to support you on this very, very special day. And to our 330 Starbucks College Achievement Plan graduates. So proud of you! Who have benefited from the Starbucks and ASU partnership, I am incredibly proud to be your partner. Congratulations to all of you.

I would like to begin my time with you today by sharing a personal story.

Last year, Starbucks coffee company opened our first store in South Africa in Johannesburg. I had never been to South Africa before, did not know what to expect. Certainly could not be prepared for the level of poverty and what I saw in the townships throughout the city. We opened two stores and lines were out the door in anticipation of Starbucks coming to the market but before we opened the stores, I gathered the 50 young people who would embrace the green apron and represent the company. I sat with them for a few hours and wanted to hear each one of their personal stories.

As they were sharing their stories with me, despite their poverty, their plight in life, there was so much joy and gratitude in their hearts. But what I learned was two things. One, all 50 of these young people had never had a job before. They were all unemployed for their entire life and you should see the self-esteem and the sense of security as they were getting ready for their first job. But the second lesson was as they were going around the room and talking to me about their story, I kept hearing an African word I had never heard before. A word that Nelson Mandela used all the time. The word is "ubuntu" and finally, I got up the courage and I asked what does this word mean that you keep using. They couldn't wait to share it with me.

In unison, they said, Howard, “Ubuntu” means I am because of you. I am because of you.

As I have the honor to speak with you today, I ask you to keep that story in mind because everything I’m going to share with you today is through the lens of ubuntu.

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in public housing. The projects, as it was called back then. My parents were both high school dropouts, and they could barely afford $96 a month rent in our two-bedroom apartment for my brother, my sister and my parents.

However, from my earliest of memories, my mother instilled in me her belief in the American dream and the promise of America. That a good education and hard work will open the doors to a better life, and that provides me with an important lesson to share with you all today. That your station in life does not define you and the promise of America that is for all of us.

When I was 7 years old, I had a defining moment in my life. I came home from school one day and saw my father laid on a couch with a cast from his hip to his ankle. He had a series of terrible blue collar jobs as a high school dropout, army vet, but this particular job he had in 1960 was probably the worst.

He was a truck driver delivering and picking up cloth diapers before the invention of pampers. He fell on a sheet of ice in March of 1960, and in March of 1960, if you were a blue collar, uneducated worker, you were dismissed if you had an accident. No workers' compensation, no severance, no health insurance and I saw the fracturing of the American Dream and I saw my parents go through hopelessness and despair at the age of 7. And those scars, that shame, that is with me even today.

As a young boy, I could have never imagined that I would one day build a company of my own, let alone a company that would have more than 26,000 stores in 75 countries and employ more than 300,000 people. Thank you.

But from day one, I really wanted to build the kind of company my father never got a chance to work for. A company that honors and respects the dignity of work and the dignity of all men and all women. And that is why we became the first company in all of America to provide comprehensive health insurance 30 years ahead of the affordable care act, as well as ownership in the form of stock options for all of our employees, including part-time people because it is my firm belief that success in business and in life is best when it's shared.

Starbucks Coffee Company went public in 1992, and from 1992 to 2006, we were on a magical carpet ride in which everything we did turned to gold. But in 2007, the music stopped. We had lost sight of our shared purpose and our guiding principles, in which growth and success began to cover up mistakes and a disease set into Starbucks. That disease, hubris. We lost our way and believe it or not, we almost lost the entire company.

During this cataclysmic period, I was reminded what it means to love something and the responsibility that goes with it, as well as an understanding that leadership and moral courage is not a passive act.

My partners and I took it personally, and we transformed the entire company. We galvanized the entire organization around our core values and servant leadership. Every business, every organization, even every family, must be true to its values and reason for being. Our core purpose and reason for being then and now has always been to achieve the fragile balance between profit and humanity.

Today the equity of the Starbucks brand has never been stronger and our track record of creating shareholder value and social impact over the last 25 years has virtually been unparalleled.

We have built one of the most respected and recognized brands in the world, with the view that today the rules of engagement for business and business leaders have changed. That we must do more for our people and the communities we serve. And most importantly, that not every business decision is an economic one. And that success is not an entitlement. It has to be earned and earned every day through the lens of humility.

Only in America can a poor kid from public housing have the privilege and the honor to be the commencement speaker at the largest and most innovative university in the country.

I stand before you as living proof of the American dream. Joining many of your parents, your professors and generations of graduates before you. But today, you may question the strength of that dream and the promise of America. That's fair.

My generation has not made it easy for you. Our political leaders on both sides of the aisle have not acted with enough courage, nor honesty, in addressing the long-term challenges we face. They have been more focused on fighting with each other than walking in the shoes of the American people and vitriol rules the day in Washington.

I'm extremely optimistic, especially when I look out and see you, because the future is not up to them, not up to Washington, it's up to you.

This milestone in your life may come with some anxiety about what tomorrow holds and you may have questions that only time can answer.

But as a young man, who once sat nervously at his own commencement, I encourage you to always trust yourself and to be mindful of these three enduring questions. How will you respect your parents and honor your family? How will you share your success and serve others with dignity? And how will you lead with humility and demonstrate moral courage?

You are leaving this campus as the best prepared generation in the history of our country. You each possess entrepreneurial spirit, the passion, and the commitment to create the future you deserve. However, don't stop there. Try not to rely only on what you have learned in the classroom.

Summon your compassion, your curiosity, your empathy towards others and your commitment to service. Give more than you receive and I promise you, it will come back to you in ways you can't possibly imagine.

Each of you is here today because of someone else. A parent, a sibling, a teacher, a neighbor, a mentor, someone who had faith and confidence in you, like my mother had in me, and nurtured your dreams.

As you leave here today, take a moment to think of those who have come before you, who have helped you along the way, who are at your side today.

If they are here, embrace them and thank them for the gift of education and for the support and the love that they have given you.

Your generation can bring people together like no other. You can innovate, create, and lead. Your generation will transform our economy and create millions of new jobs. You will develop cleaner energy. You will make it so racism only exists in history books. Yes, you will. You will be the generation that teaches the world that we are at our best when we recognize, respect, and celebrate our diversity. You can and you will make your mark on our country and our shared humanity. Dream big, and then dream bigger, a more innovative dream, a more inclusive dream.

All of you will preserve and enhance the promise of America. The promise that propelled me out of public housing. The promise that will propel you forward, regardless of the color of your skin, your religion, your gender, your sexual orientation, or your station in life. Please remember that.

ASU is because of you. You are because of ASU. We are because of each other. Ubuntu! Ubuntu! Ubuntu! Yes! Say it with me! Ubuntu! Ubuntu! Ubuntu! Ubuntu!

Go forward and continue to make your parents and your family proud. God bless you and thank you and congratulations to the class of 2017! Thank you! Ubuntu! Thank you!

Jose B Gonzalez: 'There is always something left to love', Three Rivers College - 2017

24 May 2017, Norwich, Connecticut, USA

Jose B Gonzalez is a Fulbright scholar and author of International Book Award Finalist, Toys Made of Rock.

Coming back to Three Rivers is always a homecoming for me.  This is a college where I taught students who were as talented, as driven, and as hardworking as any other students I’ve ever met.

It’s a college that I loved nearly 25 years ago and it’s a college that I love to this day.   And I use the word, “love” intentionally.

We are at a time in which we consider people who use the word, “love” as weak, but we view those who use the language of hate as strong. And we have become so desensitized to the hate that we’re inhaling that we sometimes forget to exhale it. 

My advice to you, Class of 2017, is that no matter where you are in the next stage of your life, whether it’s in a new job or a new college, run from the language of hate.

Instead, remember a line so powerful that it can be found in two classics, One Hundred Years of Solitude and a Raisin the Sun, “There is Always Something Left to Love.”

As you move forward, the winds of hate will try to push you backwards but love will make you a better student, a better worker, and a better person.

In your next math class, if you’re going to tell your professor that you hate decimals, as if decimals have ever done anything to you, tell her how you love pi. Everyone loves pi.

In your new job, if you’re going to tell your boss that you hate the pay, tell her that you love the hours.

If you’re going to tell your boss that you hate the hours, tell her that you love the pay. Everybody loves to get paid.

Nothing productive rises out of hate.

You are part of a world where political campaigns are built on pillars of hate, where we don’t always recognize that hatred of immigrants means nothing more than a hatred of self, where hate speech has become common speech, where we can too easily become part of a hate wasteland.

Hating is easy. It requires much less work than love.

There is always something left to love.

And that is true about yourselves too.  In fact, as I’ve visited community colleges throughout the country, there are three things that they have in common. One is that they all have a crazy uncle who shows up at graduation. Where is that crazy uncle today?

Two is that they all have overworked faculty and staff.

And three—they all have students who have spent years beating themselves up and being tougher on themselves than any professor ever could be.

It’s no wonder we are caught up in Photoshopping our flaws, fixated on this myth called perfection.

We all have something we hate about ourselves. Look at me, I’m short, I have bad eyesight, and I love Krispy Kreme doughnuts a little too much.  There is a lot to Photoshop and hate here.

Throughout my life the winds of hate have howled at me. As much as I love Three Rivers, I certainly hated that moment when I was teaching a literature class here on a September day when even the board was smiling and the autumn trees were singing.  That day, someone opened my classroom door, walked in slowly and informed me that my father had died.

I hated the moments when people made fun of me when I was learning English and the moments when others hated me for the color of my skin.

But it was my love for my brown skin that led me to study Brown Literature, and it was my love of language that led me to become a writer and a professor of English.

We’ve got to love our skin and what’s inside that skin. There is always something left to love. 

The fact is you’ve had so many reasons to hate that you could have allowed yourselves to become poster children for hate.

As you commuted to school, I’m sure you didn’t exactly love traffic on 395 or on the obstacle course called I-95.

As you attended classes, you had jobs that were unforgiving, cars that wouldn’t behave, coughs that wouldn’t go away, and deadlines that wouldn’t cooperate. Yet, you refused to allow hate to defeat you.

It’s your love that has brought all of us here together on this memorable day.

Society needs people like you. Students who have persevered through storms of hate, and are ready to show the world that with the love of family, with the love FOR family, with the love of learning, and the love of self, anything is possible. 

Your diplomas are proof that you are ready to use love to make Three Rivers Community College prouder and make our communities and the three rivers that surround us stronger.

And that’s why, tonight, after all the hugs, after the crazy uncle who always stays too long leaves your celebration, be sure to take a look at yourself in the mirror.

Stare hard, and stare long, and say to yourself, “I’m ready to show the world what love can accomplish. I love that I worked hard for this degree, I love that my family is proud of me. And I love myself.” 

Congratulations and much love to you, Class of 2017. 

Purchase Toys Made of Rock

Theo Epstein: 'We all have our rain delay moments', Yale Class Speech - 2017

20 May 2016, Yale,  New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Theo Epstein is the President of Baseball Operations for the Chicago Cubs, who broke a 108 year drought by winning the 2016 World Series.

Thank you... thank you. It appears we have some Cub fans here today. Alright, let’s get right to it then: how many of you are Cub fans? How many are Red Sox fans? how many are Yankee fans? I see. Yankee fans, the exits are located on either side toward the back... you can just head right out Phelps Gate!

President Salovey, Heads of College, College Deans, Members of the Faculty and Staff, good afternoon.

Members of the Class Council, Class Day Chairs Joana Andoh and Larry Milstein, Class Secretary Tommy Rosenkranz, Class Treasurer Mimi Pham, and the entire Yale Class of 2017, greetings and congratulations! I am honored to be with you today to help you celebrate, and I would like to thank Joana and Larry for inviting me on your behalf as well as for that kind introduction.

Your class has been witness to and a participant in a period of historic change at Yale: the inauguration of a new President; the creation of two new residential colleges; the renaming of a third; and, most savory of all, the introduction of Hanoi Fried Cape Shark.

I would like to recognize some of the members of your class who had special accomplishments this year:

the Yale baseball team, for just this week winning the Ivy League and earning its first NCAA tournament berth since 1994 ... congratulations;

the Yale football team for beating Harvard for the first time in 10 years... well done, Bulldogs; and Saybrook for an unprecedented commitment to the Saybrook Strip. Good job, Saybrook! I seem to remember back in my day we at least kept our underwear on and didn’t get hauled away by the Harvard police, but congratulations on taking it to the next level! That is what we call progress!

I would also like to thank some others who are here today in support:

First, my family, including my dad, Leslie, Class of ‘60, and my sister, Anya, Class of ’92. I know, despite your faith in me, you are mildly surprised that I am standing up here today as Class Day Speaker;• Next, my friends and classmates at Yale, with whom I discovered the great institutions of higher education – Toad’s Place and Rudy’s – and wasted many brain cells in the pursuit of the knowledge hidden there. I know you are as shocked as I am about this incredible honor here today.

And finally, a nod to my professors and especially my terrific graduate student teaching assistants. Thank you for all your invaluable tutelage. I know you were somewhat bemused that I made it to my own Class Day, so I am sure you are downright horrified that I am the one speaking here today!

I remember my years at Yale fondly, and, as you’ll find out, a Yale degree is something that stays with you the rest of your life. Back in 2002, when I was 28 years old, I stumbled into being named General Manager of the Boston Red Sox. Days after I was hired, my boss, Larry Lucchino, was visiting his old baseball colleague, President George W Bush, Class of ’68, in the White House. President Bush asked: "What are you doing naming a 28-year-old kid as your general manager? That's an absurd risk; he's far too young." Lucchino replied: "But, Mr. President, you don't understand, he's a Yale Man," — to which the President replied: "Sttrriiike Two!"

Like the former President, I didn’t do anything too serious with my career; I just worked in baseball. Yes, American’s National Pastime, but also, largely, just part of the bread and circuses of society, entertaining and distracting us while others like my twin brother Paul, a social worker, do the real work of holding our communities together. But there are certainly times when baseball is much more than bread and circus, times when baseball resonates deeply and meaningfully with many, many people, and times when a game that is built around overcoming failure can teach us all a few important lessons.

So, Class of 2017, if you'll indulge me, I'm going to tell you just one baseball story. It's a bit long, but don't worry you'll like the ending... unless you happen to be from Cleveland, in which case I am truly sorry! The story is about a very important game — Game Seven of last year's World Series — but has little to do with the actual outcome of the game.

For those who don’t follow baseball: a little background. I work for the Chicago Cubs, a team with a following so loyal and adoring and a history so forlorn that we were known nationwide as the Loveable Losers. As of last fall, the Cubs had not won the World Series since 1908. Think about that. 1908. That’s the Teddy Roosevelt administration. The Ottoman Empire was still around. That's two World Wars ago. (Well, I haven't checked the news since breakfast... let me look at my phone... oh, good, yes, still only two World Wars ago!) It was a 108-year drought, the longest in the history of professional sports. As the late Cubs broadcasting legend Jack Brickhouse said: "Hey, anybody can have a bad century."

I joined the Cubs after the 2011 season amid an inordinate and uncomfortable amount of media attention. The Chicago Sun-Times, I remember, ran a full-page, front-page photo-shop of me walking on water across Lake Michigan, as if by showing up I was going to miraculously fix the team’s fortunes. Imagine their disappointment, then, when I announced a long-term rebuilding plan focused on acquiring young players and winning in five years. One season and 101 losses later, the same paper ran the identical picture on the front page, but this time the only part of me above water was the tip of my nose!

One day in the early years, after a particularly humiliating double-digit loss at Wrigley, I was walking home amongst the fans in a bit of a foul mood and I remember I kept my head down, trying not to get recognized. A very charming elderly woman spotted me and came over to ask a question. “I appreciate what you are trying to do, young man, I really do. I understand why you are bringing in so many young players, but, tell me: exactly when are you planning on winning a World Series? I’m not sure how much time I have left.”

I was a little taken aback and all I could think of to say as I put my head back down to walk away was: “Ma’am, I hope you take your vitamins!” (That was five years ago. If it happened today I guess I would say: “Ma’am, I hope you don’t have any preexisting conditions!”)

After three years of arduous rebuilding, we had a nucleus of young players we believed in who were ready to break into the majors together. Many of these players were 21- and 22-years-old: your peers, your generation. Typically, it takes young players years to adjust to life in the big leagues and to start performing up to their capabilities. Most of the blame for this rests on these ridiculous old baseball norms that say young players are to be seen and not heard. That young players must follow and not lead. That young players must adhere to the established codes — from the dress code that requires them to wear suits and ties to the code that says major league players can't get too excited on the field or look like they are having too much fun.

Thankfully, we hired a manager in Joe Maddon who agreed it was time to turn these conventions on their heads. We asked our young players to be themselves, to show their personalities, to have fun, to be daring, to be bold. The dress code was changed from suit and tie to: "If you think you look hot, wear it!" Unburdened, and empowered, our young team flourished last season, winning 103 games, the most in baseball, and reached our first World Series since 1945. After fighting back from a three-games-to-one deficit against the Cleveland Indians, we faced a decisive Game Seven in Cleveland.

I watched Game Seven from the stands with my colleagues, my wife Marie, and my oldest son Jack, who was then eight years old. Jack, a big baseball fan and the math whiz of the family, kept me updated on the Cubs' win probability throughout the game. As we enjoyed a two-run lead after five innings, he tapped me on the leg: "Dad, we have a 67% chance of winning the World Series." "I know, buddy. It’s going well. But, remember, it’s baseball. Lots of things can happen." Later, we had a three-run lead with just four outs to go in the game, nobody on base, and the bottom of the Indians order coming up. Tens of millions of Cubs fans nationwide, counting down the outs, put their arms around loved ones – or called them – to keep them close for the big moment ahead.

Jack put his arm around me: "Dad, we have a 97% chance of winning the World Series!"

"I know, buddy, I know.” I said. “It’s so great. One batter at time, though. We still need four more outs. Don’t want to look too far ahead.”

"But, Dad, first time in 108 years!"

Then, out of nowhere, as storm clouds suddenly moved into the area: an infield single, a double, an errant fastball, a fateful swing, an impossible home run.... and a tie game.

Indians fans erupted, rocking the stadium on its foundation with ear-splitting cheers. Cubs fans and I slumped in our seats, heads in hands. I felt another tap on my leg. "Dad, we definitely have less than a 50% chance of winning the World Series now." I couldn't think of anything wise to say, so I just sat up in my seat, stared stoically out at the field, put one arm around my son, and with the other I patted his leg as reassuringly as I could.

Minutes later, the skies opened up and rain halted the action. It was just enough of a pause to ponder the magnitude of the situation. Extra innings in Game Seven of the World Series. An entire season, down to this one moment. A five-year plan, down to this moment. 108 years of patience and unrequited love from our fans, down to this moment.

Still in a bit of a daze, I cut through our clubhouse toward a meeting about the weather. Turning a corner, I saw, through the window of the weight room door, the backs of our players' blue jerseys, shoulder to shoulder and packed tightly, all 25 guys squeezed into a space designed for half that many. It was an unusual sight. We hardly ever had meetings and never during a game. I inched closer to the door and saw Aroldis Chapman, the pitcher who had surrendered the tying home run, in tears. I lingered just long enough to hear a few sentences.

“We would not even be here without you,” catcher David Ross said as he embraced Chapman. “We are going to win this for you. We are going to win this for each other.”

Outfielder Jason Heyward walked to the middle of the room: “We are the best team in baseball” he said. “We’ve leaned on each other all year. We’ve still got this. This is only going to make it sweeter.”

And then first baseman Anthony Rizzo: “Nobody can take this away from us. We have each other.”

Kyle Schwarber stood up with a bat in his hands: "We win this right here!"

I turned away, a big smile on my face, and headed to the weather meeting.

Ten minutes later, the rain cleared. Schwarber led off with a single, Ben Zobrist doubled just past the reach of the third baseman, and we took the lead. In the bottom of the 10th, with the tying run on base and the winning run at the plate, at 12:47 a.m., Kris Bryant fielded a slow roller with a gigantic smile on his face and threw to Rizzo for the final out. We had won the World Series. My wife, Jack and I embraced in celebration – equal parts ecstasy and relief. I noticed Jack’s mouth agape; the young mathematician was shocked and overjoyed that we had for once beaten the odds.

Later that morning, back in Chicago, the team bus passed a cemetery on the drive from O’Hare to Wrigley. We saw countless Cubs hats and pennants already draped lovingly over tombstones for family members who did not quite live to see the moment. The next day, five million triumphant Chicagoans from every corner of the immense city gathered downtown for a victory parade. The sea of blue was a beautiful sight; Chicago, fractious and endangered, was united in the aftermath of the championship.

After all the champagne had dried and we finally got a good night's sleep, I found myself returning to a simple question: what should I tell Jack and his younger brother, Drew, about this historic achievement; what is it, exactly, that I want them to hold on to?

I thought immediately of the players' meeting during the rain delay, and how connected they were with each other, how invested they were in each other's fates, how they turned each other's tears into determination. During rain delays players typically come in off the field and head to their own lockers, sit there by themselves, change their wet jerseys, check their phones, think about what has gone right and wrong during the game, and become engrossed in their own worlds. That would have been disastrous for our team during Game Seven — 25 players sitting alone at their lockers, lamenting the bad breaks, assigning blame, wallowing, wondering. Instead, they had the instinct to come together.

Actually, it was not an instinct; it was a choice.

One day I will tell Jack and Drew that some players — and some of us — go through our careers with our heads down, focused on our craft and our tasks, keeping to ourselves, worrying about our numbers or our grades, pursuing the next objective goal, building our resumes, protecting our individual interests. Other players — and others amongst us — go through our careers with our heads up, as real parts of a team, alert and aware of others, embracing difference, employing empathy, genuinely connecting, putting collective interests ahead of our own. It is a choice.

The former approach, keeping our heads down, seems safer and more efficient, and I guess sometimes it may be. The latter, connecting, keeping our heads up, allows us to lead, and, every now and then, to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and, therefore, to truly triumph. I know, I will tell them, because I have tried it both ways.

And I will tell Jack and Drew that we all have our rain delay moments. There will be times when everything you have been wanting, everything you have worked for, everything you have earned, everything you feel you deserve is snatched away in what seems like a personal and unfair blow. This, I will tell them, is called life. But when these moments happen, and they will, will you be alone at your locker with your head down, lamenting, divvying up blame; or will you be shoulder to shoulder with your teammates, connected, with your heads up, giving and receiving support?

And I will tell them not to wait until the rain comes to make this choice, because that can be too late. We weren't winners that night in Cleveland because we ended up with one more run than the Indians. If Zobrist's ball were four inches farther off the line, it would have been a double play and we would have lost the game. That was randomness; like much of life, it was arbitrary. We were winners that night in Cleveland because when things went really, really wrong — and then the rains came — our players already knew each other so well that they could come together; they already trusted each other so much that they could open up and be vulnerable, and they were already so connected that they could lift one another up. We had already won. That's why I had that smile on my face as I walked away from the weight room door.

I learned later that the players’ only meeting had been called by Heyward, a 27-year-old who was suffering through a terrible offensive season, by far the worst of his career. Most players who are having seasons that rough detach from the team and isolate themselves — either to the disabled list or to the periphery of the clubhouse. But Heyward stayed at the center of everything: he never stopped being invested in his teammates, opened up to them about his own struggles, and bought them suites on the road for gatherings. The first to speak was Ross, the 38-year-old backup catcher in his final season who made a career out of being a wonderful teammate (and who is now in the finals of Dancing With The Stars. And you thought you were having a good year?) Rossy was always reaching out to befriend the loneliest players, organizing team dinners, breaking down the barriers that sometimes arise between players of different backgrounds in the clubhouse. The last to speak was Rizzo, the young team leader who all season long was reminding his teammates they were going to make history together, have a parade, and spend the rest of eternity linked with one another. Anthony, a survivor of pediatric cancer, just celebrated the World Series by making a $3.5 million gift to Chicago's Lurie Children’s Hospital. Schwarber, who raced out of the meeting and right into the batter’s box, had torn two ligaments in his knee in the third game of the season – a 12-to-15 month injury. Rather than disappearing to a rehab facility, Schwarber, just 23, stayed connected with his team, getting his rehab work done early so nobody would have to see him in that state, and then functioning as an extra coach for his teammates the rest of the day. He kept telling his teammates he was going to find a way to help them win. Shocking the doctors and everyone else, Schwarber returned in just six months, right in time for the World Series. He hit over .400, including the single to start the deciding rally in Game Seven.

Early in my career, I used to think of players as assets, statistics on a spreadsheet I could use to project future performance and measure precisely how much they would impact our team on the field. I used to think of teams as portfolios, diversified collections of player assets paid to produce up to their projections to ensure the organization’s success. My head had been down. That narrow approach worked for a while, but it certainly had its limits. I grew and my team- building philosophy grew as well. The truth – as our team proved in Cleveland — is that a player’s character matters. The heartbeat matters. Fears and aspirations matter. The player’s impact on others matters. The tone he sets matters. The willingness to connect matters. Breaking down cliques and overcoming stereotypes in the clubhouse matters. Who you are, how you live among others — that all matters. The youngest team in World Series history with six starters under the age of 25; they helped me get my head up.

That is why, at the important moments in their lives, I’m going to keep telling my sons about the 2016 Cubs and that rain delay. And I’ll remind them – when they are graduating college or starting a new job, heading off to grad school or beginning a new life somewhere foreign – that they have a choice.

So, to the Class of 2017, as someone who has already been uplifted by members of your generation, I am thankful and in awe of what you all can accomplish when given the space to be free, to let your personalities out, and to figure it out. I am truly inspired by the traits that distinguish your generation — your diversity, your boldness, your optimism, your tolerance, your treatment of each other based on substance rather than on the labels that used to divide us.

I am so excited to see what lies ahead for you all. While there will undoubtedly be times here and there when you have to suck it up, follow the code, and put on that suit and tie, I urge you to remember that if you think you look hot, wear it! And please remember that even though so much can be quantified these days, the most important things cannot be. And, finally, when things go really, really wrong — and then when it rains on top of everything else — I ask you to choose to keep your heads up and come together, to connect, and to rally around one another, especially those who need it the most. It is likely to uplift you all.

Thank you, and congratulations.

Steven van Zandt: - 'The way to succeed universally is to be as local and as authentic as possible', Rutgers University - 2017

14 May 2017, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA

I am here as a cautionary tale. I am the world's greatest advisor, not because I'm smart, but because I have screwed up every kind of way possible. (applause) Thank you. When I suggest something, I can speak with real authority, because I most likely did the opposite with a not very good result.

After a late but promising start, I found myself in 1990 unable to work. I had been in one of the most successful bands in the world, achieved a significant level of celebrity, but I couldn't work. I was informally, unofficially blackballed by my industry for my political activity. I calmly accepted my fate, and my mind went into a lengthy meditation. I had just been in the Sahara Desert researching the Saharawi, the people of the Western Sahara who are fighting a war with Morocco. That's what I did in those days, I'd identify an area of conflict where our government was involved, often on the wrong side, and I would go and check it out and I would write about it. That would be my last research trip for a while because when I got home, I learned that I had lost my record deal and nobody else was interested. And thus, began my New York version of Wandering the Wasteland.

My mind went back to the Sahara Desert and I did nothing but walk my dog for the next seven years. Gives you time to think, to reflect. How did I get there? I decided if I ever worked again, I would never stop. As I analysed my life and I began to separate back that which had become inseparable, the politics from the work.

I realised how lucky I had been to grow up when I did. It was a true renaissance period, where my standards would forever be set very high. It was only after years of analysing myself at that time, I realised what truly motivated me, what inspired me, what attracted my attention was something called 'greatness'. It was all around me growing up, but I hadn't felt it lately. And that's what separates the vitality of life from the mundane.

Somewhere over the course of about seven years, as I walked my dog, I decided greatness would be my business. It would be my obsession. If I ever worked again. And I've been tasting greatness ever since. Seeking it out, supporting it when I find it, creating it when I can. I decided life was just too short to tolerate and endorse the mediocrity that most of the world was drowning in back then, and it's worse now. The whining, the complaining, the endless excuses that get made for all the reasons why things can't happen. I knew I'd be running in quicksand when at least I'd be fighting to preserve the life force that is driven by reaching for greatness. How I got there, wandering seven years in that desert, that's the cautionary part. My generation and I had a great start. We were the super rich leaders of the free world after World War II. You should've seen us. Masters of the universe. We invented the suburbs. We constructed the entire highway system. Everybody had a car. We were mobile. Free. We invented rock and roll, and then we invented teenagers to dance to it. That's right, there was no such thing as teenagers before the 50s. You were an adolescent, had a few awkward years in between and then you were an adult. That was it.

Suddenly there was a new species of human being called the 'teenager', and a whole new marketplace was born to serve them. Starting with the music. This rock and roll thing was interesting. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's an ancient primitive art form you can probably still find on YouTube, or ask your grandparents about it. Actually, you had another rocker here last year giving his speech, as I recall. Yeah, he was a rock and roll guy. Anyway, rock was unique by being the only rock form ever half created by Blacks, half created by whites. Europe meets Africa. With healthy contributions by Latinos, and women, it was for the most part, white kids trying to imitate Black singers and failing gloriously, creating a new hybrid of music. It was represented quite accurately by Elvis Presley's first single. ‘Single’ being a piece of vinyl with a song on each side. It doesn't matter.

On the one side was blues, on the other side, hillbilly country. There it was. From the earliest records, rock would play a role in the future of American politics. The mix of Black and White that would eventually help define our country. As I said, combined with the contributions of Latinos and plenty of women contributing, the melting pot would melt in the arts long before it would melt in society. In fact, we're still working on that melt in society and your generation is gonna have to finish that job.

Because of the tax structure at the time, 90% at the top, we had a huge middle class, very few rich people, very few poor people. And are ready for this? At one point, the dollar had so much value, it was seriously talking about a four-day work week. And that was with one parent working in most households. Oh yeah, we started strong, baby. My generation were gonna save the world. We literally thought rock and roll was gonna change everything. We came into our teenage years at the peak of a music renaissance, as I mentioned, with the greatest music being made was also the most commercial. It was actually a resurrection because just before that, the early 60s, rock and roll had been declared dead. The pioneers of the 1950s that created it, were suddenly all gone. Little Richard thought the Russians launching Sputnik was a sign from God and joined the Ministry. Chuck Berry was in jail for transporting a minor across state lines. Elvis Presley was in the army. Buddy Holly and Richie Valens had died in a plane crash. Jerry Lee Lewis had married his 13-year old cousin and wondered why nobody was returning his phone calls. Everybody thought rock and roll was a temporary teenage fad that had come and gone. There were good records being made but things were slow.

February 9th, 1964, everything changes. I refer to it as the 'Big Bang'. A band called The Beatles came from England and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Variety Show that 70 million people viewed and tuned in for. And suddenly rock and roll was here to stay. The Beatles made being in a band, not only fun, but essential. The next day everybody had one. A band, I mean. And here's where we enter the picture. Only a handful of bands actually got out of the garage where they rehearsed, and mine was one of them. For a few years, that's all we thought about. Learning that craft. Then suddenly high school was over and everybody started disappearing. Everybody who had an option took it. College, military, a legit job, they moved away, whatever. And when the dust cleared, there were only two guys left standing in New Jersey: me and Bruce Springsteen.

I'd like to tell you an inspiring-type commencement story about how dedicated and persistent we were following our dream against all the odds. But the truth is we were freaks, misfits and outcasts incapable of doing anything else. We hung in there because we had no choice. We strengthened each other by truly believing in it, and rock and roll had literally become my religion by then and still is. We believed in the redemptive salvation of music. Bands were all about friendship, family, the posse, the gang. As I said in that clip, bands communicated community. To this day, the friendship we communicated from the stage is real. Because of our long friendship, as long as I'm standing next to Bruce Springsteen, it's a real band.

We would have the longest apprenticeship in the history of craft. It would be fifteen years from the first gigs we played as kids, to the time we actually had a hit. Fifteen years. The Beatles did it in five, the Rolling Stones did it in three. We were a little slow. But, what we had was tunnel vision. When you're learning a craft, you need that. Any craft. Focus. Everything else has to wait. Not only that - and this is where coming from New Jersey really helped - you need time to develop. Greatness isn't born. It's developed. Greatness is a decision you make. You make that decision every single day with everything you do, no matter how small. It's a habit, like anything else. Are you being casual? Are you distracted? Or are you doing it right? 100%. Whatever it is.

As if you are in the learning process, while you are in the learning process and you think you're being somehow inadequate, not up to the task, then you are not measuring correctly. You cannot be inadequate while you are developing. Give yourself a chance. Nobody is born great. But you look around today and how are you supposed to aspire for greatness when you have no access to it? Once you go out to the real world, you'll see what I mean. You have the greatness here, and your professors in the work. Out there in society, there aint no place for it. There's no expectation of greatness anymore. It's very scarce. And by the way, I'm not talking about the kind of great you put on a baseball cap. I'm talking about the real thing.

Our contemporary society has forgotten what greatness is because it has no time for it. Nobody expects to experience greatness. We may not even recognise it if we saw it. Reason why greatness is scarce is because development is scarce. Development takes time. Don't let the desperate panic of mediocrity that is all around you, uncomfortably hurry your development process. Anybody who needs an answer right now, you say 'no'. You'll make your own opportunities, you'll have the choice to choose the path to greatness, in spite of our contemporary society's low expectations. It'll be up to you.

Attention deficit disorder is no longer a disorder. It's nothing less than a paradigm shift. Your brains are faster than ours were. The next generation will be faster. You will have to find a way to separate that which is most useful when functioning quickly, like a math problem, and that which is useful to best enjoy slowly, like art. What? You thought I was gonna say sex? Another speech, another time.

The arts hold a special place in the human psyche. It is the common ground, spiritual centre of all humanity. We are able to communicate through art, regardless of our language differences. Please take every opportunity to seek it out and soak it up. The great poet W.B. Yeats said, "The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper". Let me say it again, "The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." It is the highest, most sacred part of us, the divine transcendent part of us, and the more conversant you are with it, the younger one starts the better. The more you'll understand it, and the more it helps you understand life.

Art illuminates life. It can inspire, it can motivate, sometimes it exaggerates and helps us understand it's the gift that keeps on giving because it will tell you different things at different ages. A book, a painting, a song, a movie will have an entirely different meaning to you at different times of your lives. And this relationship takes development. It takes familiarity. Ultimately, the better we understand the divinity within that art illuminates, the more inspiration and motivation to achieve greatness in your everyday lives. In your everyday work. Let part of your brain relax and understand certain things are best understood and enjoyed slowly. That's what Yeats was talking about. That's how your senses get sharper, by slowing down. And that's how, once again, we will become a society that aspires to and surrounds ourselves with honours and recognises and achieves greatness... by slowing down.

We are the only country in the world where art is considered a luxury. You are going to have to change that. You might have to change administrations, but your generation will put art back in the classrooms and back as an essential part of our quality of life for all of society. Meanwhile, growing up in New Jersey in the 60s, the last thing in the world we thought about was art. We were just trying to survive. And we were lucky because we had less pressure simply by not being New York or Philadelphia. We also had low expectations. More importantly, the world had low expectations of us because we were from Jersey. We were the underdogs that somehow overcame the odds. Nobody saw us coming. That's something to take note of. Stay under the radar until you're ready. Then bam, blow minds. If you'll allow me this one quick digression, I believe you have an expression here, "Jersey roots, global reach". Is that right? Let me show you how that is applied and that it's not just a clever expression.

A few years ago, I took a crazy job starring on a Norwegian TV show called 'Lillehammer'. It was Netflix's first original show, and it was all going to be done in Norway, with subtitles. Everybody thought I was crazy. "Now, let me get this straight", my agent says, "you're gonna do some cockamamie local show in Norway, after being a principal actor in one of the biggest shows of all time, The Sopranos, right?" I said, "Right". So here's the thing, I became one of the writers, along with the husband and wife that created the show. And they say, "Listen, Norway has never sold a show to any other country. We want this to be the first". I say, "I would like it to be the first, also". So he asked me, "How can we make the show go universal?". And I thought for a minute, and I said, "You know what? I know exactly how to do this. We're gonna do precisely what I watched Bruce Springsteen do, and 20 years later, what Soprano's creator David Chase did."

The way to succeed universally is to be as local and as authentic as possible. The more authentic detail we can get in, the more the world is gonna be interested. Every Norwegian eccentricity, custom, tradition, embarrassment you can think of, I want in this show. Authenticity worked for Bruce, it worked for David Chase in Sopranos, and it worked for Lillehammer, which by the way ended up being sold to 130 countries and won Best Comedy of the World, two years in a row. Just saying.

But can you imagine the record company's faces when Bruce went in to discuss the cover of his first album, and he handed them a postcard that said "Greetings from Asbury Park". Now there had been stars from New Jersey before. Frank Sinatra, Count Basie. But their origins weren't exactly bragged about. From the 1950s comedy team Abbott and Costello, it was a laugh line. "Where are you from Lou?" "Patterson, New Jersey". Big laughs, big laughs. 'Jersey roots, global reach', Bruce Springsteen, Sopranos, Lillehammer, it works. Embrace your Jersey roots and authenticity. Jersey strong. It doesn't matter where you're from. You're in the Jersey family now.

Alright, back to 1980. I co-arrange and co-produce an album called 'The River' and the E Street Band finally breaks through... and just in time, we're already getting old. We achieved the impossible dream and suddenly the tunnel vision I told you about that you need when you're learning your craft, starts to fade. And I start wondering what I missed in those 15 years struggling to make it. Keep in mind, back then there's no news channels. There's no CNN, there's no computers, there's no cellphones. The news was something your parents watched at six o'clock. We don't know what's going on in the world, and we couldn't care less. So, okay. While we're focusing on learning our craft, we kind of missed a few things that our generation was busy doing. Civil rights, Vietnam, Summer of Love, Woodstock. Anyway, we're holding our first successful arena tour in Europe. A kid comes up to me and he says, "Why are you putting missiles in my country?". And I was like, "What are you, tripping?" You know, there's nothing but a fiddle in that case.

But days later, I couldn't shake it. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Once you leave America, you're not a guitar player, you're not a taxi driver, you're not a Democrat, you're not a Republican. You're an American. Well that was big news to me. "Wow. I'm American". Well what does that mean? I guess it means I'm responsible for what my government does. Like putting cruise missiles in Germany at the time. I didn't know any history, I didn't know anything. So I started reading books which was a new experience for me. I read everything I could about our foreign policies since World War II and I was shocked at what I was finding out. We weren't the heroes of democracy worldwide that I thought we were. In fact, we were very often, on the wrong side of conflicts, and I started getting emotionally engaged about it. I wondered why isn't anybody talking about all these dictators we're supporting all over the place? Why aren't we living up to the American ideal our Founding Fathers intended?

So I decided, since nobody else was doing it, this must be my job, my destiny. So I co-produced the next E Street Band album called 'Born in the USA', and after 15 years of work and finally having a little success, I leave the band to dedicate myself to international liberation and politics. A decision for the history books that will never be written and a featured spot in the 'Museum of Stupid.' First advice: never leave your power base, if you are lucky enough to have one. 'Born in the USA' comes out and sells a gazillion copies. And while the rest of the band is getting rich and buying their mansions, I'm hiding under a blanket in the back seat sneaking past a military blockade in Soweto while I research what's going on in South Africa. What a schmuck.

Much to my surprise, I find out I've got a part of my brain that I never knew existed. It was the opposite of the autistic side, which is always trying to find order and truth out of chaos, which I believe is the root of all artistic compulsion. But I happened upon this other part of my brain that functions with effortless logic. Every complex political problem suddenly had obvious solutions to me. I outlined 44 conflicts around the world that America was involved in. I started looking at them more closely. Latin America was full of despicable dictators on our payroll, and I would write about that. I researched our atrocities and ongoing injustices towards our own Native Americans. I wrote about that, including the unjustly imprisoned Leonard Pell Tier who's still in jail. But there was one place on my list I couldn't find much about, and that was South Africa. I heard they were going through major reforms in their apartheid government, which didn't allow Black people to vote. And I heard they kept the Black population contained in ghettos, strikingly similar to what we had only done in America, and that they were invulnerable. South Africa was super strong and that was it.

So I go down there twice hoping to see these reforms, and instead I find modern-day slavery only slightly disguised. And I cannot believe our government is supporting this. What I see is so totally intolerable, I decide the South African government has got to go. Okay, how do we do this? Wasn't much of an issue in America at the time. You'd see an occasional demonstration, but the public apathy was pathetic. It was simply not on the public radar. There was much more consciousness about it worldwide. United Nations had declared sanctions at one of the very first duties after being created. Arthur Ashe, a great African-American tennis player, had strengthened the sports boycott. And I knew the economic boycott would be the end game, so our job was to look up what was already going on and strengthen the cultural boycott, as the bridge between sports and economic boycott.

On the title track of my second album, I asked "Where is the voice of America?". Well, we're about to find out. We formed artists united against Apartheid and produced Sun City with 50 artists on it to make the issue undeniable and unavoidable in America. We made a point to include early hip-hop artists called rappers back then, against everybody's advice. "The rap thing is gonna be gone in a year", I was told. I disagreed. For the first time in history, Black artists were expressing themselves. Marvin Gaye had a fight over what's going on. Stevie Wonder also had a fight with his record company to express himself. White artists were expected to express themselves, ever since Bob Dylan introduced the idea. But that was not the case for Black artists, until rappers.

So me and Danny Schechter and Arthur Baker put Run DMC and the other rappers right next to Bob Dylan, Jackson Brown, Bruce Springsteen and Miles Davis. We were simultaneously making a statement to America about our own apartheid. In the end, it was all about getting the economic boycott done, supporting Ronald Dellums anti-Apartheid legislation. We needed a large groundswell to overcome the Ronald Reagan veto which we knew was coming. And we pulled it off. Suddenly, college campuses just like this came alive in protest. Senators and congressman's children were seeing our video on MTV and BET, and were demanding their fathers do something about it. It was the first time Ronald Reagan's veto overturned, and the rest fell like dominoes just like we wrote it up on paper. The banks cut off South Africa and they had to release Nelson Mandela. It was a stunning defeat for Reagan at the time. He was like god back then, but they never saw us coming until it was too late.

There's an equation for revolution if you wanna jot it down. "Have righteous cause, do the research, organise, strategize, execute". We did it once, so it can be done again. Granted, it was a rare and complete victory in a world of international liberation politics where success is measured one inch at a time. I wasn't a big enough celebrity to really pull it off. It was done by the celebrity of my friends and sheer, righteous, irrational will-power. In addition to whatever issue I was engaged in at the time, my intention was to politicise all my important friends, and make political engagement a normal part of our business, and that's what happened. But back then, it wasn't cool.

You could have social concerns. You could feed the hungry, like the amazing Bob Geldof and the wonderful work of Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson, but crossing that line into politics, naming names, pointing your finger at people and corporations as the source of problems, this was not cool. This was dangerous. "Oh my god, a bunch of crazy artists just run down the government." Record companies started getting concerned. "Are we next?" So, I walked my dog for seven years until the heat died down, and the industry eventually adjusted to artists being more outspoken and politically active as a normal part of our business. Mission accomplished.

At the same time, college campuses had become more politically conscious as well, and that energy exchange between music and students gets things done. At the end of my exile, the phone rings, "Hello, this is David Chase. You wanna be in my new TV show?" "Hey, I'll take a shot. I got nothing else to do". And a whole new adventure opened up that I didn't plan. All I had to do was take the highest standards I had in music, and make them my highest standards in the acting ring. Off I went, once again doing what I do best. Chasing greatness.

Summing up, what did I learn in this crazy life? Two things might come in handy. When your ship comes in, you'll probably be at the airport. You can make all the plans you want, but keep your eyes open for the unexpected opportunities because that's where most of life comes from. Keep your standards high, no matter what. Don't compare yourself to your contemporaries. Compare yourself to the best. Do your homework before you open your mouth. Find a way to do what you love because you're going to be doing it a long time. Hang out as often as you can with people smarter and better than you. Finish what you started. Don't listen to excuses and negativity about why something can't be done. Don't tolerate incompetence and mediocrity. Have pride in whatever you do. If you're gonna do something, do it right. When it comes to art, slow down. It's not a math problem. Let the senses soak it in. And give a little back on a regular basis, doesn't matter how small. You don't have to bring down a bad government everyday. Just do something nice for somebody. You'll feel better.

My generation was gonna change the world. We started some things, but you gotta finish them. We got civil rights and voting rights passed, now gerrymandering and voter suppression is taking it away. We started women's rights and LGBTQ rights, you gotta finish it. We've got separation of Church and State behind you, but be aware the biggest threat to this country is religious extremists. Some foreign, mostly domestic. We established environmental protection, and now the environment is under attack like never before. You know the future is green, I know the future is green. You're gonna finish the job. And don't be confused by all these scientific phrases like global warming, climate change. Just remember this. It's pollution. It's poison, okay? There's no acceptable level of poison in our air, food, ground or water. None, zero, zip, nada.

I leave you with this. My father was a proud ex-marine Goldwater Republican. He wouldn't recognise the party now. I paraphrase Barry Goldwater as a tribute to my late father. "Extremism in defense of the environment is no vice, and moderation in a pursuit of stopping pollution is no virtue. Lead us into a green future, reach for greatness, nothing less and make sure you have some fun along the way. Life should never be boring. Congratulations, go get them.

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.

Sheryl Sandberg: 'We are not born with a certain amount of resilience', Virginia Tech - 2017

12 may 2017, Virginia Tech, Virginia, USA

Hello Hokies!

President Sands, esteemed faculty, proud parents, devoted friends, wet siblings... congratulations to all of you. But most importantly, congratulations to the Virginia Tech class of 2017!

I am honored to be with you and this San Francisco summer day feels just like home, just like it does with anything with “Tech” in its name.

I’m so delighted to be here with my friend, Regina Dugan. As you just heard, Regina used to run DARPA – for real! – and now she is developing breakthrough technologies at Facebook. In Hokie terms, she’s our Bruce Smith. And she is just one of so many alums doing amazing things around the world.

Today, class of 2017, you join them. And I’m thrilled for you. And thrilled for all of the people who are here supporting you – the people who have pushed you, dried your tears and laughed with you from your first day to this day. Let’s show them all of our thanks.

Commencement speeches can be pretty one-sided. The speaker – that’s me – imparts her hard- earned wisdom... or at least tries to. The graduates – that’s you – you sit in the rain today and listen like the thoughtful people you are. Then you hurl your caps in the air, hug your friends, let your parents take lots pictures of you – ( post them on Instagram, just one idea) – and head off into your amazing lives... maybe swinging by Sharkey’s for one last plate of wings before you go.

Today’s going to be a little bit different because I’m not going to talk about something I know and you don’t. I want to talk about something the Virginia Tech community knows all too well. Today, I want to talk about resilience.

This university is known for so many things. Your kindness and decency... your academic excellence... your deeply-felt school spirit. I’ve spent time at a lot of time at colleges – yes for work, but also because I might want to relive my 20s just a little.

Few people talk about their school the way Hokies talk about Virginia Tech. There is so much pride and unity here -- such a deep sense of identity, and I am going to prove it by asking you one simple question:

What’s a Hokie? [I am!] That’s it!

What you might not realize is that that Hokie spirit has made all of you more resilient. I’ve spent the last two years studying resilience because something happened in my life that demanded more of it than I ever would have thought possible.

Two years and eleven days ago, I lost my husband Dave suddenly and unexpectedly. Sometimes I still have a hard time saying the words because I can’t quite believe it actually happened. I woke up on what I thought would be a totally normal day. And my world just changed forever.

I know, important day — it’s raining, and I’m up here talking about death. But I promise you there’s a reason – and even one that’s not even sad.

Because what I’ve learned since losing Dave has fundamentally changed how I view this world and how I live in it. And I want to share it with you, on this day because I think it’s going to help you lead happier, healthier, and more joyful lives. and you deserve all of that.

Each of you walked a very unique path to reach this day. Some of you faced real trauma. All of you faced challenges. disappointment, heartache, loss, illness – all of these are so personal when they strike – but they are also so universal.

And then there are the shared losses. The Virginia Tech community knows this. You’ve stopped for a quiet moment by the 32 Hokie stones on the Drillfield, as I did with President Sands just this morning. You’ve joined your friends for the “Run in Remembrance.” You know that life can turn in an instant. And you know what it means to come together, to pull together, to grieve together, but, ultimately, to overcome together.

After Dave died, I did something I’ve done at other hard times in my life: I hit the books. With my friend Adam Grant, a psychologist who studies how we find meaning in our lives, I dove into the research on resilience and recovery.

The most important thing I learned is that we are not born with a certain amount of resilience. It is a muscle, and that means we can build it.

We build resilience into ourselves. We build resilience into the people we love. And we build it together, as a community. That’s called “collective resilience.” It’s an incredibly powerful force – and it’s one that our country and our world need a lot more of right about now. It is in our relationships with each other that we find our will to live, our capacity to love, and our ability to bring change into this world.

Class of 2017, you are particularly suited to the task of building collective resilience because you are graduating from Virginia Tech. Communities like this don’t just happen. They are formed and strengthened by people coming together in very specific ways. You’ve been part of that here, whether you knew it or not. As you go off and become leaders – and yes, you will lead, you are destined to lead – you can make the communities you join – and the communities you form – stronger.

Here’s where you start.

You can build collective resilience through shared experiences. You’ve had lots of those: jumping to “Enter Sandman,” - I saw that this morning, it’s incredible. Enduring the walk across the Drillfield in the winter (kind of like Jon Snow at the Wall), finding new loves and then NEW new loves, being there for each other through triumph and through disappointment. Every class, every meal, every all nighter has added another strand to a vast web that connects you to each other and to Hokies everywhere.

These ties do more than connect – they support. Nearly 30 years ago, a very talented young man made it from a very underprivileged background all the way to college, but then he didn’t finish. And when he dropped out, he said, “If only I had my posse with me, I would have graduated.” That insight led an amazing woman named Deborah Bial to create the Posse Foundation, which recruits high-potential students in teams of 10 to go from the same city to the same college. Posse kids have a 90 percent graduation rate from some of the best schools in the country.

We all need our posses – especially when life puts the obstacles in our path. Out there in the world, when you leave Virginia Tech, you’re going to have to build your own posse – and sometimes that’s going to mean asking for help.

This was never easy for me. Before Dave died, I tried to bother people as little as possible – and yes, “bothering people” is what I thought it was. But then my life changed and I needed my friends and family and colleagues more than I ever could have thought I would. My mom – who along with my dad is here with me today just like yours are here with you – stayed with me for the very first month, literally holding me as I cried myself to sleep. I had never felt weaker. But I learned that it takes strength to rely on others. There are times to lean in and there are times to lean on.

Building a posse also means acknowledging our friends’ challenges. Before I lost Dave, if a friend was going through something hard, I would usually say I am sorry – once. And then I wouldn’t bring it up again because I didn’t want to remind them of their pain. Losing my husband taught me how absurd that was – you can’t remind me I lost Dave. But like I had done with others, when people failed to mention it, it felt like there was a big, old elephant following me around everywhere I went.

It’s not only death that ushers in the elephant. You want to completely silence a room? Say you have cancer, that your father went to jail, that you just lost your job. We retreat into silence just when we need each other the most. Now, not everyone is going to want to talk about everything all the time. But saying to a friend, “I know you are suffering and I am here with you” can kick a very ugly elephant out of any room.

If you are in someone’s posse, don’t just offer to help in a generic way. Before I lost Dave, when a friend was in need, I would say, “Is there anything I can do?” And I meant it kindly – the problem is, that question kind of shifts the burden to the person in need. And when people asked me, I didn’t know how to answer the question. “Can you make Father’s Day go away?” Here’s a different approach. When my friend Dan Levy’s son was sick in the hospital, a friend texted him and said, “What do you not want on a burger?” Another friend texted from the lobby and said “I’m in the lobby of the hospital for a hug for the next hour whether you come down or not.”

You don’t have to do something huge. You don’t have to wait for someone to tell you exactly what they need. And you do not have to be someone’s best friend from the first grade to show up. If you are there for your friends, and let them be there for you – if you laugh together until your sides ache, if you hold each other as you cry, and maybe even bring them a burger with the wrong toppings before they ask – that won’t just make you more resilient, it will help you lead a deeper and more meaningful life.

We also build collective resilience through shared narratives. That might sound light – how important can a story be? But stories are vital. They’re how we explain our past and they are how we set expectations for our future. And they help us build the common understanding that creates a community in the first place.

Every time your friends tell their favorite tales – like, I don’t know, when Tech beat UVA in double overtime – you strengthen your bonds to each other.

Shared narratives are critical for fighting injustice and creating social change. A few years ago, we started LeanIn.Org to help work towards gender equality – helping women and men form Lean In circles – small groups that support each other’s ambitions. There are now more than 33,000 Circles in 150 countries. But It wasn’t until I lost Dave that I understood why Circles are thriving – it’s because they build collective resilience.

Not long ago, I was in Beijing and I had a chance to meet with women from Lean In Circles across China. Like in a lot of places, it’s not always easy to be a woman in China. If you’re unmarried past age 27, you’re called sheng nu – a “leftover woman.” And I thought the word “widow” was bad! The stigma that comes from being a leftover woman can be intense. One woman – a 36-year-old economics professor – was rejected by 15 men because - wait for it -- she was – too educated. After that, her father forbade her younger sister from going to graduate school.

But more than 80,000 women have come together in Lean In Circles to create a new narrative. One Circle created a play, The Leftover Monologues, which celebrates being “leftover” and tackles the topics too often unspoken, like sexual harassment, date rape, and homophobia. The world told them what their stories should be, and they said, actually, we’re writing a different story for ourselves. We are not leftover. We are strong and we will write our own story together.

Building collective resilience also means trying to understand how the world looks to those who have experienced it differently – because they are a different race, come from a different country, have an economic background unlike yours. We each have our own story but we can write new ones together – and that means seeing the values in each other’s points of view and looking for common ground.

Anyone here a little bit anxious about your future? Not sure where the future is taking you? Sometimes me too. And you know what helps you combat that fear? A very big idea captured in a very tiny word: hope.

There are many kinds of hope. There’s the hope that she wouldn’t swipe left. Sorry. There’s the hope that as you sit here your stuff will magically pack itself. Sorry. There’s the hope that it would stop raining. Double sorry. But my favorite kind of hope is called grounded hope — the understanding that if you take action you can make things better.

We normally think of hope as something that’s held in individual people. But hope – like resilience – is something we grow and nurture together. Just two days ago, I visited Mother Emanuel church in Charleston. We all know about the shooting that took place there just two years ago, claiming the lives of a pastor and eight worshippers. What happened afterwards was extraordinary. Instead of being consumed by hatred, the community came together to stand against racism and violence. As a local pastor Jermaine Watkins beautifully put it: “To hatred, we say no way, not today. To division, we say no way, not today. And to loss of hope, we say no way, not today.”

That was the theme of maybe the most touching Facebook post I’ve ever read – and let’s face it, I’ve read a lot of Facebook posts. This one was written by Antoine Leiris, a journalist in Paris whose wife Hélène was killed in the 2015 Paris attacks. Two days later – two days – he wrote an open letter to his wife’s killers. “On Friday night, you stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son. But you will not have my hate. My 17-month-old son will play as we do every day, and all his life this little boy will defy you by being happy and free. Because you will not have his hate either.”

Strength like that makes all of us who see it stronger. Hope like that makes all of us more hopeful. That’s how collective resilience works – we lift each other up. This might seem very intuitive to you Hokies because these qualities of collective resilience – shared experiences, shared narratives, and shared hope – shine forth from every corner of this university. You are a testament to courage, faith and love – and that’s been true, not just for these past 10 years, but for over a century before then. This university means a lot to you, graduates... but it also means a lot to America and to the world. So many of us look to you as an example of how to stay strong and brave and true.

This is your legacy, Class of 2017. You will carry it with you – that capacity for finding strength in yourselves and building strength in the people around you.

Virginia Tech has given you a purpose, reflected in your motto, “That I May Serve.” An important way you can serve and lead is by helping build resilience in the world. We have a responsibility to help families and communities become more resilient – because none of us get through anything alone. We get through it together.

As you leave this beautiful campus and set out into the world, build resilience in yourselves. When tragedy or disappointment strike, know that deep inside you, you have the ability to get through anything. I promise you do. As the saying goes, we are more vulnerable than we ever thought, but we are stronger than we ever imagined.

Build resilient organizations. Speak up when you see injustice. Lend your time and your passion to the causes that matter. My favorite poster at Facebook reads, “Nothing at Facebook is someone else’s problem.” When you see something that’s broken and there is a lot that is broken out there, go fix it. Your motto demands that you do.

Build resilient communities. Virginia Tech founded the Global Forum on Resilience four years ago, and it’s doing outstanding work in this field. Be there for your friends and family. And I mean in person – not just in a message with a heart emoji. Even though those are pretty great too. Be there for your neighbors; it’s a divided time in our country, and we need you to help us heal. Lift each other up and celebrate each and every moment of joy. Because one of the most important ways you can build resilience is by cultivating gratitude.

Two years ago, if someone had told me that I would lose the love of my life and become more grateful, I would have never have believed them. But that’s what happened. because today I am more grateful now than I ever was before – for my family and especially my children. For my friends. For my work. For life itself.

A few months ago, my cousin Laura turned 50. Graduates, you may not appreciate that turning 50 happens soon and feels old – but your parents do. I called her that morning and I said, “Happy Birthday, Laura. But I am also calling to say in case you woke up this morning with that ‘oh my God, I’m 50’ thing. Don’t do that. This is the year Dave doesn’t turn 50.” Either we get older, or we don’t. No more jokes about growing old. Every year – every moment –even in the pouring rain –is an absolute gift.

You don’t have to wait for special occasions – like graduation – to feel and show your gratitude to your family, your friends, your professors, your baristas – everyone. Counting your blessings increases them. People who take the time to focus on the things they are grateful for are happier and healthier.

My New Year’s resolution last year was to write down three moments of joy before I went to bed each night. This very simple thing has changed my life. Because I realize I used to go to bed every night thinking about what I did wrong and what I was going to do wrong the next day. Now I go to sleep thinking of what went right. And when those moments of joy happen throughout the day, I notice them more because I know they’ll make the notebook. Try it. Start tonight, on this day full of happy memories – but maybe before you hit Big Al’s.

Graduates, on the path before you, you will have good days and you will have hard days. Go through all of them together. Seek shared experiences with all kinds of people. Write shared narratives that create the world you want to live in. Build shared hope in the communities you join and the communities you form. And above all, find gratitude for the gift of life itself and the opportunities it provides for meaning, for joy, and for love.

Tonight, when I write down my three moments of joy, I will write about this. About the hope and the amazing resilience of this community. And maybe you’ll write that I finally stopped talking.

You have the whole world in front of you. I cannot wait to see what you do with it.

Congratulations and go Hokies!

Natasha Trethewey: - 'In the words of Atlanta rapper T.I "Unhappy with the riches because you're piss poor morally"', Emory University - 2017

8 May 2017, Atlanta, Georgia

Good morning, members of the Knox College Community, President Amott, trustees, faculty, parents, and the graduating Class of 2014.  It's a great pleasure and honor to address you today in the birthplace of Carl Sandburg, a great poet of the people whose democratic vistas have compelled us to see the possibility of justice in the world.

I have visited this lovely place once before, but it is, more importantly, the history of Knox College, the commitment to abolition, to social justice, woven into its founding that makes my return today feel like a kind of homecoming. For that, I am grateful and, also, because I did not attend my own college graduation, I am grateful to share this day with you. I know that I missed out on something important, something I might have carried with me as a memory of a momentous day, a sense of triumph over difficult odds and a way to mark an important milestone that, at some moments, seemed I might never reach. Some of you have faced difficult odds thus far in your lives. Perhaps having to work while pursuing your studies, or dealing with an illness or disability, or serving as a caregiver for a family member. Many of you will have not, and, for that blessing, I am thankful and wish for you that it always be so. For all of you graduating today, I wish a smooth and lucky passage. 

This is a time of year I love, perhaps second only to the beginning of a new academic year; that first inkling of autumn in the air, the way the sharp pages of a newly acquired book or even the musty scent of an old one, suggests to me the endless possibilities for learning, for pursuing knowledge not only for my work as a poet, but also for the sheer pleasure of it. I love this time of year differently. I anticipate some time to rest, the brief respite of a few days vacation in the warmer months, so that I can begin again with renewed enthusiasm my life's work. But I also anticipate the reckoning again with my difficult past. You are perhaps feeling something quite different, perhaps relief to have completed this part of your education or melancholy at moving on from this stage in your life, excitement about the opportunities before you, or anxiety in these difficult times about the uncertain future. No doubt you've given this some serious thought.  Although my own passage was not smooth, I can still see in it a measure of luck. 

When I was a graduating senior, I had already experienced the most traumatic event of my life and had to overcome that hardship. In my freshman year, my mother was killed, gunned down in a parking lot by her second husband, her then ex-husband, a troubled Vietnam veteran with a history of mental illness. For the rest of my time in college, I was grieving. When I wasn't grieving, I was trying to carry on with my extracurricular activities, holding down a part time job and socializing with my friends. I was not doing much studying and only showing up in my classes enough to earn a gentlewoman's C average. I couldn't focus on school work, and I didn't know enough to forgive myself that fact and seek some kind of counseling that would have perhaps helped me contend with my grief and perform better at my studies.

I'd been an English major from the time I arrived at the university, but during those school years, I shopped around taking all sorts of classes and thinking I might change my major. I never did, though, not only because I liked literature in high school but also because I think I'd become complacent and not as invested in my education as I needed to be. It was my default choice. I can see now that I was lucky to be getting a liberal arts education that allowed me to explore a lot of different types of courses, as well as being offered a more concentrated education in a particular subject.

So many of my classmates seemed to know exactly what they were doing and why. And I envy that. I still do. I often wonder now what would be different about my life and career had I decided to become a history major. But I was without direction, a sampler, and fortunate that many of those courses I studied, I tried out if only for a semester, sustained my scattered attention in ways that I could not have anticipated.

Two of them stand out to me now. Perhaps you can already look back and recognize what course, academic experience, or faculty member has made what will be a lasting impact on your life. Back then, I could not see how what I was learning would give shape and purpose to my life, let alone a kind of redemption.

In the spring of my freshman year, the spring I lost my mother, I was taking an American History course. On the first day of class, the professor asked us to write down on note cards the names of our hometowns. Now, this was in the 1980s, before the ease of research on the Internet, so what the professor did is even more impressive to me as I look back on it now. We, too, were on the quarter system, and the next day when we came back to class, he introduced each of us by describing some significant historical events that had taken place at our hometowns.

Because my hometown was out of state, I sat there waiting for him to get to me, certain he couldn't have much to say about where I'd come from, a little town on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But he did know something. And as I listened, I began to see myself as part of a larger history. Not just my personal history, but also geographical, cultural, social, political, and economic history that connected me to other people and that had already helped to shape me, to make me who I was.

From that one class, I took away a seed that grew in me the first real inklings of myself as a historical being. Not someone outside of history or adrift in it, but someone with a past that was older and more significant than my 19 years on Earth. I did not know then what that would mean to me years later when I finally had found my calling as a poet, deeply interested in writing about the intersections and contentions between personal and public history and about justice. Nor did I consider the ways in which I was on my way to being part of an educated and informed citizenry, who could fully participate in the ongoing shaping of my nation.

Within a few months of that second day of class, my mother would be dead, and I would find myself asking the question, more profoundly than I ever had before: How has this world as it now exists come to be what it is? At the moment, the question was no longer what we ask in our studies in general, not the usual way we ask how and why are things, but now a life and death matter. It had an immediacy that was bound to the fact of my being and whether I would survive and flourish or merely survive in the world I'd been given.

The other class was a food science course I took in my senior year. It was only a two credit course, but it was one of the most memorable of my college experience. We studied everything from the FDA and the USDA guidelines about the various grades of meat, food processing, labeling, and safety, to food-borne illnesses. In one assignment, in order to learn how to recognize which bacteria in food preparation had caused a particular illness, we had to solve cases in which we were like detectives, following the clues as the sleuth does in a mystery novel.

Until then, I had not known how much I could be drawn to a kind of scientific research, to investigation, to puzzling out using primary evidence the answer to some practical question affecting our lives. Nor did I realize that there were connections between a course like this one and my shock and disgust and pleasure upon reading in high school Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, The Jungle, that details some of the early horrors of the meat packing industry in Chicago and the regulations that it spurred. Nor could I see that taken altogether, these courses and my English major were preparing me for the moment that I'd recognize what it was I had been meant to do, that it involved literature, not only reading it, but writing it and that the writing of it would involve an engagement with history, society, and culture, a curiosity that fostered a desire to do research, to go beyond disciplinary boundaries, to make my way in the world, not just in spite of certain setbacks, but building upon them. Those lessons that hardships and limitations, no matter what they are, can teach us.

Without realizing it, I'd been given the tools and the opportunity to think critically, to grapple with difficult knowledge, and to question assumptions and perceived notions about things. I had begun to ask more pointedly than ever before: How the world as it is now exists come to be what it is and what is my place in it? Questions that formed the scaffolding of a life built upon being consciously historical.  

Most of my other courses those years are a blur to me, now part of what seems like intuitive knowledge but is, as the best intuition is, the result of prolonged tuition. And in many ways, this is perhaps the best part of a liberal arts education. I was not studying to be a writer, but everything I studied has helped me become one, to answer my calling.

Today marks the day that you too have done that preliminary work, whether you are yet fully aware of it or not, and it is to be celebrated now and in the years to come as you continue to build upon the sound foundation of your excellent education. But this is not a time for complacency. In her essay "Resisting Amnesia," poet Adrienne Rich reminds us that one does indeed have a choice to become consciously historical. That is, a person who tries from memory and connectedness against amnesia and nostalgia. One who tries to describe her or his journeys. "Historical amnesia," she wrote, "is starvation of the imagination that no ongoing pursuit of knowledge can survive."

It was in that pursuit of knowledge that I was lucky enough to ensure my survival through what would not be a smooth passage. When I think back on those years, I have a momentary sense of terror that I might not have made it to where I am now, might not have survived personal tragedy and found a calling, a way to live in the world that continues to challenge and reward me beyond the necessary and pleasurable material comforts. And I can say without a doubt that my education, seemingly haphazard, and often blindly gained, saved me. It gave me a means of understanding my place in the world, a way to contend with history, law, and society, my role and rights as a citizen. A way to grapple with the political, societal, and socioeconomic context of the historical moment in which my mother was murdered.

Even now, it is hard to say that word. But I am a writer, and therefore, I am in the business of saying things precisely and of choosing to be consciously historical. Some people go blindly about their lives letting others decide the kind of world we're going to live in. Your education is a privilege that not everyone is able to attain and therefore, you have a greater responsibility as the educated citizenry to enter as the poet Robert Penn Warren put it, the world of action and liability. That is the necessity now, more than ever for historical awareness, civic duty, and social responsibility. To be truly educated is to resist the easy certainties of deeply ingrained and unexamined ideologies of soundbites and cliches in favor of an ongoing pursuit of knowledge, of truth, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you.

There are countless ways to enter that world of action and liability, to answer your own calling, in a way that will benefit not only yourselves and your loved ones, but can also serve the greater good. One of the things I love most about my calling, poetry, is that across time and space, it shows us not that we are different, but how we are alike. It connects us through the intimacy of a single voice speaking across the distances and through empathy to the lives of others, showing us a way to know ourselves in the mirror of someone else's experience. And, it allows us to say exactly, precisely, what we mean and to mean something else, perhaps even more important, at the same time.        

So, in closing, I'd like to read you a lovely poem by Richard Wilbur. It offers a fitting metaphor for this occasion, as you embark on writing the next chapter of your life's story. It's called "The Writer."

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desktop,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

How true, the sentiments of the poem, the stuff of our lives a great cargo, some of it heavy. The work, often difficult at times to clear the sill of the world in our pursuits. The way our lives are always a matter of life or death. Out of the stuff of my life and the gifts of a liberal arts education, I've found a way to live in the world that could nurture my soul, and, I like to think, the souls of others. There are myriad ways to do that. What will yours be? How lucky you are today to be poised before the sill of the world on the cusp of so much to come. I wish what I wished you before, but harder. Congratulations.

Peter Dinklage: 'I am happy to talk about the parallel lineages of the Targaryens and Lannisters later at the bar', Bennington College - 2012

1 June 2012, Bennington College, Vermont, USA

Don’t be frightened! When a Bennington student, 10 minutes before you come up to the podium hands you a mace, that he made,

If you don’t bring it to the podium with you, you will never be Bennington.

So I would like to thank you Ben for helping me put the fear of God in the audience tonight. But I have to put it down because I’m an actor, and I am really weak. That was heavy! It wasn’t like a prop. That shit was real!

Thanks Ben.

So now I’m going to read. And I’m not off book. So I might be looking down a lot.

Thank you, President Coleman, Brian Conover, faculty, students, family, alumni, some of whom are dear friends of mine who have travelled all the way from the big city to see me hopefully not humiliate myself tonight.

And especially thanks to you, the Graduating Class of 2012.

See, as a joke I wrote, hold for applause, and I was actually going to read that. So you kind of killed my joke!

Let’s do that again. 2012, hold for applause.

2012! Wow! I never thought I’d see 2012. I thought perhaps the Mayan calendar would prove correct. And the end of the world would have been the greatest excuse to get me out of this terrifying task of delivering the commencement speech. But wait! According to the Mayan calendar here, when does the world end? December — December 2012. Damn!

Okay. Maybe I shouldn’t talk to the graduates eager to start their new lives about the end of the world. Okay. Really? Really?

Of all the novelists, teachers, playwrights, poets, groundbreaking visual artists and pioneers of science, you got the TV actor. No, no, and I actually heard you petitioned for me. Oh, you fools!

You know what, for those of you who didn’t petition for me, I would love to later on talk about the problems in the Middle East and the downfall of the world economy. And for those of you who did petition for me, I don’t have any signed DVDs of the Game of Thrones. But I am happy to talk about the parallel lineages of the Targaryens and Lannisters later at the bar.

You see, it took all of my strength, and, of course, a little extra push from my wife Erica for me to agree to do this. Because I don’t do this. In my profession, I am told by people who know what they’re doing, where to stand, how to look, and most importantly, what to say. But you’ve got me — only me — my words unedited and as you will see quite embarrassing.

Okay, let me think.

I’m thinking. [But actually I didn’t read that. That was ad libbed.]

Let me think. What has — everyone and their uncle told me, as I desperately seek out advice on how to give a commencement address.

“Tell them what they want to hear.”

“Talk about your time at Bennington.”

“Know that there is no wrong speech.” I like that one.

“Just keep it brief.” That was my father-in-law.

“Be brutally honest. Tell them how hard it is after you graduate.” We’ll get back to that one.

“Just watch Meryl Streep’s commencement speech at Barnard and you’ll be fine.”

What did Beckett say: “I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On”.

So even if I don’t burn in your hearts and minds long after this speech is over. Even if I don’t inspire you to reach for the stars and beyond. Even if I am erased from your memory after one glass of wine tonight — Where am I going with this? I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

You know, I won’t speak of my time here, like some old fishermen. You have already had your time here. You have your own story to tell.

But I have to say. For me, it did start here, in Vermont, on a very rainy night. It was 1987. And I was a prospective student. The rain was coming down so hard, it was impossible to see that I was meeting the person who would later become my greatest friend and collaborator. A freshman, who would, 17 years later, introduce me to the woman that became my wife. I’ll call him Sherm. Because I do.

It was late at night, on the road, right there near Booth House. And despite the dark night and the heavy rain, this place was so alive. The lights pulsed from each of the dorms.

Now I was a kid from New Jersey who went to an all-boys catholic high school. I was four-foot something. I mumbled when I spoke. I wore a sort of woman’s black velvet cape, black tights, combat boots and a scowl.

But here at Bennington, I was home. And I have to say it doesn’t get better. Let me clarify. There are not shinier more important people out there. Your fellow students, you friends sitting around you are as good as it gets. Twenty two years after my own graduation, I have worked with my rainy night friend and fellow graduate Sherm on countless productions he has written, in all stages of development from living rooms to off-Broadway.

Brooks, Ian, Justin, Brett, John, Matthew, Jim, Sean, Hyla, Nicki and The B are all classmates I shared my time with here and still work with, and am lucky to call my friends. We are very spoiled here. People always say to me, “for such a small school it seems like there are so many of you”. I find that really interesting. And I kind of think that’s perfect. We can’t help it. We burn very brightly. Please don’t ever stop.

Graduates, now when I sat where you are right sitting right now, I had so many dreams of where I wanted to go, who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to do. Theater companies I wanted to start with classmates. Movies, I wanted to be in. Directors I wanted to work with. Stories I needed to tell. It might take a little time, I thought. But it would happen. When I sat there, 22 years ago, what I didn’t want to think about is where I would be tomorrow. What I would have to start to do tomorrow.

And I graduated in 1991, a great year. A time of resurgence for independent films in this country. A time of relatively affordable rents in New York City. See, I assumed that I could make a living writing my plays, acting way off off off Broadway. And hopefully, you know, one day, join the actors I loved and respected in those independent films. TV – oh, what, no. What! Are you kidding me? No, didn’t even consider that. I had much more class than that. Much more self-respect than that. And so bothers —

What I didn’t have was cash, a bank account, a credit card, or an apartment. I just had debt. A big hungry, growing larger every moment debt.

So as you will tomorrow, I had to leave beautiful Vermont. Attack the life that I knew with socks and a tooth brush into my backpack. And I slept on ouch, after couch, after couch, after couch at friends’ apartments in New York. Until I wore out the rent paying roommates’ welcome.

I didn’t want a day job. I was an actor, I was a writer. I was a Bennington graduate. I had to get a day job. I dusted pianos at a piano store and let those streak for five months. I worked on the property of a Shakespeare scholar for a year pulling weeds and removing bees’ nests. I went on unemployment once but for not for long, I couldn’t handle the guilt.

Eventually I was able to pay rent for a spot on the floor of an apartment on the Lower East side. But my roommate had a breakdown and disappeared. He later resurfaced in a religious cult. I’m making this sound romantic. It really wasn’t.

I helped hang paintings at galleries, paintings that inspire you to think, I could do that.

And then finally, after two years of job and couch surfing, I got a job in application processing. As a data enterer at a place called Professional Examination Services. And I stayed for six years. Six years! Longer than my time at Bennington.

From the age of 23 to 29, well they loved me there. I was funny. I wore black no cap no tights. I smoked in the loading docks with the guys from the mail room and we shared how hung-over we all were. Everyone called each other shortie. What’s up short? How you doing shortie? So how so hung-over shortie?

I called in sick almost every Friday because I was out late the night before. I hated that job. And I clung to that job. Because of that job, I could afford my own place.

So I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Yeah, you say that now. Oh, my kingdom for a time machine. Yeah, that’s right. I lived in an industrial loft. My rent was $400 a month.

My dream of running a theater company with my friend and fellow Bennington graduate, Ian bell had died. I won’t go into those details but neither one of us had any business sense and the theater we lived in. It had no heat or hot water. We didn’t smell very good. But we had our youth, but youth gets old very quickly. You’ll see.

So Ian moved out to Seattle. And I moved up the street to my loft. And I still didn’t have heat.

In 1993, industrial loft meant not legal to live there. See, I don’t want this to sound cool and I feel like it’s sounding cool. Ad lib.

But I did have hot water — hot water in my bathroom, which a friend of mine using that bathroom once shouted, it smells exactly like. A summer camp in here. It was true. For some reason, in the middle of Brooklyn, there was earth in my shower – actual earth and then oh, look, mushrooms growing from the earth. But I was safe though.

The ideal fire control company was right across the street where they make all the chemicals that put out chemical fires. I did not fear a chemical fire. I would be OK. And all those chemicals in the air were OK too. Because up the street we had the spice factory, they made spices, and that just covered everything up in a nice cumin scent. I had a rat. But that was OK, because I got a cat. His name was Brian, no relation.

My grandmother had given me a pink pull-out couch. Oddly no friends or recent graduates wanted to crash on my couch. So I put the couch on its end, so Brian could climb it and look out the window.

I had only the one window. I myself could not look out the window. It was – it was quite high. So I had no heat. No girlfriend. What! Are you kidding me? No, acting agent. But I had a cat named Brian who told me of the world outside. And I stayed for 10 years. No, don’t pity me. There’s a happy ending.

When I was 29, I told myself the next acting job I get no matter what it pays, I will from now on, for better or worse, be a working actor. So I quit my position at the Professional Examination Services. My friends really weren’t happy about that, because it was so easy to find me when I worked there. Work – that was the only place I had the internet. This was at the beginning of the Internet.

And now I didn’t have either the internet or a cell phone or a job. But something good happened.

I got a little pink theater job in a play called Imperfect Love. Which led to a film called 13 Moons with the same writer. Which led to other roles. Which led to other roles. And I’ve worked as an actor ever since.

But I didn’t know that would happen. At 29, walking away from data processing, I was terrified.

Ten years in a place without heat. Six years at a job, I felt stuck in. Maybe I was afraid of change. Are you?

My parents didn’t have much money. But they struggled to send me to the best schools. And one of the most important things they did for me — and graduates, maybe you don’t want to hear this – is that once I graduated, I was on my own. Financially, it was my turn.

Parents are applauding, graduates are not. But this made me very hungry. Literally. I couldn’t be lazy. Now I’m totally lazy but back then, I couldn’t be.

And so at 29, in a very long last, I was in the company of the actors and writers and directors I’d start out that first year, that first day after school. I was. I am by their sides.

Raise the rest of your life to meet you. Don’t search for defining moments because they will never come. Well, the birth of your children, OK, of course, forget about it, that’s just six months. My life is forever changed, that’s most defining moment ever. But I’m talking about in the rest of your life and most importantly in your work. The moments that define you have already happened. And they will already happen again. And it passes so quickly.

So please bring each other along with you. Everyone you need is in this room. These are the shiny more important people.

Sorry, it sucks after graduation. It really does. I mean, I don’t know. At least it did for me. But that’s the only thing I know.

You just get a bit derailed. But soon something starts to happen. Trust me. A rhythm sets in. Just like it did after your first few days here. Just try not to wait until like me, you’re 29 before you find it. And if you are, that’s fine too. Some of us never find it. But you will, I promise you. You are already here. That’s such an enormous step all its own. You’ll find your rhythm, or continue the one you have already found.

I was walking downtown in Manhattan the other day. And I was approached by a group of very sweet young ladies. Easy. Actually they’re sort of running feverishly down the street after me. When they got to me breathless, it was really — they didn’t know what to say, or couldn’t form the words. But it came out that they were NYU freshmen. And they were majoring in musical theater. Of course, come on. They were like science majors. They are running after me.

“What musicals are you doing?” I inquired.

“Well,” one of them said, looking down at her shoes, “we aren’t allowed to be in plays in our freshman year”.

Now they were paying a very high tuition to not do what they love doing.

I think I said, “Well, hang in there”. What I should have said was, “Don’t wait until they tell you you are ready. Get in there”. Sing or quickly transfer to Bennington.

When I went to school here, if a freshman wanted to write direct and star in her own musical, the lights would already be hung for her.

Now I tell the story, because the world might say you are not allowed to yet. I waited a long time out in the world before I gave myself permission to fail. Please, don’t even bother asking, don’t bother telling the world you are ready. Show it. Do it.

What did Beckett say? “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Bennington Class of 2012, the world is yours. Treat everyone kindly and light up the night.

Thank you so much for having me here.

This terrific little mash up in under 2 mins with Game of Thrones clips is pretty ace.

Will Ferrell: 'Trust your gut', USC - 2017

12 May 2017, Uinversity of Southern California, USA

We are SC We are [SC]. We are [SC]. We are [SC]. Thank you. Thank you.

It is such an honor to deliver this year’s commencement address to the University of Southern California’s graduating class of 2017.

I would like to say thank you, graduates, for that warm welcome. I would also like to apologize to all the parents who are sitting there, saying, ‘Will Ferrell? Why will Ferrell? I hate Will Ferrell. I hate him. I hate his movies. He’s gross. Although he’s much better-looking in person. Has he lost weight?’

By the way, that discussion is happening out there right now.

Today I have also received an honorary doctorate, for which I would like to give my thanks to President Max Nikias. I would also like to recognize my esteemed fellow honorary doctorates, Suzanne Dworak-Peck, a great humanitarian and visionary in the field of social work. Dr. Gary Michelson, whose innovation as one of the country’s leading orthopedic spinal surgeons has revolutionized this field. Mark Ridley Thomas, a pillar of local and state government for over 25 years. David Ho whose work in AIDS research led him to be TIME Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1996. And one of the great actors of our time, Academy-Award winning actress Dame Helen Mirren.

And then there’s me. Will Ferrell, whose achievements include running naked through the city of Montrose in Old School. Montrose in the house, alright. Running around in my underwear and racing helmet, thinking that I’m on fire as Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights. Running around in Elf tights eating gum off the ground and playing cowbell. I think my fellow doctorates would agree based on our achievements we are all on equal footing.

I want the university to know that I do not take this prestigious honor lightly. I’ve already instructed my wife and my children, from this point on, they have to address me as Dr. Ferrell. There will be no exceptions. Especially at our children’s various school functions and when opening Christmas presents. ‘Yay, we got the new Xbox, thank you Dad! I mean, Dr. Ferrell.’

I’ve been informed that I can now perform minimally invasive surgery at any time or any place, even if people don’t want it. In fact, I am legally obligated to perform minor surgery at the end of today’s ceremonies, or my doctor’s degree will be revoked. So if anyone has a sore tooth that needs to be removed or wants hernia surgery, please meet me at the “surgery center” – by “surgery center” I mean a windowless van I have parked over by the Coliseum.

The next time I’m flying and they ask if there’s a doctor on board, I can now confidently leap to my feet and scream, ‘I’m a doctor, what can I do? Yes, no problem, I can absolutely deliver that baby.’ Hopefully it will be on United Airlines, in which I will be immediately be subdued and dragged off the aircraft, which we all know will be recorded on someone’s iPhone and put on YouTube. You will hear me say, “Call Max Nikias, President of USC. He told me I’m a doctor.’ Rest assured, President Nikias, I will use my powers wisely.

Although this is my first commencement address I have delivered to an actual university, this is not my first commencement speech. The institutions to which I have spoken at previously include Bryman School of Nursing, DeVry Technical School, Debbie Dudeson School of Trucking, University of Phoenix, Hollywood DJ Academy and Trump University. I am still waiting to get paid from Trump University. In fact, it turns out I owe Trump University money for the honor to speak at Trump University.

You are the graduating class of 2017. And by every statistical analysis you are collectively considered the strongest class ever to graduate from this university. All of you have excelled in various courses of study. All of you, except for four students. And you know exactly who you are. If you would care to stand and reveal yourself right now, that would be great, those four students. There’s one. Two. Three, four, five, six, eight, more like 20. Very honest of you.

It is incredibly surreal, one might even say unbelievable, that I get to deliver this address to you. As a freshman in the fall of 1986, if you were to come up to me and say that in the year 2017 you, Will Ferrell, will be delivering the commencement address for USC, I would have hugged you with tears in my eyes.

I then would have asked this person from the future, ‘Does that mean I graduated?’

‘Yes, you did,’ says the person from the future.

‘What else can you tell me about the future?’

Future person turns to me and says, ‘I can tell you that you will become one of the most famous alumni in this university, mentioned in the same breath as John Wayne, Neil Armstrong and Rob Kardashian. You will be referenced in rap songs from Kanye West, to Little Wayne to Drake. Nas will say, ‘Get me real bonkers like Will Ferrell on cat tranquilizer.’’

‘Is that it?’ I would ask.

‘Yes, that sums it up. Except one other thing – in the future there will be something called Shake Shack. It will start in New York and then come to LA and people will wait hours for a milkshake that is definitely good but not that good that you should wait two hours.’

So yes, if I had heard all of that I would have been incredulous at best. But it turns out I did graduate in 1990 with a degree in Sports Information. Yes. You heard me, Sports Information. A program so difficult, so arduous, that they discontinued the major eight years after I left. Those of us with Sports Information degrees are an elite group. We are like the Navy Seals of USC graduates. There are very few of us and there was a high dropout rate.

So I graduate and I immediately get a job right out of college working for ESPN, right? Wrong. No, I moved right back home. Back home to the mean streets of Irvine, California. Yes. Irvine always gets that response. Pretty great success story, right? Yeah, I moved back home for a solid two years, I might add. And I was lucky, actually. Lucky that I had a very supportive and understanding mother, who is sitting out there in the crowd, who let me move back home. And she recognized that while I had an interest in pursuing sportscasting, my gut was telling me that I really wanted to pursue something else. And that something else was comedy.

For you see, the seeds for this journey were planted right here on this campus. This campus was a theater or testing lab if you will. I was always trying to make my friends laugh whenever I could find a moment. I had a work-study job at the humanities audiovisual department that would allow me to take off from time to time. By allow me, I mean I would just leave and they didn’t notice. So I would literally leave my job if I knew friends were attending class close by and crash a lecture while in character. My good buddy Emil, who’s also here today – Emil, in the house – Emil told me one day that I should crash his Thematic Options literature class one day. So I cobbled together a janitor’s outfit complete with work gloves, safety goggles, a dangling lit cigarette, and a bucket full of cleaning supplies. And then I proceeded to walk into the class, interrupting the lecture, informing the professor that I’d just been sent from Physical Plant to clean up a student’s vomit. True story.

What Emil neglected to tell me was that the professor of his class was Ronald Gottesman, a professor who co-edited the Norton Anthology of American literature. Needless to say a big-time guy. A month after visiting my friend’s class as a janitor, I was walking through the campus when someone grabbed me by the shoulder and it was Ron Gottesman. I thought for sure he was going to tell me to never do that again. Instead what he told me was that he loved my barging in on his class and that he thought it was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen and would I please do it again? So on invitation from Professor Gottesman I would barge in on his lecture class from time to time as the guy from Physical Plant coming by to check on things, and the professor would joyfully play along.

One time I got my hands on a power drill and I just stood outside the classroom door operating the drill for a good minute. Unbeknownst to me, Professor Gottesman was wondering aloud to his class, 'I wonder if we’re about to get a visit from our Physical Plant guy?' I then walked in as if on cue and the whole class erupted in laughter. After leaving, Professor Gottesman then weaved the surprise visit into his lecture on Walt Whitman and the Leaves of Grass. Moments like these encouraged me to think maybe I was funny to whole groups of people who didn’t know me, and this wonderful professor had no idea how his encouragement of me — to come and interrupt his class no less — was enough to give myself permission to be silly and weird.

My senior year I would discover a comedy and improv troupe called the Groundlings located on Melrose Avenue. This was the theater company and school that gave the starts to Laraine Newman, Phil Hartman, John Lovitz, Pee Wee Herman, Conan O’Brien, Lisa Kudrow to name a few. Later it would become my home where I would meet the likes of Chris Kattan, Cheri O’Teri, Ana Gasteyer, Chris Parnell, Maya Rudolph, Will Forte and Kristin Wiig. I went to one of their shows during the spring semester of my senior year and in fact got pulled up onstage during an audience participation sketch. I was so afraid and awestruck at what the actors were doing that I didn’t utter a word. And even in this moment of abject fear and total failure I found it to be thrilling to be on that stage. I then knew I wanted to be a comedic actor.

So starting in the fall of 1991, for the next three and a half years I was taking classes and performing in various shows at the Groundlings and around Los Angeles. I was even trying my hand at stand-up comedy. Not great stand-up, mind you, but enough material to get myself up in front of strangers. I would work the phones to invite all my SC friends to places like Nino’s Italian Restaurant in Long Beach, the San Juan Depot in San Juan, Capistrano, and the Cannery in Newport Beach. And those members of my Trojan family would always show up. My stand-up act was based mostly on material derived from watching old episodes of Star Trek. My opening joke was to sing the opening theme to Star Trek. [Sings]

Thank you. Not even funny, just weird. But I didn’t care, I was just trying to throw as many darts at the dart board, hoping that one would eventually stick. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t extremely confident that I would succeed during this time period, and after moving back to LA there were many a night where in my LA apartment, I would sit down to a meal of spaghetti topped with mustard, with only $20 in my checking account and I would think to myself, ‘Oh well I can always be a substitute schoolteacher.’ And yes, I was afraid. You’re never not afraid. I’m still afraid. I was afraid to write this speech. And now, I’m just realizing how many people are watching me right now, and it’s scary. Can you please look away while I deliver the rest of the speech?

But my fear of failure never approached in magnitude my fear of what if. What if I never tried at all?

By the spring of 1995 producers from Saturday Night Live had come to see the current show at the Groundlings. After two harrowing auditions and two meetings with executive producer Lorne Michaels, which all took place over the course of six weeks, I got the word I was hired to the cast of Saturday Night Live for the ‘95-‘96 season.

I couldn’t believe it. And even though I went on to enjoy seven seasons on the show, it was rocky beginning for me. After my first show, one reviewer referred to me as ‘the most annoying newcomer of the new cast.’ Someone showed this to me and I promptly put it up on the wall in my office, reminding myself that to some people I will be annoying. Some people will not think I’m funny, and that that’s okay. One woman wrote to me and said she hated my portrayal of George W. Bush. It was mean-spirited, not funny and besides you have a fat face. I wrote her back and I said, I appreciate your letter and she was entitled to her opinion, but that my job as a comedian especially on a show like Saturday Night Live was to hold up a mirror to our political leaders and engage from time to time in satirical reflection. As for my fat face, you are 100% right. I’m trying to work on that. Please don’t hesitate to write me again if you feel like I’ve lost some weight in my face.

The venerable television critic for the Washington Post Tom Shales came up to me during my last season of the show. He told me congratulations on my time at the show and then he apologized for things he had written about me in some of his early reviews of my work. I paused for a second before I spoke, and then I said, ‘How dare you, you son of a bitch?’ I could tell this startled him, and then I told him I was kidding, and that I’d never read any of his reviews. It was true, I hadn’t read his reviews. In fact I didn’t read any reviews because once again, I was too busy throwing darts at the dartboard, all the while facing my fears.

Even as I left SNL, none of the studios were willing to take a chance on me as a comedy star. It took us three years of shopping Anchorman around before anyone would make it. When I left SNL all I really had was a movie called Old School that wouldn’t be released for another year, and a sub-par script that needed a huge rewrite about a man raised by elves at the North Pole.

Even now I still lose out on parts that I want so desperately. My most painful example was losing the role of Queen Elizabeth in the film The Queen. Apparently it came down to two actors, myself and Helen Mirren. The rest is history. Dame Helen Mirren, you stole my Oscar!

Now one may look at me as having great success, which I have in the strictest sense of the word, and don’t get me wrong, I love what I do and I feel so fortunate to get to entertain people. But to me, my definition of success is my 16-and-a-half-year marriage to my beautiful and talented wife, Vivica. Success are my three amazing sons, Magnus, 13, Matthias, 10 and Axel age 7. Right there, stand up guys, take a bow, there you go.

Success to me is my involvement in the charity Cancer for College, which gives college scholarships to cancer survivors, started by my great friend and SC alum Craig Pollard, a two-time cancer survivor himself, who thought of the charity while we were fraternity brothers at the Delt house, up on West Adams. Craig was also one of the members of my Trojan family sitting front-and-center at my bad stand-up comedy shows, cheering me on.

No matter how cliché it may sound you will never truly be successful until you learn to give beyond yourself. Empathy and kindness are the true signs of emotional intelligence, and that’s what Viv and I try to teach our boys. Hey Matthias, get your hands of Axel right now! Stop it. I can see you. Okay? Dr. Ferrell’s watching you.

To those of you graduates sitting out there who have a pretty good idea of what you’d like to do with your life, congratulations. For many of you who maybe don’t have it all figured out, it’s okay. That’s the same chair that I sat in. Enjoy the process of your search without succumbing to the pressure of the result. Trust your gut, keep throwing darts at the dartboard. Don’t listen to the critics and you will figure it out.

Class of 2017, I just want you to know you will never be alone on whatever path you may choose. If you do have a moment where you feel a little down just think of the support you have from this great Trojan family and imagine me, literally picture my face, singing this song gently into your ear: If I should stay, I would only be in your way. So I’ll go, but I know, I’ll think of you every step of the way. And I will always love you, will always love you, will always love you, Class of 2017. And I will always love you.

Thank you, fight on!

Ursula Le Guin: 'Success is somebody else’s failure', Mills College - 1983

May 1983, Mills College, Oakland, California, USA

I want to thank the Mills College Class of ’83 for offering me a rare chance: to speak aloud in public in the language of women.

I know there are men graduating, and I don’t mean to exclude them, far from it. There is a Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, “If you don’t understand Greek, please signify by nodding.” Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be. That’s why we are all wearing these twelfth-century dresses that look so great on men and make women look either like a mushroom or a pregnant stork. Intellectual tradition is male. Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language. The words are all words of power. You’ve come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough. You can’t even get there by selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours.

Maybe we’ve had enough words of power and talk about the battle of life. Maybe we need some words of weakness. Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your husband to and keep our country strong and be a success in everything - instead of talking about power, what if I talked like a woman right here in public? It won’t sound right. It’s going to sound terrible. What if I said what I hope for you is first, if — only if — you want kids, I hope you have them. Not hordes of them. A couple, enough. I hope they’re beautiful. I hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and work you like doing. Well, is that what you went to college for? Is that all? What about success?

Success is somebody else’s failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don’t even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure.

Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you’re weak where you thought yourself strong. You’ll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself — as I know you already have — in dark places, alone, and afraid.

What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.

Well, we’re already foreigners. Women as women are largely excluded from, alien to, the self-declared male norms of this society, where human beings are called Man, the only respectable god is male, the only direction is up. So that’s their country; let’s explore our own. I’m not talking about sex; that’s a whole other universe, where every man and woman is on their own. I’m talking about society, the so-called man’s world of institutionalized competition, aggression, violence, authority, and power. If we want to live as women, some separatism is forced upon us: Mills College is a wise embodiment of that separatism. The war-games world wasn’t made by us or for us; we can’t even breathe the air there without masks. And if you put the mask on you’ll have a hard time getting it off. So how about going on doing things our own way, as to some extent you did here at Mills? Not for men and the male power hierarchy — that’s their game. Not against men, either — that’s still playing by their rules. But with any men who are with us: that’s our game. Why should a free woman with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him? Why should she live her life on his terms?

Machoman is afraid of our terms, which are not all rational, positive, competitive, etc. And so he has taught us to despise and deny them. In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean — the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can’t play doctor, only nurse, can’t be warriors, only civilians, can’t be chiefs, only indians. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers’ tales about it, we haven’t got there yet. We’re never going to get there by imitating Machoman. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country.

So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives. That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own. That you will do your work there, whatever you’re good at, art or science or tech or running a company or sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that it’s second-class work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they’re going to give you equal pay for equal time. I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.

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.

Sheryl Sandberg: 'It turns out that counting your blessings can actually increase your blessings', Berkeley, 2016

14 May 2016, University of Berkeley, San Francisco, California, USA

Thank you, Marie. And thank you esteemed members of the faculty, proud parents, devoted friends, squirming siblings. Congratulations to all of you...and especially to the magnificent Berkeley graduating class of 2016!

It is a privilege to be here at Berkeley , which has produced so many Nobel Prize winners, Turing Award winners, astronauts, members of C ongress , Olympic gold medalists.... and that’s just the women! Berkeley has always been ahead of the times. In the 1960s, you led the Free Speech Movement. Back in those days, people used to say that with all the long hair, how do we even tell the boys from the girls? We now know the answer: manbuns.

Early on, Berkeley opened its doors to the entire population. When this campus opened i n 1873 , the class included 167 men and 22 2 women. It took my alma mater another ninety years to award a single degree to a single woman . One of the women who came here in search of opportunity was Rosalind Nuss . Roz grew up scrubbing floors in the Brooklyn boardinghouse where she lived . She was pulled out of high school by her parents to help support their family. One of her teachers insisted that her parents put her back in to school — and in 1937, she sat where you are sitting today an d received a Berkeley degree. Roz was my grandmother . She was a huge inspiration to me and I’m so grateful that Berkeley recognized her potential.

I want to take a moment to offer a special congratulations to the many here today who are the first generation in their families to graduate from college . What a remarkable achievement.

Today is a day of celebration. A day to celebrate all the hard work that got you to this moment. Today is a day of thanks. A day to thank those who helped you get here — nurtured you, taught you, cheered you on , and dried your tears. Or at least the ones who didn’t draw on you with a Sharpie when you fell asleep at a party.

Today is a day of reflection. Because today marks the end of one era of your life and the beginning of something new. A commencement address is meant to be a dance between youth and wisdom. You have the youth . Someone comes in to be the voice of wisdom — that’s supposed to be me.

I stand up here and tell you all the things I have learned in life , you throw your cap in the air , you let your 2 family take a million photos – don’t forget to post them on Instagram — and everyone goes home happy.

Today will be a bit different. We will still do the caps and you still have to do the photos . But I am not here to tell you all the things I’ve learned in life.

Today I will try to tell you what I learned in death. I have never spoken publicly about this before . It’s hard. B ut I will do my very best not to blow my nose on this beautiful Berkeley robe.

One year and thirteen days ago , I lost my husband , Dave . His death was sudden and unexpected . We were at a friend’s fiftieth birthday party in Mexico. I took a nap. Dave went to work out. What followed was the unthinkable — walking into a gym to find him lying on the floor . Flying home to tell my children that their father was gone . Watching his casket being lowered into the ground. For many months afterward, and at many times since , I was swallowed up in the deep fog of grief — what I think of as the void — an emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even to breathe.

Dave’s death changed me in very profound ways. I learned about the depths of sadness and the brutality of loss. But I also learned that when life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface , and breathe again. I learned that in the face of the void — or in the face of any challenge — you can choose joy and meaning.

I’m sharing this with you in the hopes that today, as you take the next step in your life, you can learn the lessons that I only learned in death. Lessons about hope, strength, and the light within us that will not be extinguished.

Everyone who has made it through Cal has already experienced some disappointment. You wanted an A but you got a B. O K , let’s be honest — you got an A -­- but you ’ re still mad. You applied for an internship at Facebook, but you only got one from Google. She was the love of your life... but then she swiped left. Game of Thrones the show has diverged way too much from the books — and you bothered to read all four thousand three hundred and fifty -­- two pages .

You will almost certainly face more and deeper adversity . There’s loss of opportunity: the job that doesn’t work out, the illness or accident that changes everything in an instant . There’s loss of dignity : the sharp sting of prejudice when it happens . There’s loss of love : the broken relationships that can ’t be fixed . And sometimes there’s loss of life itself. Some of you have already experienced the kind of tragedy and hardship that leave an indelible mark.

Last year, Radhika , the winner of the University Medal , spoke so beautifully about the sudden loss of her mother. The question is not if some of these things will happen to you. They will. oday I want to talk about what happens next . A bout the things you can do to overcome adversity , no matter what form it takes or when it hits you .

The easy days ahead of you will be easy. It is the hard days — the times that challenge you to your very core — that will determine who you are. You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive .

A few weeks after Dave died, I was talking to my friend Phil about a father -­- son activity that Dave was not here to do. We came up with a plan to fill in for Dave . I cried to him , “ But I want Dave.” Phil put his arm around me and said, “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.”

We all at some point live some form of option B. The question is: What do we do then? As a representative of Silicon Valley, I’m pleased to tell you there is data to learn from. After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that there are three P ’ s — personalization, pervasiveness , and permanence — that are critical to how we bounce back from hardship .

The seeds of resilience are planted in the way we process the negative events in our lives . The first P is personalization — the belief that we are at fault. This is different from taking responsibility , which you should always do. This is the lesson that not everything that happens to us happens because of us. When Dave died, I had a very common reaction, which was to blame myself. He died in seconds from a cardiac arrhythmia . I poured over his medical records asking what I could have — or should have — done . It wasn’t until I learned about the three P ’ s that I accepted that I could not have prevented his death. His doctors had not identified his coronary artery disease . I was an economics major; how could I have ?

Studies show that getting past personalization can actually make you stronger. Teachers who knew they could do better after students failed adjust ed their methods and saw future classes go on to excel . College swimmers who underperformed but believed they were capable of swimming faster did . Not taking failures personally allows us to recover — and even to thrive.

The second P is pervasiveness — the belief that an event will affect all areas of your life . You know that song “Everything is awesome?” This is the flip : “ Everything is awful. ” There’s no place to run or hide from the all -­- consuming sadness . The child psychologists I spoke to encouraged me to get my kids back to their routine as soon as possible .

So ten days after Dave died, they went back to school and I went back to work. I remember sitting in my first Facebook meeting in a deep, deep haze. All I could think was, “What is everyone talking about and how could this possibly matter? ”But then I got drawn into the discussion and for a second — a brief split second — I forgot about death .

That brief second helped me see that there were other things in my life that were not awful . My children and I were healthy. My friends and family were so loving and they carried us — quite literally at times. The loss of a partner often has severe negative financial consequences, especially for women. So many single mothers — and fathers — struggle to make ends meet or have jobs that don’t allow them the time they need to care for their children. I had financial security, the ability to take the time off I needed, and a job that I did not just believe in, but where it’s actually OK to spend all day on Facebook. Gradually , my children started sleeping through the night, crying less, playing more.

The third P is permanence — the belief that the sorrow will last forever. For months, no matter what I did, it felt like the crushing grief would always be there . We often project our current feelings out indefinitely — and experience what I think of as the second derivative of those feelings. We feel anxious — and then we feel anxious that we ’re anxious. We feel sad — and then we feel sad that we’re sad. Instead, we should accept our feelings — but recognize that they will not last forever.

My rabbi told me that time would heal but for now I should “lean in to the suck . ” It was good advice , but not really what I meant by “lean i n . ” None of you need me to explain the fourth P...which is, of course, pizza from Cheese Board.

But I wish I had known about the three P ’ s when I was your age . There were so many times these lessons would have helped . Day one of my first job out of college, my boss found out that I didn’t know how to enter data into Lotus 1 -­- 2 -­- 3. That’s a spreadsheet — ask your parents .

His mouth dropped open and he said, ‘I can’t believe you got this job without knowing that” — and then walked out of the room. I went home convinced that I was going to be fired. I thought I was terrible at everything... but it turns out I was only terrible at spreadsheets.

Under standing pervasiveness would have saved me a lot of anxiety that week. I wish I had known about permanence when I broke up with boyfriends . It would’ve been a comfort to know that feeling was not going to last forever, and if I was being honest with myself... neither were any of those relationships.

And I wish I had understood personalization when boyfriends broke up with me. Sometimes it’s not you — it really is them. I mean , that dude never showered. And all three P’s ganged up on me in my twenties after my first marriage ended in divorce . I thought at the time that no matter what I accomplished, I was a massive failure .

The three P ’ s are common emotional reaction s to so many things that happen to us — in our careers , our personal lives , and our relationships. You’re probably feeling one of them right 5 now about something in your life . But if you can recognize you are falling into these trap s , you can catch yourself. Just as our bodies have a physiological immune system, our brains have a psychological immune system — and there are steps you can take to help kick it into gear.

One day my friend Adam Grant, a psychologist, suggested that I think about how much worse things could be. This was completely counterintuitive; it seemed like the way to recover was to try to find positive thoughts.

“Worse?” I said. “Are you kidding me? How could things be worse?” His answer cut straight through me: “Dave could have had that same cardiac arrhythmia while he was driving your children.” Wow. The moment he said it, I was overwhelmingly grateful that the rest of my family was alive and health y. That gratitude overtook some of the grief .

Finding gratitude and appreciation is key to resilience . People who take the time to list things they are grateful for are happier and healthier . It turns out that counting your blessings can actually increase your blessings .

My New Year’s resolution this year is to write down three moments of joy before I go to bed each night. This simple practice has changed my life. Because no matter what happens each day, I go to sleep thinking of something cheerful . Try it . Start tonight when you have so many fun moments to list — although maybe do it before you hit Ki p’ s and can still remember what they are .

Last month , eleven days before the anniversary of Dave’s death, I broke down crying to a friend of mine. We were sitting — of all places — on a bathroom floor. I said: “ Eleven days. One year ago, he had eleven days left. And we had no idea.” We looked at each other through tears, and asked how we would live if we knew we had eleven days left.

As you graduate, can you ask yourselves to live as if you had eleven days left? I don’t mean blow everything off and party all the time — although tonight is an exception . I mean live with the understanding of how precious every single day would be . How precious every day actually is.

A few years ago, my mom had to have her hip replaced. When she was younger , she always walked without pain . But as her hip disintegrated, each step became painful. Now, even years after her operation , she is grateful for every step she takes without pain — something that never would have occurred to her before.

As I stand here today, a year after the worst day of my life, two things are true. I have a huge reservoir of sadness that is with me always — right here where I can touch it . I never knew I could cry so often — or so much. But I am also aware that I am walking without pain. For the first time, I am grateful for each breath in and out — grateful for the gift of life itself.

I used to celebrate my birthday every five years and friends ’ birthdays sometimes . Now I celebrate always .I used to go to sleep worrying about all the things I messed up that day — and trust me that list was often quite long. Now I try really hard to focus on each day’s moments of joy .

It is the greatest irony of my life that losing my husband helped me find deeper gratitude — gratitude for the kindness of my friends , the love of my family, the laughter of my children.

My hope for you is that you can find that gratitude — not just on the good days, like today, but on the hard ones, when you will really need it . There are so many moments of joy ahead of you. That trip you always wanted to take. A first kiss with someone you really like. The day you get a job doing something you truly believe in. Beating Stanford . (Go Bears ! ) All of these things will happen to you . Enjoy each and every one . I hope that you live your life — each precious day of it — with joy and meaning. I hope that you walk without pain — and that you are grateful for each step . An d when the challenges come , I hope you remember that anchored deep with in you is the ability to learn and grow.

You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a muscle, you can build it up, draw on it when you need it. In that process you will figure out who you really are — and you just might become the very best version of yourself.

Class of 2016, as you leave Berkeley, build resilience . Build resilience in yourselves. When tragedy or disappointment strike , know that you have the ability to get through absolutely anything . I promise you do.

As the saying goes, we are more vulnerable than we ever thought, but we are stronger than we ever imagined. Build resilient organizations . If anyone can do it , you can , because Berkeley is filled with people who want to make the world a better place. Never stop working to do so — whether it’s a boardroom that is not representative or a campus that ’ s not safe . Speak up, especially at institutions like this one , which you hold so dear . My favorite poster at work reads, “ Nothing at Facebook is someone else’s problem . ” When you see something that ’ s broken, go fix it. Build resilient communities .

We find our humanity — our will to live and our ability to love — in our connections to one another . Be there for your family and friends. And I mean in person. Not just in a message with a heart emoji . Lift each other up, help each other kick the shit out of option B — and celebrate each and every moment of joy. You have the whole world in front of you . I can’t wait to see what you do with it. Congratulations, and Go Bears!

Steven Spielberg: 'Listen to that voice that tells you what you could do', Harvard University - 2016

26 May 2016, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Thank you, thank you, President Faust, and Paul Choi, thank you so much.

It’s an honor and a thrill to address this group of distinguished alumni and supportive friends and kvelling parents. We’ve all gathered to share in the joy of this day, so please join me in congratulating Harvard’s Class of 2016.

I can remember my own college graduation, which is easy, since it was only 14 years ago. How many of you took 37 years to graduate? Because, like most of you, I began college in my teens, but sophomore year, I was offered my dream job at Universal Studios, so I dropped out. I told my parents if my movie career didn’t go well, I’d re-enroll.

It went all right.

But eventually, I returned for one big reason. Most people go to college for an education, and some go for their parents, but I went for my kids. I’m the father of seven, and I kept insisting on the importance of going to college, but I hadn’t walked the walk. So, in my fifties, I re-enrolled at Cal State -- Long Beach, and I earned my degree.

I just have to add: It helped that they gave me course credit in paleontology for the work I did on Jurassic Park. That’s three units for Jurassic Park, thank you.

Well I left college because I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and some of you know, too -- but some of you don’t. Or maybe you thought you knew but are now questioning that choice. Maybe you’re sitting there trying to figure out how to tell your parents that you want to be a doctor and not a comedy writer.

Well, what you choose to do next is what we call in the movies the ‘character-defining moment.’ Now, these are moments you’re very familiar with, like in the last Star Wars: The Force Awakens, when Rey realizes the force is with her. Or Indiana Jones choosing mission over fear by jumping over a pile of snakes.

Now in a two-hour movie, you get a handful of character-defining moments, but in real life, you face them every day. Life is one strong, long string of character-defining moments. And I was lucky that at 18 I knew what I exactly wanted to do. But I didn’t know who I was. How could I? And how could any of us? Because for the first 25 years of our lives, we are trained to listen to voices that are not our own. Parents and professors fill our heads with wisdom and information, and then employers and mentors take their place and explain how this world really works.

And usually these voices of authority make sense, but sometimes, doubt starts to creep into our heads and into our hearts. And even when we think, ‘that’s not quite how I see the world,’ it’s kind of easier to just to nod in agreement and go along, and for a while, I let that going along define my character. Because I was repressing my own point of view, because like in that Nilsson song, ‘Everybody was talkin’ at me, so I couldn’t hear the echoes of my mind.’

And at first, the internal voice I needed to listen to was hardly audible, and it was hardly noticeable -- kind of like me in high school. But then I started paying more attention, and my intuition kicked in.

And I want to be clear that your intuition is different from your conscience. They work in tandem, but here’s the distinction: Your conscience shouts, ‘here’s what you should do,’ while your intuition whispers, ‘here’s what you could do.’ Listen to that voice that tells you what you could do. Nothing will define your character more than that.

Because once I turned to my intuition, and I tuned into it, certain projects began to pull me into them, and others, I turned away from.

And up until the 1980s, my movies were mostly, I guess what you could call ‘escapist.’ And I don’t dismiss any of these movies -- not even 1941. Not even that one. And many of these early films reflected the values that I cared deeply about, and I still do. But I was in a celluloid bubble, because I’d cut my education short, my worldview was limited to what I could dream up in my head, not what the world could teach me.

But then I directed The Color Purple. And this one film opened my eyes to experiences that I never could have imagined, and yet were all too real. This story was filled with deep pain and deeper truths, like when Shug Avery says, ‘Everything wants to be loved.’ My gut, which was my intuition, told me that more people needed to meet these characters and experience these truths. And while making that film, I realized that a movie could also be a mission.

I hope all of you find that sense of mission. Don’t turn away from what’s painful. Examine it. Challenge it.

My job is to create a world that lasts two hours. Your job is to create a world that lasts forever. You are the future innovators, motivators, leaders and caretakers.

And the way you create a better future is by studying the past. Jurassic Park writer Michael Crichton, who graduated from both this college and this medical school, liked to quote a favorite professor of his who said that if you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree. So history majors: Good choice, you’re in great shape...Not in the job market, but culturally.

The rest of us have to make a little effort. Social media that we’re inundated and swarmed with is about the here and now. But I’ve been fighting and fighting inside my own family to get all my kids to look behind them, to look at what already has happened. Because to understand who they are is to understand who were were, and who their grandparents were, and then, what this country was like when they emigrated here. We are a nation of immigrants -- at least for now.

So to me, this means we all have to tell our own stories. We have so many stories to tell. Talk to your parents and your grandparents, if you can, and ask them about their stories. And I promise you, like I have promised my kids, you will not be bored.

And that’s why I so often make movies based on real-life events. I look to history not to be didactic, ‘cause that’s just a bonus, but I look because the past is filled with the greatest stories that have ever been told. Heroes and villains are not literary constructs, but they’re at the heart of all history.

And again, this is why it’s so important to listen to your internal whisper. It’s the same one that compelled Abraham Lincoln and Oskar Schindler to make the correct moral choices. In your defining moments, do not let your morals be swayed by convenience or expediency. Sticking to your character requires a lot of courage. And to be courageous, you’re going to need a lot of support.

And if you’re lucky, you have parents like mine. I consider my mom my lucky charm. And when I was 12 years old, my father handed me a movie camera, the tool that allowed me to make sense of this world. And I am so grateful to him for that. And I am grateful that he’s here at Harvard, sitting right down there.

My dad is 99 years old, which means he’s only one year younger than Widener Library. But unlike Widener, he’s had zero cosmetic work. And dad, there’s a lady behind you, also 99, and I’ll introduce you after this is over, okay?

But look, if your family’s not always available, there’s backup. Near the end of It’s a Wonderful Life -- you remember that movie, It’s a Wonderful Life? Clarence the Angel inscribes a book with this: “No man is a failure who has friends.” And I hope you hang on to the friendships you’ve made here at Harvard. And among your friends, I hope you find someone you want to share your life with. I imagine some of you in this yard may be a tad cynical, but I want to be unapologetically sentimental. I spoke about the importance of intuition and how there’s no greater voice to follow. That is, until you meet the love of your life. And this is what happened when I met and married Kate, and that became the greatest character-defining moment of my life.

Love, support, courage, intuition. All of these things are in your hero’s quiver, but still, a hero needs one more thing: A hero needs a villain to vanquish. And you’re all in luck. This world is full of monsters. And there’s racism, homophobia, ethnic hatred, class hatred, there’s political hatred, and there’s religious hatred.

As a kid, I was bullied -- for being Jewish. This was upsetting, but compared to what my parents and grandparents had faced, it felt tame. Because we truly believed that anti-Semitism was fading. And we were wrong. Over the last two years, nearly 20,000 Jews have left Europe to find higher ground. And earlier this year, I was at the Israeli embassy when President Obama stated the sad truth. He said: ‘We must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it.’

My own desire to confront that reality compelled me to start, in 1994, the Shoah Foundation. And since then, we’ve spoken to over 53,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses in 63 countries and taken all their video testimonies. And we’re now gathering testimonies from genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia and Nanking. Because we must never forget that the inconceivable doesn’t happen -- it happens frequently. Atrocities are happening right now. And so we wonder not just, ‘When will this hatred end?’ but, ‘How did it begin?’

Now, I don’t have to tell a crowd of Red Sox fans that we are wired for tribalism. But beyond rooting for the home team, tribalism has a much darker side. Instinctively and maybe even genetically, we divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ So the burning question must be: How do all of us together find the ‘we?’ How do we do that? There’s still so much work to be done, and sometimes I feel the work hasn’t even begun. And it’s not just anti-Semitism that’s surging -- Islamophobia’s on the rise, too. Because there’s no difference between anyone who is discriminated against, whether it’s the Muslims, or the Jews, or minorities on the border states, or the LGBT community -- it is all big one hate.

And to me, and, I think, to all of you, the only answer to more hate is more humanity. We gotta repair -- we have to replace fear with curiosity. ‘Us’ and ‘them’ -- we’ll find the ‘we’ by connecting with each other. And by believing that we’re members of the same tribe. And by feeling empathy for every soul -- even Yalies.

My son graduated from Yale, thank you …

But make sure this empathy isn’t just something that you feel. Make it something you act upon. That means vote. Peaceably protest. Speak up for those who can’t and speak up for those who may be shouting but aren’t being hard. Let your conscience shout as loud as it wants if you’re using it in the service of others.

And as an example of action in service of others, you need to look no further than this Hollywood-worthy backdrop of Memorial Church. Its south wall bears the names of Harvard alumni -- like President Faust has already mentioned -- students and faculty members, who gave their lives in World War II. All told, 697 souls, who once tread the ground where stand now, were lost. And at a service in this church in late 1945, Harvard President James Conant -- which President Faust also mentioned -- honored the brave and called upon the community to ‘reflect the radiance of their deeds.’

Seventy years later, this message still holds true. Because their sacrifice is not a debt that can be repaid in a single generation. It must be repaid with every generation. Just as we must never forget the atrocities, we must never forget those who fought for freedom. So as you leave this college and head out into the world, continue please to ‘reflect the radiance of their deeds,’ or as Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan would say, “Earn this.”

And please stay connected. Please never lose eye contact. This may not be a lesson you want to hear from a person who creates media, but we are spending more time looking down at our devices than we are looking in each other’s eyes. So, forgive me, but let’s start right now. Everyone here, please find someone’s eyes to look into. Students, and alumni and you too, President Faust, all of you, turn to someone you don’t know or don’t know very well. They may be standing behind you, or a couple of rows ahead. Just let your eyes meet. That’s it. That emotion you’re feeling is our shared humanity mixed in with a little social discomfort.

But, if you remember nothing else from today, I hope you remember this moment of human connection. And I hope you all had a lot of that over the past four years. Because today you start down the path of becoming the generation on which the next generation stands. And I’ve imagined many possible futures in my films, but you will determine the actual future. And I hope that it’s filled with justice and peace.

And finally, I wish you all a true, Hollywood-style happy ending. I hope you outrun the T. rex, catch the criminal and for your parents’ sake, maybe every now and then, just like E.T.: Go home. Thank you.

Elizabeth Warren: 'The most exciting parts of your life aren’t even on your radar screen', Suffolk University - 2016

22 May 2016, Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Thank you. Thank you. I am deeply honored to be here today, and I am deeply humbled by this award. I appreciate the invitation to join you here today. Thank you, President McKenna, thank you. I really am.

You know, I can’t think of a better place to be celebrating education than at Suffolk University, a school founded in 1906 for the best possible reason, a deep belief that, because higher education matters, it should be available not just for the wealthy few, but for everyone. Exactly right, Suffolk. Exactly right. One hundred and ten years ago, Gleason Archer decided that the legal profession shouldn’t be limited only to students who could afford to go to school full time. He dedicated the money, the energy and the passion to make an evening law school available to working students in Boston. Suffolk would grow in many ways that Mr. Archer could never have dreamed, becoming a world-class university and a cornerstone for the city of Boston. Now it is big and vibrant. But Suffolk has never strayed from its original vision of being an excellent school that sends smart, tough, capable, hardworking people out into the world to make a real difference. Congratulations to Suffolk. We share your success.

And now, for the graduates, this is your day. After years of hard work and perseverance, your long wait is almost over. You’ve done it. You can now proudly take a zillion selfies wearing a cardboard hat. Stylin’. But seriously, Class of 2016, congratulations. You did it. You did it.

Fabulous. And to the parents and grandparents, to the families and friends, to the teachers and advisors, to Talia Sanchez and to her big brother, Ricardo, who works for me and dared me to embarrass her at this graduation, for all of you, this is a pretty amazing day. Without you, this day would not have been possible, so congratulations to all of you. Congratulations.

Now, graduation speakers have a lot of important responsibilities, but the main one is to give advice, ideally based on personal experience and, if we all get lucky, the advice will not be a big thumping cliché. That is actually a high bar. And I just want you all to know I did my homework on this. You can always tell the professor. I did my homework, and I considered a lot of possibilities here. I started with don’t live your life based on what other people think. Excellent advice. But Suffolk University runs one of the best public opinion polls in the country, so it seemed off-message. By the way, President McKenna, how’s this speech polling so far? Higher or lower than Donald Trump’s unfavorable numbers with women?

O.K., O.K. Advice. Lots of people turn to Robert Frost, who spent much of his life in Massachusetts. Take the road less traveled. I always liked that advice. But Jerry Seinfeld once pointed out: Sometimes, the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. Hmm, good rebuttal. O.K., or how about: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Important lesson on being resilient. But when it comes to lemonade, could I really add anything to Beyoncé?

Now seriously, I know that graduation speakers are supposed to inspire, to offer good life advice, but I’ll be honest. My own journey here feels so unexpected—so full of mistakes and twists and turns. On the day of my graduation, I never imagined the most important things that were going to happen in my life. I never imagined I would be a law professor. I never imagined I would be a United States Senator. I never imagined I would be a blonde, but here I am. And I can tell you, it is life-changing to be a blonde. So my message to all the graduates this year is simple. Get ready because, even if you think you’ve got everything figured out, trust me, the most exciting parts of your life aren’t even on your radar screen.

From the time I was in second grade, I wanted to be a teacher, but that meant college. My family had no money for college, and besides—my mother didn’t think I should go to college. I should just find a nice man to marry and let him take care of me. That’s what she said. But I had a different plan. I was a high school debater, as was noted earlier. I got a full scholarship to college, and off I went. And I knew at that moment my path was set for life. And then I turned 19.

There were some details left out of the earlier story. I married the first boy I had ever dated who had parachuted back into my life, and in the blink of an eye, I took my mother’s advice. I said yes to the marriage proposal, gave up my scholarship, dropped out of school. I was really smart at 19. But the dream of being a teacher did not go away, so I found another school. I scraped together enough credits to graduate, and then I got the job of my dreams, teaching special-needs kids. And now I knew for sure that my path was set for life.

Except not exactly. Surprise, surprise, I was going to have a baby. And in those days, there were actually some pretty harsh rules about pregnant teachers. So good bye, beloved teaching job. I was at home with a little baby. I did all the usual stuff, and I watched a lot of television. And then I was inspired—all those lawyer shows. I figured, “How hard could that be?” Warren for the defense. So I decided to go to law school at a nearby public university, and then I was sure I was set on my path for life.

But surprise, surprise caught up with me again. I graduated from law school nine months pregnant. You will notice a pattern to this. That was at a time when employers were pretty iffy on the idea of a woman lawyer. And the idea of a pregnant, already the mother of a toddler woman lawyer was just plain old impossible. Nobody wanted me, and I mean that literally. Nobody would hire me.

But just as that plan went out the window, I got another call. Would I like to go back to teaching, this time teaching law? I started with night school, just like the original Suffolk Law, and I loved it. I truly loved it. In fact, I spent 30 years teaching at different schools about bankruptcy and contracts and finance law. I studied why working families were going broke and how big banks were raking in gigantic profits by cheating people. I wrote books and gave speeches and headed up commissions and did everything I could to try to get the law changed to help hardworking people. And I knew that this was the work I wanted to do forever. Now for sure I was set on my path for life.

And then, in 2008, a huge financial crash rocked this country. One day, truly out of the blue, I’m in my kitchen and the phone rings and it’s Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader of the Senate. And he calls and he says that Congress is putting together a panel about how the Treasury Department was handling the Wall Street bailout. And he asked if I’d come to Washington to try to bring some accountability to it. Now I was still a professor and I really had no idea why Senator Reid had called me and why he thought I was the right person for this job. But our country was in trouble.

I went to Washington, and I just did my best. The big problem at the heart of the crash was that Wall Street had made zillions of dollars in profits by ripping people off and there was no one with the power and the backbone to stop them. So I put together an idea for a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose only job would be to protect consumers from tricks and traps on credit cards and mortgages and student loans. Now, no surprise, the big banks and the credit cards hated this idea. Can we underline hated and put like little fiery things around it, little zaps coming out from it? They hated it. They spent more than a million dollars a day fighting against these financial reforms. They did that for over a year. And what did we have on our side? We didn’t have any money on our side. But we scrambled and we scratched and we fought back.

It was truly David taking on Goliath, 21st century style. But here’s the thing about it. We won, and that little Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is now the law. It is the law. Now, before you go home and say to yourself, “Good grief, I just clapped for a government agency at my graduation. Maybe graduating from college means I’m turning into a nerd.” Let me just point out to you that that little consumer agency has been up and running for nearly five years, and it has already forced the biggest financial institutions in this country to return more than $11 billion directly to the people they cheated. Now that’s government that works for the people. That’s what I like.

A few years later, my world turned upside down again. Running for office had not been on my bucket list, my shopping list or any other list. But there I was in 2012, busting my tail to be the first woman to be elected senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Now I know that’s all a long story and today it truly is all about you, but there is a point to that story. Actually, like most graduation speeches, there are three points to that story.

First, all the planning in the world can’t prepare you for the twists that are coming your way. You can’t predict it all. People will tell you to plan, to focus. They will tell you that if you want to succeed, you must stubbornly stay on your path no matter what. And they will be right. But they will also be wrong. So there’s my first point. I never planned to get married when I did, and I sure didn’t plan to get divorced. I never planned to become a lawyer or a law professor. No amount of focus when I was 20 would have envisioned me as a United States Senator standing on this stage. So there’s my first piece of advice for you. Don’t be so focused in your plans that you are unwilling to consider the unexpected.

My second piece of advice is that you have to figure out who you are. I grew up in a family that was barely hanging on to the ragged edge of the middle class. And that experience shaped who I am, not just on the surface, but deep down, down in my gut. It made me passionate about helping working families, families that were a lot like mine. Families whose kids may have all the potential in the world but don’t really have much of a chance to build a future. Families that have the system rigged against them. I figured out what I’m fighting for and no matter where I’ve gone and what I’ve done it has helped guide my life. And you have to do the same. You have to figure out who you are, and who you are isn’t about what job you have or what kind of car you drive. You have to think hard about what really matters to you.

What makes your heart flutter and your stomach clench? What makes you wake up ready to go, and what makes you grind your teeth? I’m not saying it’s easy. One of the hardest things to do in a world of Twitter and Facebook and Snapchat is to carve out time for yourself and not just the time you carve out following Selena Gomez on Instagram. I mean making it a priority to know yourself, to know what defines you, totally separate from what anybody else thinks. But here’s the thing: If you figure that out, nothing will be more valuable. Because knowing who you are is the compass that will help guide you to unexpected opportunity or when a setback blows your way. Knowing who you are is the centerboard that will help steady you when you’re afraid you may capsize.

And knowing who you are is also helpful for another reason, and this is my third piece of advice. You have to be willing to fight for what you believe in. You have to be willing to fight for what you want.

It is a tough world out there, and you’re going to encounter roadblocks and setbacks and even people who want you to fail. I couldn’t get a job when I graduated from law school. There were almost no women law professors when I started out. When I proposed a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, people told me I shouldn’t even try, that I should lower my sights.

And now that I’m in the Senate, I can tell you that Washington is full of people who say, “No, no, no,” and who are saying it in nastier and nastier and nastier ways. But knowing who you are will help you when it’s time to fight. Fight for the job you want, fight for the people who mean the most to you and fight for the kind of world you want to live in. It will help when people say that’s impossible or you can’t do that. Look, if you take the unexpected opportunities when they come up, if you know yourself, and if you fight for what you believe in, I can promise that you will live a life that is rich with meaning. You’ll be on the road less traveled. You won’t care what the polling says. And you’ll find that lemonade is terrific. And besides, if you don’t like drinking lemonade, you can always listen to Beyoncé.

It has been a great honor to share this celebration with you. Congratulations again on a job well done. Now get ready for a lifetime of unexpected adventures. Thank you.

Hank Azaria: 'All you can really count on at the end of the day are your own instincts', Tufts University - 2016

22 May 2016, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA

Thank you Mr. President. It’s great to be here. I wasn’t told I had to prepare anything, so I figured I’d just take questions for the next 15 minutes. Yes, you at the back, way down there.

No, no. I actually, uh … Although those of you who might remember me from my academic career here would know that that concept is not completely far-fetched. But I actually, look, I did prepare a speech today. Which, you know, I’m very excited, because this is the first time ever that I’ve been standing on the Tufts campus holding a writing assignment that I can actually say I completed on time. Yes, thank you.

So good morning and welcome, friends, family, faculty, most important, the graduating Class of 2016. Uh, yes. [Chuckles] Even though it’s interesting for me to call you the graduating Class of 2016. That is what you are, but you’re also individuals of course. Each one of you has a unique character, a unique back-story. If I were to play any one of you in a movie, which I admit is highly unlikely, but stranger things have happened. It’d be odd casting for me to be cast as a 21-year-old female graduating student, but I’m a character actor. I try not to limit myself creatively. But if I were to play any of you, it would take me hours, days, weeks to study each of you and learn your traits, your quirks, your likes, your dislikes, your hopes and dreams and fears.

So I was given the delightful and impossible task of standing up in front of all of you today and offering some words of wisdom that would somehow impact and affect each one of you as you move forward in your individual journey. Some truth to apply to about 1,300 bright, young, singular minds. So I wasn’t sure if that was possible. So like most Hollywood actors, I’ve decided just to talk about myself for the next 15 minutes. [Chuckles]

I was a pretty good student. [Laughs] I’m not kidding. They’ll be, they’ll be some points I’ll sneak in along the way. I was a pretty good student until 11th grade when a wonderful and horrible thing happened to me: I did a play. I was cast as King Arthur in Camelot, and I didn’t realize it at the time, but I thus lost all concentration for my studies. I desperately and passionately wanted to be an actor. And I actually booked a gig on my very first professional audition. It was a product called Brooklyn Gum. It was on Italian Television. And I thought, “Hey, this acting thing is easy. Why am I wasting my time on things like getting an education, when apparently I’m ready to go out there and become a professional right now?” Uh, P.S., I did not work again professionally for about seven years.

Of course my grades suffered. In fact, my transcript was so poor my senior year of high school that I did not get into any of the schools I applied to. I was wait-listed here at Tufts and at Brown and at Georgetown. Now, I think it would be safe to categorize my mother’s reaction to this as a “total freak-out.” She told me through gritted teeth that I was going to “get on a plane” … This is the way my mother talks, by the way, when she’s angry. “Appear at each one of these schools in person and make some kind of impassioned plea to get accepted into college.”

So still consumed with my love of acting, I looked at these interviews this way, I figured, well I want to make it as an actor, so I need to be convincing. So I thought of this as my first acting job. I really did. I told each school the same thing, that it’s always been my dream to attend “insert name of university here.” [Chuckles] And that I had a, I had a really rough personal time senior year, I broke both my elbows in a basketball accident, which was true, to be fair. [Chuckles] And that I had a lot of difficulty accomplishing my academic tasks. This did not work at all at Georgetown. The Brown guy was considering it, but the Tufts lady bought it hook, line, and sinker. [Chuckles] Which is why I’m standing before you today and not at Brown or at Georgetown.

Truth, the truth was though that I, I still did not see why I needed to attend school to follow my dream. Now, when I got here, I discovered that I loved acting and the theater more than I even knew. I spent almost all my time at the Arena Theater, either involved in productions or drama classes. Yes. [Laughs] Drama students. Just take it easy, guys. But just hanging out with the kindred spirits I met here at Tufts over in the theater. Now, I would love to report that once I found my niche, all of the sudden that was reflected in my grades and my transcript took an acadermic, academic … Or acadermic [Chuckles]… turn for the better.

But I’m here to tell you a different story. Neither one of those things happened. In actuality, I found myself here not really caring about whether I was given an A or an F or a pass or a fail. I studied what interested me, and I enjoyed it without really worrying too much if I was going to be rewarded for my efforts or not. I really was only concerned with what I was personally getting out of it.

Okay, so at this point, you might be asking yourself, “Where is he going with all this?” You might even be upset that I didn’t give you this speech on your first day here so that you could’ve saved yourself from a lifetime of being buried in student debt. Just bear with me. So there I was. I’m very grateful to find myself spiritually, mentally, and physically in an incredible institution of learning that offered me opportunities every day to follow my passions and interests. You know, when I actually went to class, that is.

It would also be nice to report that at this juncture, I was at the very least, able to complete my 4-year college curriculum and call myself a Tufts graduate. Again, not the case for me. When I marched with my graduating class in the spring of ’85, I received an empty box instead of a diploma. I was a few credits shy. Thank you, yes. Ever kind and compassionate, the administration here was good enough to let me participate in commencement, thus saving my mother yet another in what had become a series of freak-outs during my college career.

So I went to New York not long after that. I almost immediately, immediately got fired from a bartending job. Apparently out in the real world, they do not appreciate it if you don’t really care about how well you’re accomplishing your given tasks. And I, I moved to LA. Now the good news out there was I was lucky enough to audition for a bunch of movies and TV shows my first year. The bad news is that I booked exactly none of them.

So I sat down with my mother. This time I was the one freaking out, whining about the things that young, unemployed actors whine about and looking for some maternal encouragement. My mom listened to me attentively and then rather matter-of-factly stated, “Well, I just … ” This is my mom talking again. “I just don’t think anything is going to happen for you in your life until you get that degree.” And I said, “Mom, I think you’ve just placed a mother’s curse on my head, and I would like you to remove it.” To which she replied, “No.” And she walked out of the kitchen.

So with the help of Doc Collins, Sherwood Collins, who was then head of the drama department here, I coordinated the last two or three classes I would need to complete my drama major and I had the credits transferred. And that’s why I’m officially the Class of Tufts ’87. One of the upsides of which being that I can believably claim to be two years younger than I actually am, which is very handy for an actor in Hollywood.

Okay, so what is the point of all this? Um, first of all, and as much as it pains me to say this and please don’t tell her I said this, but my mom was right. Maybe not for the reasons that she thought. But completing my drama major two years late made me realize that even though I had taken my own weird and atypical and borderline bizarre path, I could follow that road and get to the same place that the world wanted me to get to, even if it … Even if I didn’t do it in a quote-on-quote “conventional” fashion. I could now put a diploma in that empty box. I don’t think it registered on me at the time, but the notion that I could do things my way, even if that was, uh, a way that no one had ever done before or would ever care to do again, it was valid and unique and ultimately viable.

I’ve always been a singular, strong-minded person, which is a nice way of saying that I’m very stubborn. And I don’t know about Brown or Georgetown, but I know that Tufts accepted me as the willful person that I was and allowed me to be that headstrong fellow for four years without ever robbing me of my individuality.

Now, and as an actor, and I believe in any profession, all you can really count on at the end of the day are your own instincts. What is right for somebody else, even if that somebody else is most of society, may not be right for you. Case in point, and this is one of my favorite Hollywood stories. I was talking to Dianne Wiest, who’s a wonderful actress. We were on the set of The Birdcage, where I played the Guatemalan house-boy, Agador Spartacus. [Character voice] Thank you. Okay, take it easy. You’re going to hear some advice from Agador later, so just relax.

Dianne had just won an Oscar for her work in Woody Allen’s film Bullets Over Broadway. And I asked her about her experience on that movie, and she said it was very nerve-wracking for her because about a week into shooting the movie, she asked, uh, Woody, “How’s it all looking?” And Woody Allen said [clears throat], “It’s, you know, it’s not good. Not good.” So she said, “You mean the whole film or just my performance?” He said, “No, just you, darling. Your character’s not … It’s just not working.” She said, “Well what’s the matter?” He said, “It’s your voice. It’s too high and it’s not convincing and, you know, it’s distracting.” So she said, “Well, should we re-shoot these scenes? Uh, should I deepen my voice or something?” He said, “Yeah. That’s probably a good idea. Let’s do that.” So and in that film, Dianne Wiest is speaking in a very baritone, hyper-intense way, covering people’s mouths and saying things like, “Don’t speak.” She won the Oscar.

Years later, I was talking to Mira Sorvino, another wonderful actress who won the Academy Award … Uh, Academy Award in Woody Allen’s film Mighty Aphrodite. In that movie, she plays a, a prostitute with a heart of gold, with an absurdly high voice. She literally sounds like Miss Piggy from The Muppets. And once again, about a week into shooting, she said there was a knock on her trailer door and there was Woody Allen. And he said to her, “I … So, listen. It’s not working.” She said, “The whole movie or just me?” “No, just you, darling. Just you.” She said, “What’s the matter?” And I, I swear this is true. He said, “Yeah, it’s your voice. It’s too high. It’s, you know, it’s silly and the scenes are not believable and, you know, let’s re-shoot. Let’s re-shoot.” So Mira Sorvino said she took this in and she had a good cry over it. And by the time lunch was over, she realized that she felt both comedically and dramatically that she, she believed in how she was playing the character and that the high voice she was using was really going to work. And she told Willy, Woody Allen as much, and that’s what ended up on, on film.

Now, and this is exciting for me, because I’m finally getting to my point. Um, it, it’s this. One day, a very powerful director can walk up to you and tell you to lower your voice, and if you do it, you will win an Oscar. And on another day, that very same director can walk up to you and tell you to lower your voice and if you don’t do it, you will win an Oscar. Now, how will you know which is the right decision? You know, in a moment like that, what you think anybody else might do will not help you. But if you calm, if you calm down, you will know what your instincts are telling you and you’ll know which way, right or wrong, that you must proceed.

So, as you may have gathered from my stories about my checkered past, my academic career is not why I’m standing before you today. Let’s face it, it’s because I’ve been on The Simpsons for at least 5 years longer than 95 percent of the graduating class has been alive. So in closing, I thought it’d be nice to let some of my Simpsons characters address you and give you their advice. Yes. When in doubt, always pull out the Simpsons voices. That’s my first bit of advice.

So let’s hear from Chief Wiggum first:

“Uh, thank you very much. Let’s see, advice, advice. Um, oh yeah, mmm. Kids, you didn’t hear this from me, but if a cop even thinks that you’re going to throw up in your backseat, they will immediately let you go. No crime is worth having to clean yak out of a seat-belt hole. Also, if you’re ever wearing a body camera, take it off when you go to the bathroom. That’ll end up on YouTube.”

Moe the bartender would like to say hi:

“Yeah, how you’s all doing out there? Uh, yeah, all right, I didn’t have the benefit of a fancy, highfalutin education. I, uh, I went to BU. Yeah, at least Tufts has a campus. I majored in not getting hit by cars on Commonwealth Avenue.”

Apu, the owner and proprietor of the Kwik-E-Mart would also like to say hello:

“Uh, greetings to everybody here. Tufts students and myself, we have very much in common. We both worship an elephant. And there he is. It’s a tremendous honor for me to be staring at an elephant. Remember, please children, that in life, there is nothing that is not so disgusting that it cannot be sold on a heated roller at a nearly criminal mark-up.”

Uh, the old Sea Captain has something he’d like to say:

“Yar, kids remember, the sea is a cruel mistress, but Medford is worse, so you’ll be fine.”

Finally, Comic Book Guy would like to say:

“Hello. Life is like the Star Wars movies. Some of it is great, some of it sucks, but you have no choice but to sit through all of it. Very similar to the commencement speech you are listening to right now.”

You know, most of my Simpsons voices are either just good or bad impressions of people. I’m a mimic at heart. I became an actor as a result because I really wanted to be other people. I wanted to be anybody but myself, really. So imagine my shock and chagrin when I discovered that while doing impressions of people can be amusing and even hilarious, great actors, even great character actors, are willing to utterly be themselves, in front of an audience or a camera.

I didn’t realize it, but when I was your guys’ age, I had a belief that who I was and how I thought and how I felt was inherently uninteresting and flawed and not practical. Well maybe they were and maybe they still are. But it wasn’t until I embraced the person that I really was that my work as an actor got really interesting. I’m not suggesting that you ignore the laws of … The rules of society or the laws of common sense or the actual law or textbooks or manuals or your teachers or your advisors or the Internet or all the other sources that are happy to tell you the right and wrong way to go about doing almost everything. Just please be honest with yourself about what you think and how you feel about all of that, what you like and dislike, what angers you or scares you or saddens you or inspires you or delights you. Those feelings are called your instincts, and you ignore them at your own peril.

Or as Agador Spartacus would say it:

“Kids, just please be yourselves. And if you can’t be yourself, please be Judy Garland from that movie Meet Me in St. Louis. My God, she got to wear such cute outfits in that movie. Speaking of which, why do we have to be in these robes today? Uh, who is this flattering on? You can’t look good in this. I mean, maybe with shoulder pads and like a cinched belt it would all work. But I’m going to stop talking now, because the sooner we change out of these things the better, yes?”

Congratulations, Class of 2016. You did it.

William Foege: 'I hope we all find our way home', Emory University 2016

Graduates, President Wagner, faculty, staff, parents, family — everyone who is here because these graduates are important to you: Welcome to a wonderful day for all of us. To the hundreds of public health students that I heard over here (cheers), ah, you came to the right school.

Why do we have commencement talks?

I’ll tell you. But first, a diversion. In science these days it’s expected that the speaker will start by listing conflicts of interest and then give some feeling that there will be transparency.

Well, my conflicts of interest? I love Emory. And I appreciate what Emory has done for me over the years. I appreciate the medical care Emory has given to President and Mrs. Carter, so that they’ve had a long and productive relationship. I appreciate the fact that Emory has made global health a university-wide priority. And I appreciate what Emory has done in the advancement of the treatment of Ebola and I appreciate what Tim Olsen’s team has done for eye care for people who survived Ebola in Africa.

As to transparency? I can tell you with great confidence that not a single syllable, not a single word, not a single thought that I give you today has not been plagiarized by me.

Now, why commencement talks? Well, 50 years ago, I was on the way to Africa with my family. We stopped for 10 days at the London School of Tropical Medicine to talk to teachers. One teacher was Dr. Robert Cochrane. He’d been the dean of the Vellore medical school in south India. He was the world’s authority on leprosy. And I had his book on leprosy and a list of questions. And I met with him, and after 20 minutes he stopped me. And he said, “My conscience would not permit me to allow you to go to Africa knowing as little about leprosy as you seem to know.”

And he took me to his house for three days and lectured and showed some of his 16,000 leprosy slides. And I tell you it was a thrill — at first. By the third day, I realized the passion to teach far surpasses the passion to learn.

And that is why we have commencement talks. The university can't stop. It tries to the end to teach.

G.K Chesterton said, “Tradition is the democracy of the dead.” Take awhile to think about that. We are all caught now in tradition today, and you for the next few minutes will have to pretend to learn and I have to pretend to teach.

But the difference is you are only going to invest minutes. It took me 80 years to write this talk. Eighty years, and I’m still big for my age. A talk entitled, “Lessons I am Still Desperately Trying to Learn.” I have fallen short in all of these categories, but I pass this on hoping you will do better. And I actually, I’m talking to myself because I hope I will do better.

Chapter 1: Obituaries

Hod Ogden was the head of health education at CDC — and he was a wordsmith, he had a way of putting words together. And he could write a poem or a song or a talk with very little effort. He wrote inspirational guides for other health educators, such as, “Remember always to be grateful for the millions of people everywhere whose despicable habits make health education necessary.” Another was, “He who lives by bread alone, needs sex education.”

On his deathbed he asked a colleague to write his obituary. He drifted into a coma and the word went forth that he had hours to live.

He surprised everyone by waking up the next morning and improving, and weeks later said it was such a joy to pick up old conversations. But he said the greatest joy of all was the chance to edit his obituary.

Every day we edit our obituaries. Sophocles said, “It’s not ‘til evening that you may know how good the day has been.” And it’s not until you get to be my age that you know how good a life has been. But consciously, daily edit your obituary so you realize that sooner. Edit with care and gusto.

Chapter 2: Life plans When my grandfather was born during the Civil War, over 150 years ago, everyone who knew the family knew his life plan the day he was born. He would be a farmer, like his father and his grandfather before him.

Times changed. When I was your age, everyone was telling me to develop a life plan. My advice? Avoid a life plan.

You cannot imagine what will be invented in the future. You cannot imagine the opportunities that will be presented.

You enter a world of infinite possibilities, confusing ideas, continuous changes. But a life plan will limit your future.

Chapter 3: Instead of a life plan, spend your time developing a life philosophy.

And then you will have tools to evaluate every fork in the road. What is truly important to you?

Tradition is the DNA of our beliefs. Question those traditions. Because we are slow to question traditions, we allowed slavery. Because we are slow to question traditions, we allowed gender inequities, a bias against sexual orientation, religious and cultural intolerance.

When this University was less than a decade old, the president of Emory chaired a committee that concluded it was okay for bishops to have slaves. So question the bias of traditions, the intolerance for other cultures; the fear of immigrants.

And question the certainty of those with a bias. The physicist Richard Feynman said, “Certainty is the Achilles heel of science" … and of religion and of politics.

Chapter 4: Integrate your world of knowledge.

E.O. Wilson, the biologist from Harvard, wrote a book called "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge."

And he reminded us that the statement of C.P. Snow, that we would never bridge the gap between the sciences and the humanities, he showed that it is not true. We do it every day. His definition of the word consilience is “the jumping together of knowledge” — I love that phrase, "the jumping together of knowledge."

The Earl of Shaftesbury also encouraged this harmony between the parts of knowledge and the whole of knowledge. He concluded that “good” is when you concentrated on the needs of the group, rather than your own needs. And he said the larger the group, the better you are. So you see why you want to be globalists. You can tell from what President Wagner said, this is a globalist institution. Einstein said nationalism is an infantile disease. He said it’s the measles of mankind.

Not just globalists, but be futurists. Be good ancestors. Remember that the children of the future have given you their proxy and they are asking desperately for you to make good decisions, to hope you will take climate change seriously. The opposition to climate change is not only fierce, but it’s powerful since many of them are in Congress.

Because each of us can do so little, it’s important that we do our part. If you follow basketball you may know the name Stacy King. His first year as a rookie in Chicago, he had a disastrous night where he made a single point. That night, Michael Jordan made 69 points. And after the game, a journalist needling Stacy King asked, “Could you comment on the game?” And Stacy King said, “I will always remember this as the night I combined with Michael Jordan for 70 points."

It may be a little contribution, but we each have to make that contribution.

The world will be confusing, making it hard to integrate knowledge. Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian, once told the story of someone breaking into a jewelry store — and stealing nothing. All they did was rearrange all the price tags.

And that’s the world you are going into — a world with distorted price tags. High prices for athletes, Wall Street bankers, CEOs; low prices for school teachers, public health workers, physical therapists.

The world keeps telling you to go for power, money, publicity. And they pass this off as wisdom. Resist it.

Years ago, Dr. Laney asked me to speak to the Emory Board of Trustees about what I hoped Emory would provide for my son, who was then a student at Emory.

The U.S. was about to go to war and that fervor was everyplace. It was hard to see a balance and the night before I was reading Kipling. And Kipling wrote:

And the talk slid North, and the talk slid South,
With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth,
Four things greater than all things are,
Women, and horses, and power, and war.

I knew it wasn’t right, I knew that was offensive, and I wondered. So that night I had the audacity to re-write Kipling, to what I wished he had said, to my son and to this school:

And the talk slid East, and the talk slid West,
And a student asked, "What life is best?"
Four things treasure, all else above,
Purpose, and Faith, and Wisdom, and Love.

Chapter 5: Actively seek mentors.

Identify people who have the traits and the ideas and the philosophies you want and get their help, always asking, “How best to live?” Borrow their wisdom.

I’m in my eighties. I still seek mentors. Many now are much younger than me. And last night I mentioned how I used to supervise Jim Curran and Jeff Koplan at CDC. And now they’ve turned the tables. They have become my mentors, both of them doing things I never could have imagined.

Chapter 6: The world is expanding.

The world is expanding in promise, in complexity, in the ability to enjoy it. For all of the problems in the world, I can tell you there has never been a better time to be alive and enjoy that.

Not only does your life expectancy increase six to seven hours a day — think of that, I used to wish I didn’t have to sleep and now I get the equivalent, six to seven hours a day. But what you can do in that hour or day or year or lifetime continues to increase.

So functional life expectancy goes up faster than calendar life expectancy.

An example: You have been exposed to as much knowledge in the last year at Emory as Aristotle was in his entire lifetime. Many of you will experience as many cultures in a year as Marco Polo encountered in a lifetime. And think what Shakespeare might have done with a word processor. He didn’t run out of ideas, he had a quill and a bottle of ink.

You will pack centuries into 80 calendar years.

Chapter 7: Seek equity.

I keep wondering why I was not born in a village in New Guinea. I am no self-made person. I was born in this country, urged on by family, traveled roads paid for by government, went to schools that required thousands of people to put together. (Schools that may seem antiquated to you: I went to a one-room schoolhouse. And I often tell students I was first in my class – in the slow group. And that’s funny if I tell you there were only three in my class.)

I avoided dying of tuberculosis, food poisoning, toxic water because of a government, rarely appreciated. Not because I deserved it but because of a coalition of government, religious institutions, and public and private groups, all conspiring to help me.

And your story is the same. So what can we do? Seek equity and justice so others can tell that story someday. And I’m going to place only one burden on you today, but it’s a big burden. The slavery of today is poverty and every one of us in this audience is a plantation owner, because people working at low wages subsidize the price of clothes and our food and our entertainment and our travel. And because I benefit it makes it so hard for me to want to change. But even $15 an hour — think of that — it’s a step forward, but it compromises life for millions of families.

Over 200 years ago, a bold figure in changing slavery was William Wilberforce, who worked for a quarter century until he finally got a bill through parliament that made it illegal to transport slaves. William Wilberforce was influenced, as a child, by the Wesley brothers.

We need William Wilberforces to combat poverty — and what a great thought to have graduates of Emory lead that the change. An institution also influenced by the Wesley brothers.

Gandhi said his idea of the Golden Rule was that he should not be able to enjoy what is denied to others, including education, health care and financial security. Can you even imagine what health care would look like in this country if Congress would be obligated to receive health care no better than the average?

Chapter 8: Seek serendipity.

We often think of serendipity as a random good fortune. The origin involves three princes and Serendip, the Persian name for Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.

A professor at Emory, Marion Creekmore, was once ambassador to Sri Lanka, or Serendip. The original story tells about a lost camel and how these three men, finding small clues that other people missed, figured out where the camel was. Today, this would be the equivalent of reading a Sherlock Holmes story. And I think this is the ability comedians have, to see things that we don’t see until they say them. Then suddenly, we realize they are funny.

We are told this can be learned by being in the moment and actually looking for connections. Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.”

Chapter 9: Civilization

We like to feel we are civilized. How do you measure that? The usual versions look at science, technology, wealth, education, happiness. Every measure fails, except one. But there is one measure of civilization and it comes down to how people treat each other.

Kindness is the basic ingredient:

At the request of a friend, I asked President Carter what his favorite Bible verse was and he sent back a verse from Ephesians: "Be ye kind one to another."

Five months ago we attended the funeral for my brother. And his son, Tom, related that when he went to college, he asked his dad, “What advice do you have?” And my brother said, “Be kind to people.”

Plato said, "Be kind to people, because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

That is the ultimate measure of civilization: how people treat each other. It’s the measure of a civilized person, it’s the measure of a civilized university, it’s the measure of a civilized politician, the measure of a civilized state. And I am sad that in Georgia we’ve re-written Matthew 25 to say, “When, Lord, did we see you sick and not provide Medicaid?”

It is the measure of a civilized nation. The World Health Organization is criticized, correctly, for its response to Ebola. But you never hear people talk about how the United States and other countries every year reduce their budget.

We save more money in this country each year because of the eradication of smallpox than our dues to WHO, and yet we join countries to tell them to reduce their budget. One year, the U.S. was not going to pay its dues. I wrote an editorial and I quoted Dolly Parton, who said, “You would be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.”

And then Ebola showed how much it cost to look this cheap.

How you treat people is the healing force in the world, and William Penn, the Quaker leader, said, “Healing the world is true religion.”

And finally, Chapter 10: Finding our way home.

In the book “Cutting for Stone,” there is an unforgettable line, and may this phrase stick with you forever: "Home is not where you are from. Home is where you are needed."

As I congratulate you on what you have done, I also hope we all find our way home.

Thank you.

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.