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16 April 1998, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Hazel Edwards O.A.M. is the bestselling author of ‘There is a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake’, an Australian classic. This is a rerecording of her Graduation Occasional Address to Monash University in 1998 .
Hazel Edwards O.A.M. writes quirky, thought-provoking fiction and fact for adults and children. Celebrant Sleuth is her latest for adults. Check out her website. www.hazeledwards.com
3 May 2019, Northeastern University, Massachusetts, USA
Hello and good morning. President Aoun, members of the board, faculty, staff, and of course, graduates: it’s an honor to be with you this morning to celebrate this milestone. This huge achievement. For you graduates, it’s a celebration of the last several years and all the work you put in. For your parents, it’s a celebration of work put in your whole lives. Maybe even before your lives. Let’s take a moment, and thank them for that.
First, I’d just like to say, that my being awarded this degree for a few minutes of public speaking in no way diminishes the many years of hard work that you had to put in to get yours.
Actually, I’ve never given a commencement speech before. In fact, this is the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to, by about ten times. You can imagine, then, that I was a little tense about it. I’m not all that much older than you, ten years maybe, and this is a scary gig. So what I did is, I looked up last year’s commencement speaker to see how I would measure up. I’m a published author, with a book on the New York Times list, so, you know, I thought would measure up pretty well.
Welll….Here is what I found. Last year’s speaker was an Emmy-nominated actor. Okay, that’s okay I thought. Then I kept reading. She is also a sprinter, who broke several world records. Wait for it. She is also a double-below-the-knee amputee (just wait, there’s more) who pioneered the technology for her own prosthesis. Which of course is now the international standard for prosthetics. It also casually mentioned that she’s a runway model and was recently inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
If I were going to tailor-make a nightmare act to follow, she would be it.
I, in contrast, am not a model. I’ve overcome no major surgeries, and I’ve developed no technology to help others. My athletic abilities are pitiable, but probably better than my acting skills. Still, here I am. And you’re stuck with me for the next 15 minutes.
So. Looking out at you all in your black caps and gowns, I’m reminded of my own graduation, which wasn’t that long ago. I was twenty-one years old. I remember that back then I was an avid Facebook user, and that like everyone, when the ceremony ended, I uploaded photos to my page. Specifically, I uploaded three photos. One of me, standing alone, in my cap and gown. Another of me with my mother, and a third of me with both my mother and father.
There was nothing unusual about the photos. In them we were smiling, or near enough to it. In them I was just another happy graduate full of promise, embracing my happy parents. But this was a fiction, and I knew it. In fact, it was because the photos were untrue, and not in spite of it, that I wanted them online. Because they showed my life as I wanted it to be, rather than as it was.
Here are four things that I remember about that day. Four things you can’t see in the photos, but that tell the real story.
Number one. That it was my first graduation ceremony. That unlike my classmates, I had neither a high-school diploma, nor a GED. I’d been raised in the mountains of Idaho by parents whose radicals beliefs meant that I had never been allowed to go to school. (I was sort of the equivalent of a kindergarten dropout.) It was a miracle that I’d made it to that university at all, let alone that I was leaving with a degree.
Number two. That although I was graduating from a Mormon university, I no longer believed in Mormonism. All of the previous year, I had struggled to hold on to the beliefs of my childhood—to the faith I shared with my parents as well as with every other person I cared about, every brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin. I was, at the moment I walked across the stage to get my diploma, still wondering what the loss of my faith would mean. Could I be a good person, even without my faith? It sounds strange now, but I really did think that without Mormonism, I might turn out to be an ass.
Number three. That I was alone. Although my parents are standing next to me in the picture, they had not been at the graduation ceremony. At least, I don’t think they were there. I had quarreled with my father some weeks before on some point of ideology, and he had declared that he wasn’t coming. That morning he had changed his mind, and he and my mother had raced down from Idaho, but they were too late. They missed the ceremony, and were, in fact, only present for the photo.
Number four. That my apartment was empty. I’d been up all of the previous night packing every item I owned either into boxes for storage or suitcases, which now sat packed by the door. I was leaving that night for the University of Cambridge in England, a country about which I knew very little.
Adding these four things together, I don’t believe there was any part of my life that I felt secure in, or proud of. The prospect of Cambridge terrified me. I’d grown up in a junkyard; I felt deeply that I didn’t belong in that place.
Faith was the rock I’d built my life on, and now that rock was turning to sand before my eyes.
My family was a tangle of love and radicalism and what I now suspect was mental illness. The love was real, but so were the other things, and I didn’t yet know how I was going to navigate them.
That was who I was, but that is not who I uploaded to Facebook. I uploaded a happy woman, a woman who was all joy and smiles. Who was “fun.” Even though I was terrified. Even though I spent most of that day just trying to get through it, and wishing it was over.
Something strange happened in the weeks and years that followed my graduation. Something bizarre. Which is that I came to think of my graduation photos as my graduation. I came to identify more with the woman in those pictures than I did with my actual self.
We humans have always struggled with two identities. There has always been a difference between who we are when we are with ourselves and who we are when we are with others. But now we have a third self: The virtual avatar we create and share with the world.
For most people, “sharing themselves” online means carefully curating an identity that exaggerates some qualities while repressing others that they consider to be undesirable. Online, no one has acne or dark circles or a temper; no one washes dishes, does laundry or scrubs toilets. Mostly, we brunch. And we take exotic, rarified vacations. We pet sea turtles. We throw ourselves from airplanes.
They are beautiful, unblemished lives. But sometimes I think that when we deny what is worst about ourselves, we also deny what is best. We repress our ignorance, and thus we deny our capacity to learn. We repress our faults, and thus we deny our capacity to change. We forget that it is our flawed human self, and not our avatar, who creates things and reconsiders and forgives and shows mercy.
But ultimately the real problem, as the writer Zadie Smith has pointed out, is that sharing a self is not the same thing as having a self. Your avatar isn’t real. It’s a projection. It’s not terribly far from a lie. And like all of the lies that we tell, the real danger isn’t that others will believe it but that we will come to believe it ourselves. That we will come to identify with our virtual self (who looks so beguiling in photographs, whose life is bright and free and literally filtered).
In this way we become alien to ourselves. Who is this person who spends so much time studying? Washing dishes? Taking care of grandma? This is not how I see myself.
I learned at my own graduation that over identifying with your idealized self is a deeply alienating experience. It is a form of self-rejection. Because what you are saying to yourself is: I’m not good enough the way I am.
So today, I would like to pause for a moment to appreciate the parts of you that you don’t put online. I would like to mount a defense of them. Of your boring, internal, book-reading, dishwashing, thought-having life. Of the parts of you that can’t be captured by any technological medium. It’s a concept that I’m going to call “the un-instagramable self.”
Here’s something I truly believe: everything of any significance that you will do in your life will be done by your un-instagramable self. It is, for example, your un-instagramable self who is graduating today. I say this with confidence because I’ve yet to see a Facebook or Instagram account which is dedicated to photos of someone studying or attending lectures or writing essays.
All of the most substantive experiences that you will have in your life will be had by the boorish slob you are trying to edit out of existence. The you who falls in love at your dingy entry-level job will not be the glamorous and airbrushed you who will appear in your wedding photos. And parenting will be nothing like you will represent it to be online. For one thing, there will a lot more actual shit than you will ever post on Instagram. There will be sleep deprivation and petty standoffs and moments of self-doubt. But the moments of love and tenderness and belonging will touch you more deeply than anything you will find in the virtual world.
You will look wonderful in the photos you will post of you and your children. You will look wonderful because you will make sure that you look wonderful, and you will delete the ones in which you look harassed and depleted because your five-year-old woke screaming from a nightmare at 3am. You will not look wonderful as you crouch on your hall floor in stretched-out pajamas and rock your child back to sleep. You will look like hell. But you will remember the weight of your son on your chest long after the perfectly staged portraits have faded from all relevance.
And in twenty-five or thirty years, when your daughter graduates from a university, and she is sitting where you are now, and some random commencement speaker tells her to thank her Mom and Dad, she will not be thinking of your avatar—of the carefully chosen cover photo that obscures the lines in your face and the grey in your hair. She will be thinking of you. Creased and sweaty, with thinning hair and warts and liver spots and whatever other signs of decay that you’ve got going on by then.
So. Class of 2019. March up here, and claim your degree, and give the camera your best smile. But tonight, as you upload that photograph, take a moment to check in with your un-instagramable self—and thank them for getting you this far, and for taking you the rest of the way.
Thank you.
23 May 2018, Yale Class Day, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Oh, that was great. Oh, nice one. Thank you, thank you. Hello. Thank you very much. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Wow, I am so delighted to be here. Sorry we're not outside, but this makes it kind of cosy.
I want to thank President Salovey and Dean Chun. Thank you Alex, a Razorback fan from Little Rock, Arkansas for getting us started on such a high note. Thanks to Alexis and Josh for your comments and your introduction. Thanks to all of the family and friends here today for allowing me to share this happy occasion, and good afternoon to everyone joining us by livestream from around campus. But most of all, congratulations to the class of 2018. I am thrilled for all of you, even the three of you who live in Michigan and didn't request your absentee ballots in time.
But before I go any further, I just want to be sure, did the students from the new colleges make it here? I worried that your flights might be delayed. Sorry Franklin and Pauli Murray, I heard you had a great first year and I am honoured that this class has invited me to be your speaker. Now I see, looking out at you that you are following the tradition of over-the-top hats so I brought a hat too. A Russian hat. Right? Look, I mean, if you can't beat them, join them.
Being here with you brings back a flood of memories. I remember the first time I arrived on campus as an incoming law student in the fall of 1969 wearing my bell-bottoms, driving a beat up old car with a mattress tied to the roof. I had no idea what to expect. Now to be honest, I had had some trouble making up my mind between Yale and Harvard Law Schools. Then one day while we were still in that period of decision making, I was invited to a cocktail party at Harvard for potentially incoming law students where I met a famous law professor.
A friend of mine, a male law student, introduced me to this famous law professor. I mean truly, big three piece suit, watch chain, and my friend said, "Professor, this is Hillary Rodham. She's trying to decide whether to come here next year or sign up with our closest competitor." Now the great man gave me a cool dismissive look and said, "Well, first of all, we don't have any close competitors. And secondly, we don't need any more women at Harvard."
Now I was leaning toward Yale anyway but that pretty much sealed the deal, and when I came to Yale I was one of 27 women out of 235 law students. It was the first year women were admitted to the college, and as that first class of women prepared to graduate four years later, The New York Times reported on Yale's foray into co-education, noting that the women "worked harder and got somewhat better grades than the 940 men graduating with them. A fact," they went on to say, "that some of the men apparently found threatening." Well, I was shocked.
But over the years Yale has been a home away from home for me, a place I've returned to time and again. I spoke to class day back in 2001 on the 300th anniversary of the university, and I hope that that will be the case for many of you as well. This school has been responsible for some of my most treasured friends and colleagues, people like Jake Sullivan and Harold Koh, and I've watched some of you grow up, like Rebecca Shaw, who's graduating today and you'll hear from shortly. And I've been honoured to serve over the last year or two, working with some of the Yale Law School faculty including the new Dean, Heather Gerkin.
Now Yale grads, many of whom are also here today, have worked for me in the United States Senate, the State Department, on my presidential campaigns, and I have been so well-served. I have a very dedicated campaign intern here graduating, David Shimer, the class of 2018.
But I have to confess, of all the formative experiences I had at Yale, perhaps none was more significant than the day during my second year when I was cutting through what was then the student lounge with some friends, and I saw this tall, handsome guy with a beard who looked like a viking. I said to my friend, "Well, who is that?" And she said, "Well, that's Bill Clinton. He's from Arkansas and that's all he ever talks about." And then as if on cue, I hear him saying, "And not only that, we grow the biggest watermelons in the world." And I was like, "Who is this person?" But he kept looking at me and I kept looking back.
So we were in the Law Library one night, I was studying but I couldn't help but see occasionally as I lifted my head up that he was, again, looking at me. So finally I thought, "This is ridiculous," so I got up, went over to him, and I said, "If you're going to keep looking at me and I'm going to keep looking back, we at least ought to be introduced. I'm Hillary Rodham. Who are you?" And that started a conversation that continues to this day.
Now it was also here at Yale that I saw a flyer in the Law School on a bulletin board that changed my life. Now some of your parents and grandparents may remember flyers and bulletin boards. For the rest of you, suffice it to say, that was how we got information. It was like Facebook but the bulletin board didn't steal your personal information. So one day I saw a note about a woman named Marian Wright Edelman, a Yale Law School graduate, civil rights activist who would go on to found The Children's Defence Fund.
Marian was coming back to campus to give a lecture. I went, I was captivated to hear her talk about using her Yale education to create a Head Start programme in rural Mississippi. And I wound up working for her that summer, and the experience opened my eyes to the ways that the law can protect children or come up short. Because like many of you, I learned just as much outside the four walls of the classroom as I did sitting in a lecture hall, and I discovered a passion that has animated my life and my work ever since.
Now a lot has changed since I was here. In 2019 Yale will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the matriculation of women at the college, and the 150th anniversary of the first women graduate students at Yale. And I heard that Yale officially changed the term freshman to first year. I also heard, amazingly, that The Duke's Men and the Whiffenpoofs have started welcoming women. Now as for my long lost Whiffs audition tape, I have buried it so deep not even Wikileaks will be able to find it, because if you thought my emails were scandalous you should hear my singing voice.
I find it very exciting that today's graduates hail from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and 56 other countries. And in your four years on campus, you've survived late nights in the Bass cubicles and early mornings in the Sterling stacks, you've trekked up Science Hill, maybe you've even found love at The Last Chance Dance, and now you're ready to take on your next adventure. But maybe some of you are reluctant to leave. I understand that. It's possible to feel both because the class of 2018 is graduating at one of the most tumultuous times int he history of our country, and I say that as someone who graduated in the sixties.
I recently went back and looked up those famous lines from Charles Dickens in A Tale of two Cities because I usually end after saying, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." But it goes on, "It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
Now Dickens was writing about the years leading up to the French Revolution, but he could have been describing the ricocheting highs and lows of this moment in America. We're living through a time when fundamental rights, civic virtue, freedom of the press, even facts and reason are under assault like never before. But we are also witnessing an era of new moral conviction, civic engagement, and a sense of devotion to our democracy and country. So here's the good news. If any group were ever prepared to rise to the occasion, it is you, the class of 2018. You've already demonstrated the character and courage that will help you navigate this tumultuous moment, and most of all, you've demonstrated resilience.
Now that's a word that's been on my mind a lot recently. One of my personal heroes, Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself I have lived through this horror, I can take the next thing that comes along." Well, that's resilience and it's so important because everyone, everyone gets knocked down. What matters is whether you get back up and keep going. This may be hard for a group of Yale soon-to-be graduates to accept, but yes, you will make mistakes in life. You will even fail. It happens to all of us, no matter how qualified or capable we are. Take it from me.
I remember those first months after that 2016 election were not easy. We all had our own methods of coping. I went for long walks in the woods, Yale students went for long walks in East Rock Park. I spent hours going down a Twitter rabbit hole, you spend hours in the Yale Memes Group. I had my fair share of Chardonnay, you had penny drinks at Woads. I practised yoga and alternate nostril breathing, you took Psych and the Good Life.
And let me just get this out of the way, no, I'm not over it. I still think about the 2016 election. I still regret the mistakes I made. I still think though, that understanding what happened in such a weird and wild election in American history will help us defend our democracy in the future. Whether you're right, left, centre, Republican, Democrat, independent, vegetarian, whatever, we all have stake in that. So today as a person, I'm okay. But as an American, I'm concerned.
Personal resilience is important but it's not the only form of resilience we need right now. We also need community resilience. That's something that this class has embodied during your time on campus. Literally, at times, like in the March of Resilience your sophomore year. It was the biggest demonstration in the history of the school. That's 300+ years. Led by women of colour, supported by students and faculty determined to make Yale a more just, equitable, and safe place for everyone. Many of you have said that march was a defining moment in your college experience, and that says something about this class and your values. Because the truth is, our country is more polarised than ever.
We have sorted ourselves into opposing camps and that divides how we see the world. The data backs this up. There are more Liberals and Conservatives than there used to be and fewer Centrists. Our political parties are more ideologically and geographically consistent, which means there are fewer northern Republicans and fewer southern Democrats. And the divides on race and religion are starker than ever before. And as the middle shrank, partisan animosity grew. Now I'm not going to get political here, but this isn't simply a both sides problem. The radicalization of American politics hasn't been symmetrical. There are leaders in our country who blatantly incite people with hateful rhetoric, who fear change, who see the world in zero sum terms, so that if others are gaining, well, they must be losing. That's a recipe for polarisation and conflict.
Our social fabric is fraying and the bonds of community that hold us together are fractured. This isn't just a problem because it leads to unpleasant conversations over the Thanksgiving dinner table, it's a problem because it undermines the civic spirit that makes democracy possible. The habits of the heart that de Tocqueville found so unique in the American character. I believe healing our country is going to take what I call radical empathy. As hard as it is, this is a moment to reach across divide of race, class, and politics, to try to see the world through the eyes of people very different from ourselves and to return to rational debate. To find a way to disagree without being disagreeable, to try to recapture a sense of community and common humanity.
When we think about politics and judge our leaders, we can't just ask, "Am I better off than I was two years or four years ago?" We have to ask, "Are we all better off? Are we as a country better, stronger, and fairer?" That's something you've done here at Yale. You've learned that you don't need to be an immigrant to be outraged when a classmate's father, a human being who contributes to his family and his country is unjustly deported. You don't need to be a person of colour to understand that when black students feel singled out and targeted, we still have work to do. And you don't need to experience gun violence to know that when a teenager in Texas who just survived a mass shooting says she's not surprised by what happened at her school because, and I quote, "I've always felt like eventually it was going to happen here too." We are failing our children. So enough is enough, we need to come together and we certainly need common sense gun safety legislation as soon as we can get it.
Now empathy should not only be at the centre of our individual lives, our families, and our communities, it should be at the centre of our public life, our policies, and our politics. I know we don't always think of politics and empathy as going hand in hand, but they can, and more than that, they must. As former secretary Madeleine Albright writes in her terrific new book, Fascism: A Warning, she says, "This generosity of spirit, this caring about others and about the proposition that we are created equal is the single most effective antidote to the self-centred moral numbness that allows fascism to thrive." And of course, Madeleine had personal experience fleeing the Nazis in Czechoslovakia as a baby, returning after the wall, feeling the communists as a young girl.
Now that brings me to one more form of resilience that's been on my mind over the last year, democratic resilience. In 1787, after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, who by the way received an honorary degree from Yale, was asked by a woman in the street outside Independence Hall, "Well doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy? And Franklin answered, "A republic, if you can keep it." Right now we're living through a full-fledged crisis in our democracy. Now there are not tanks in the streets, but what's happening right now goes to the heart of who we are as a nation.
And I say this not as a democrat who lost an election, but as an American afraid of losing a country. There are certain things that are so essential, they should transcend politics. Waging a war on the rule of law and a free press, delegitimizing elections, perpetrating shameless corruption, and rejecting the idea that our leaders should be public servants undermines our national unity. And attacking truth and reason, evidence and facts should alarm us all.
You and your parents have just paid for a first class, world class education, and as Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder writes in his book, On Tyranny, "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticise power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle." I think Professor Snyder, both in that book and in his new one, The Road to Unfreedom, is sounding the alarm as loudly as he can. Because attempting to erase the line between fact and fiction, truth and reality is a core feature of authoritarianism. The goal is to make us question logic and reason and to sow mistrust toward exactly the people we need to rely on, our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, even ourselves.
Just this week, former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson said, "If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom. Perhaps a tad late, but he's absolutely right. So how do we build democratic resilience? I think it starts with standing up for truth, facts, and reason, not just in the classroom and on campus but every day in our lives. It means speaking out about the vital role of higher education in our society, to create opportunity and equality. It means calling out actual fake news when we see it and supporting brave journalists and their reporting, maybe even by subscribing to a newspaper. Now most of all, as obvious as it seems, it means voting. In every election, not just the presidential ones. So yes, these are challenging times for America but we've come through challenging times before.
I think back to the night Barrack Obama was elected president. Many of us, so many of us were jubilant. Even I, who had once hoped to beat him, was ecstatic. It was such a hopeful moment, and yet in some ways this moment feels even more hopeful, because this is a battle-hardened hope, tempered by loss, and clear-eyed about the stakes. We are standing up to policies that hurt people. We are standing up for all people being treated with dignity. We are doing the work to translate those feelings into action. And the fact that some days it is really hard to keep at it just makes it that much more remarkable that so many of us are, in fact, keeping at it.
It's not easy to wade back into the fight every day, but we're doing it. And that's why I am optimistic, because of how unbelievably tough Americans are proving to be. I've encountered lots of people in recent months who give me hope. The Parkland students who endured unthinkable tragedy and have responded with courage and resolve. The leaders and groups I've gotten to know through Onward Together, an organisation I started after the election to encourage the outpouring of grassroots engagement that we're seeing. Everyone who is marching, registering voters, and diving into the issues facing us like never before, some for the very first time in their lives. And I find hope in the wave of women running for office, and winning. And hope in the women and men who are dismantling the notion that women should have to endure harassment and violence as a part of our lives.
So we have a long way to go. There are many fights to fight and more seem to arise every day. It will take work to keep up the pressure, to stay vigilant, to neither close our eyes, nor numb our hearts, or throw up our hands and say, "Someone else take over from here." Because at this moment in our history our country depends on every citizen believing in the power of their actions, even when that power is invisible and their efforts feel like an uphill battle. Of every citizen voting in every election, even when your side loses. It is a matter of infinite faith, this faith we have in the ability to govern ourselves, to come together to make honourable, practical compromise in the pursuit of ends that will lift us all up and move us forward.
So yes, we need to pace ourselves but also lean on each other. Look for the good wherever we can. Celebrate heroes, encourage children, find ways to disagree respectfully. We need to be ready to lose some fights, because we will. As John McCain recently reminded us, "No just cause is futile, even if it's lost." What matters is to keep going no matter what, keep going.
The Yale you're graduating from is very different from the Yale I graduated from. It's different even from the Yale that welcomed you four years ago. Four years ago, not one of Yale's colleges was named after a woman. Today students are carrying on the legacy of a trailblazing LGBT civil rights activist at Pauli Murray College and celebrating one of Yale's own hidden figures at Grace Hopper College, named after the naval officer who happened to be one of the first computer programmers in America.
Those changes didn't happen on their own, you made them possible. You kept fighting, you kept the faith. And because of that, in the end, you changed Yale as much as Yale changed you. And now it's time for you to make your mark on the world. I know the best. The best for you, for Yale, and for America is yet to come, and you each will have a role to play and a contribution to make. Thank you and congratulations to the class of 2018.
21 March 2019, WAAPA, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
I am hugely grateful and more than a little embarrassed to be honoured like this. This institution puts out proper extraordinary artists. I was only here for two years, and yet my contemporaries include Graeme Blevins and Tommy O’Halloran and Ben Vanderwal and Libby Hammer and Troy Roberts and James Sandon and Grant Windsor and these incredible people who’ve found a level of craft I wouldn’t be able to approach in my wildest dreams. In this tent alone, there are artists who I swear you’ve put here just to make me feel like the hack that I am. I feel the same as I did when the jazz students used to come and watch our “commercial music” ensemble performances: mildly embarrassed and very threatened. And then the added cruelty of holding the event in a circular room full of mirrors: I’m not much good with the piano but I’m very good with subtext, you bastards, I know you’re telling me to take a good hard look at myself.
With a head like mine, you learn to try not to.
So this week I’m staying at the Crown Metropole hotel. It’s not my usual vibe, but the theatre I’m playing in is right there, and besides if I stay with my parents, the kettle wakes me up at half past six and I’m not having that. Anyway, presumably because my tour is attracting punters, the hotel management upgraded me, so I’m staying in some kind of penthouse suite thing. It’s about the size of my house, and feels like I’m living in an Italian furniture show room. There are just so many couches. I’m staying there on my own, yet I counted, and you could have 90 people comfortably sitting in my hotel room. I don’t know what it’s for. It’s a room built for the sole purpose of making Wankers feel like Legends. Trump would love it, you know.
When you first walk into a room like that, you initially feel really excited, but it is genuinely gross and quite miserable to stay there. That’s worth knowing, I guess, if your plan is to be a Rockstar or a famous actor. It’s not only lonely at the top, but populated by unnecessary chairs. Put that on a fridge magnet.
My time here at WAAPA was quite hard actually. Being an artist requires massive reserves of self-belief, and coming to a place like this is incredibly testing. Of course, I know now that the 2 years I spent here feeling unbelievably bad about myself were simply training for the subsequent 8 years where I felt even worse. Watching beautiful beautiful Graham Wood play piano and just wanting to give up… wanting to cut my fingers off and feed them to a swan, taught me… well, not to. I guess. It was the beginning of a lesson I’m still trying to learn: that comparing yourself to others, in any area of your life, is poison.
It was also hard here because I had really good friends in the acting course, and they were all wandering around in black tights and shagging each other and looking fabulously sweaty, while I was wandering around with the other pianist in my year, who was a sweet guy, but deeply depressed, and every day just reminded me how we were going to be poor for life and that there was no point.
And it was hard because – like you – I was making coffees and pouring beers to pay my rent.
But mostly, it was hard because music had always just been fun to me. Music was a thing you did at parties to pick up girls. It was something I did when I was stressed or sad. It was an escape; I could – and still can – fall asleep playing the piano, and wake up seconds later wondering how my fingers got to where they’d got. And coming here, it was work, suddenly. I had to practice. (The first year I was here remains the only year I ever actually practiced piano. Russell Holmes will confirm I certainly didn’t do any practice in second year. Somewhere a few weeks in it became clear we both preferred just hanging out and chatting.)
But I am so grateful for the two years I spent here. It is impossible to measure the value of what that diploma gave me. Much of what they were teaching me I couldn’t get at the time, but unconsciously, I put the info on some shelf in my brain to be picked up and properly examined later, when I had more time and was feeling less stubborn. I learned musical tools, performance tools, I learned to respect time, I learned to listen, I learned resilience. I learned that dominant 13th shape that is also a minor 6/9 and a dominant 7 sharp 5 sharp 9 and a major 7 sharp 11 and it’s the best shape in the world and Matilda is built on it. I never learned to read music. I don’t know whose failure that is. I’m gonna say Paul Pooley. Is he here?
I guess I’m trying to say to the students here: I know these places can be hard, but keep going. You won’t actually know what you’re really learning until years later. Just listen, keep your humility and stay tough.
Right, if this were a graduation ceremony, my role here would be to give career advice to the graduates. It’s not, but I guess I’ll try to give advice anyway, because I’m quite old now, and giving unsolicited advice is what old white guys are supposed to do. I’m gonna mansplain the arts to you.
It’s actually surprising to me how often I get asked for career advice. Young musos and actors, and parents of stagey little kids… they go, “how do you get a career like you?” And I mean, I get it. I so clearly remember in my teens and twenties thinking, what’s the trick? There must be a trick. But it still takes me aback that they ask me, because my career is so clearly such an absurd fluke. I mean, I simply got lucky. And not lucky like, I was on the bus and I got my umbrella confused with the umbrella of a guy who turned out to be the husband of a record company exec… There was no single moment of luck, nor a series of lucky events. I mean, it’s a fluke because it turned out that having my weird combination of attributes allowed me to make some stuff that happened to find an audience in a particular place and time.
And that’s the short and long of my advice really: there is no trick. You can’t have a career like mine. It’s mine. You have to have your career.
To expand upon that platitude, I’ll tell you three things I reckon are important if you’re serious about a career in music or theatre or dance or film. All three of these are total clichés, but perhaps worth reiterating.
Firstly: you have to get good. Get really good. No short-cut, no business technique, no amount of self-promotion or nice business cards, none of it means anything, really. You just have to be really, really good at what you do. Ideally, be the best. And that takes hours and hours and hours. Time when your mates are taking pills or smoking cones, time when other people are having holidays. You don’t get to have a good work-life balance. It means being a bit obsessed. And if you’re lucky, it won’t suck because you love it. And if you don’t love it, stop now. Don’t do it as a job. There are many more important jobs than being a muso or an actor, or at least as important, get one of those and play music as a hobby.
But if you’re going to do it, you simply have to spend all your time and all your energy and all your money getting good. Sorry.
There is however, a little loophole in this advice. Which is that how you define ‘what you do’ is up to you. I am the best in the world at what I do. Without a doubt. And I can say that confidently, because the number of people I’m competing with is zero. The thing I am best in the world at, is being a science-obsessed, uber-rhymey polemicist pianist singer satirist wanker. I am really, really good at that job. I am the king of Minchinland, population: this idiot.
So be really, really good at what you do. And figuring out what that is also takes hours and hours and hours. I’m sorry.
And this is related to my second bit of advice, which is:
You have to be authentic. Actors, you might authentically look like a Hemsworth and authentically love going to the gym. But I promise, as someone who has been involved in casting on both sides of the couch: all anyone wants to see is you. We want to see how you play the character, how you bring you into a character.
My career began in my late twenties when I finally stopped trying to be what I thought other people wanted from me. I was trying to get acting agents, getting headshots and cutting my hair, changing my name to Timothy, as if that crap ever changed anything. I was trying to get the silliness out of my songs in the hope that I could get a record deal. I was separating all the things I am, because I had identified what I thought was the marketplace available to me, and was trying to be various products that might be consumable. The minute, the minute, I stuck everything I am on the stage… the moment I wore what I wanted, said what I wanted, put together a show that had me doing weird poems and monologues and playing jazz and pop and rock, the moment I got authentic, my life changed.
I’m an odd example, obviously, because I’ve always been obsessed by trying to do lots of different things. But the lesson stands anyway. Your career, whether you wanna be a triple threat on the west end, or a film actor, or a session percussionist: don’t make the mistake of thinking that little old you is not interesting to the world. You have lived a unique life, consumed a unique suite of ideas, marinated in a unique combination of songs and artists and influences. You will have something that no one else has, and identifying that is your key to a beautiful career. And that career might mean you are dirt poor your whole life, or it might mean you get to be a massive star. But it won’t matter, because you won’t be trying to be something that you’re not.
And the third bit of advice: Be kind. Just be kind. To everyone. Always. (Actually you don’t have to always be kind upwards. You’ll come across people above you – a director or producer, a studio boss, an A&R dude – who are arseholes. You’re allowed to tell them to f-off.) But basically you should always be kind. It seems so obvious, but it’s amazing how many people fail to understand its importance. Be kind to the monitor guys, be kind to the fly-mech, be kind to the ushers and the merch people, the gaffers, the make-up artists, be kind to your fellow performers. Whatever happens. Even if there is feedback screaming in your in-ears, even if the air-con doesn’t work in your trailer and you’re freezing, even if you’re under huge pressure and you’re under-slept and working days and gigging nights and you haven’t written a speech you have to write and you’re starving and all you want is some poached eggs and a flat white delivered to your furniture store hotel room but you’ve accidentally left your “do not disturb” sign on the door so the waiter just doesn’t deliver your breakfast for an hour and then when he does, he spills your flat white onto your poached eggs… even then, be kind. If in doubt, double down and be kinder. Not only will it make your life better, but it is really good career advice. The musicians I’m working with on this tour are some of the best players in the country, but that’s only half the reason we sought them out. They are just really, really lovely people. So just be kind. It will bite you on the ass if you’re not. And yes, there are successful arseholes – I’ve worked with a couple of the most famous of them – but, who wants to be one of them? It’s gross.
Music is not magic to me. Being a musician is not particularly romantic. Songwriting is a craft you get better at by doing it over and over again, just like cooking or surgery or painting or sex or handstands. Our ability to make art that resonates correlates very closely to our experience in life. I’m back at authenticity now. We carry our scars and our defeats and victories into how we express ourself. We bring all our experience, all our hours, all our self-loathing and self-love into our craft. At least we should.
Thank you so much for having me.
28 April 2018, Seaver College, Malibu, Los Angeles, USA
Rev Gregory Boyle is the author of The New York Times bestselling book, "Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
Thank you very much for this kind and generous honor. President Benton called me some months ago and he said, "Greg, do you believe in free speech?", and I said yes, and he said, "Good, you're giving one on April 28th." If I could, how do the kids call it? Give a shout out to Will Carjoley. He is the sixth of his siblings, the last of the six to graduate from Pepperdine, which is a huge accomplishment, and also a whole lot of tuition.
I'm an expert on nothing, but for 34 years I've worked with gang members, and apparently President Benton thought that made me eminently suited to address the class of 2018.
You know what Martin Luther King says about church could well be said about your time here at Pepperdine. ‘It's not the place you've come to, it's the place you go from’, and you go from here to create a community of kinship such that, God in fact, might recognize it. In fact, that is God's dream come true. No us and them, just us. And you imagine with God a circle of compassion, and then you imagine nobody standing outside that circle, and you know that God does not share in the demonizing in which we all engage in.
And so, you choose to go from here, and you dismantle the barriers that exclude, and you go out to the margins, because that's the only way they'll get erased, if you stand out at them, and you stand with the poor, and the powerless, and the voiceless, and you stand with those whose dignity has been denied, and you stand with those whose burdens are more than they can bear, and every one of the graduates here has had an exquisite mutual experience of knowing what it's like to stand with the easily despised and the readily left out.
You go from here to stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop, and you stand with the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away. For no kinship, no peace, no kinship, no justice, no kinship, no equality. You go to the margins not to make a difference, because then that's about you. You go to the margin so that the folks at the margins make you different.
It's the privilege of my life for 30 years to have been taught everything of value by gang members, and in the last few years they've taught me how to text, and so, I'm really grateful to them, because I find it sure beats the heck out of actually talking to people. And I'm pretty dextrous at it, LOL and OMG, and BTW, and the homies have taught me a new one, OHN, which apparently stands for, "Oh hell no," and I've been using that one quite a bit lately.
I know I can't be alone in being vexed by this autocorrect thing. I had a homegirl, kind of a tough cookie named Bertha, and she texted me on a Sunday, "Where are you at?" And I said, "I'm about to speak to a room full of monjas and monjas is Spanish for nuns, sisters, religious women. "I'm about to speak to a room full of monjas. I pushed send, autocorrect told her I was about to speak to a room full of ninjas, which she thought was pretty darn interesting.
The homies, their hair is always on fire, and they always need money to finish off the rent, or to pay their light bill or something, and a homie texted me once, he just needed $100 to finish off his rent, and I just didn't have it, so I texted him, "Things are tight," and I pushed send and autocorrect told him, "Thongs are tight." He said, "Sorry to hear that. What about my rent?"
So there I am in a car with two older [inaudible 00:00:04:46], [Manuel and Poncho and they do a variety of things at Homeboy. They're going to help me give a talk at a high school, and Manuel's in the front seat and we're 15 minutes on the road, when Manuel gets an incoming text, he reads it to himself and he chuckles, and I said, "What is it?" He goes, "Oh, it's dumb. It's from Snoopy back at the office." Well, I'd just seen Snoopy. Snoopy gave me a big embarcio as the day was beginning. Snoopy and Manuel work together in the clock in room, where they clock in hundreds and hundreds of gang members who work there. I would not want this job. This may come as a surprise, gang members can occasionally be attitudinal. So I said, "Well, what's it say?" And Manuel said, "Oh, it's dumb. Let me find it. Oh, here it is. Hey dawg, it's me, Snoops. Yeah, they got my ass locked up in county jail. They're charging me with being the ugliest vato in America. You have to come down right now, show them they got the wrong guy." Well, we died laughing, and I nearly drove into oncoming traffic, and then I realized that Manuel and Snoopy are enemies. They're from rival gangs. They used to shoot bullets at each other, because I remember.
Now they shoot text messages, and there's a word for that, and the word is kinship.
How do we obliterate once and for all the illusion that we are separate? All of you go from Pepperdine to choose to become enlightened witnesses, people who, through your kindness and tenderness, and focused, attentive love, returned people to themselves. And in the process, we're all returned to our dignity and to our truth, that we are exactly what God had in mind when God made us.
It occurs to university sometimes to force their students to read my book against their will, and I'm not complaining, but my alma mater at Gonzaga University called me and said they had forced the incoming freshmen class to read Tattoos on the Heart, and so I said sure, and they said, "Can you bring two homies with you?" And I said, sure, and they were going to have a big talk on a Tuesday night with a thousand people. And so, I always invite homies in the same way I pick homies who are enemies, rivals, who work together at Homeboy, just that they have to share a hotel room, just to mess with them. And I always pick homies who have never flown before, just for the thrill of seeing gang members panicked in the sky.
Once I had two homies, we were flying to D.C., and older guys, and one guy said to me, "Hey, are we flying Virgin Airlines? Because it's our first time." I said, "Well yes, it's a requirement. We'll come home on American." So I picked these two guys, Bobby, an African American gang member who worked in the bakery, and Mario, who worked in our merchandise store. I've done this hundreds and hundreds of times with men and women. I've never picked anybody more terrified to flying than this guy Mario. He was just absolutely petrified. In fact, he was hyperventilating, and we hadn't even boarded the plane yet.
And so, we're at Burbank Airport, and the big bay windows, and Southwest Airlines, and they don't have that hermetically sealed chute where you walk onto the plane, you walk out onto the tarmac like you're the president, and you climb the steps to go to the front of the plane or the back of the plane, they have steps. And so, our plane arrives, it's early morning and I tell Mario, "There's our plane," and [inaudible 00:08:42], and I think, "Wow, he may actually die before we climb those steps." And then our flight crew arrives and I see two flight attendants, females, and they both have very large cups of Starbucks coffee, and they're schlepping up the front steps and Mario goes, "When are we going to board the plane?" I said, "As soon as they sober up the pilots. There they go now.
Perhaps I shouldn't have said that, but I should tell you that Mario, in our 30 year history at Homeboy, is the most tattooed individual who's ever worked there. His arms are all sleeved out, neck blackened with the name of his gang, head shaved covered in tattoos, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyelids that say "the end," so that when he's lying in his coffin, there's no doubt. And so, I'd never been in public with him and we're walking and people are like this, and mothers are clutching their kids more closely, and I'm thinking, wow, isn't that interesting? Because if you were to go to Homeboy on Monday and ask anybody there who's the kindest, most gentle soul who works there, they won't say me, they'll say, Mario. He sells baked goods at the counter at our cafe. He's proof that only the soul that ventilates the world with tenderness has any chance of changing the world.
So we get to Gonzaga, and they don't just have the talk at night, they have all these other talks throughout the day and I tell them, "You get up and give those talks. I'm going to sit in the back of the classroom," and they were terrified, but they did a good job. Stories of terror, and torture, and violence, and abuse of every imaginable kind that led the audience to stand in awe at what these two had carried in their lives, rather than in judgment at how they carried it. And honest to God, if their stories had been flames, you'd have to keep your distance, otherwise you'd get scorched.
So the nighttime talk comes and it's a thousand people, and I invite them up to share their stories in front of all these people for five minutes each, and I do my thing, and then I invite them up for Q and A, and I said, "Yes ma'am," and a woman stands and she says, "Yeah, I got a question. It's for Mario." First question out the gate, and Mario steps up to the microphone. He's a tall drink of water, skinny and clutching the microphone, and he's terrified, "Yes?" And she says, "Well, you say you're a father, and you have a son and a daughter who are about to enter their teenage years. What advice do you give them? What wisdom do you impart to them?
And Mario clutches his microphone, and he's just terrified, and he's trembling, and he's getting a hernia trying to come up with whatever the hell he's going to say, when finally he blurts out, "I just...", and he stops, and he retreats back to his microphone clutching terrified retreat, but he wants to get this whole sentence out. "I just don't want my kids to turn out to be like me."
And there's silence, until the woman who asked the question stands, and now it's her turn to cry, and she says, "Why wouldn't you want your kids to turn out to be like you? You are loving, you are kind, you are gentle, you are wise. I hope your kids turn out to be like you." And a thousand total perfect strangers stand, and they will not stop clapping, and all Mario can do is hold his face in his hands, so overwhelmed with the emotion that this room full of people, strangers, had returned him to himself, and they were returned to themselves, and I think that's the only praise God has any interest in.
No kinship, no peace, no kinship, no justice, no kinship, no equality. Graduates, you go from here to stand at the margins, because that's the only way they get erased, and you brace yourselves, because the world will accuse you of wasting your time. But the prophet Jeremiah writes, "In this place of which you say it is a waste, there will be heard again, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voices of those who sing." Make those voices heard, for you go to the margins, not to make a difference, but so that the folks at the margins make you different. And may God bless you as you go from this place.
22 April 2017, Cal Maritime, University in Vallejo, California
The wisest person I ever met in my life, a third-grade dropout. Wisest and dropout in the same sentence is rather oxymoronic, like jumbo shrimp. Like Fun Run, ain’t nothing fun about it, like Microsoft Works. You all don’t hear me. I used to say like country music, but I’ve lived in Texas so long, I love country music now. I hunt. I fish. I have cowboy boots and cowboy … You all, I’m a blackneck redneck. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? No longer oxymoronic for me to say country music, and it’s not oxymoronic for me to say third grade and dropout.
That third grade dropout, the wisest person I ever met in my life, who taught me to combine knowledge and wisdom to make an impact, was my father, a simple cook, wisest man I ever met in my life, just a simple cook, left school in the third grade to help out on the family farm, but just because he left school doesn’t mean his education stopped. Mark Twain once said, “I’ve never allowed my schooling to get in the way of my education.” My father taught himself how to read, taught himself how to write, decided in the midst of Jim Crowism, as America was breathing the last gasp of the Civil War, my father decided he was going to stand and be a man, not a black man, not a brown man, not a white man, but a man. He literally challenged himself to be the best that he could all the days of his life.
I have four degrees. My brother is a judge. We’re not the smartest ones in our family. It’s a third grade dropout daddy, a third grade dropout daddy who was quoting Michelangelo, saying to us boys, “I won’t have a problem if you aim high and miss, but I’m gonna have a real issue if you aim low and hit.” A country mother quoting Henry Ford, saying, “If you think you can or if you think you can’t, you’re right.” I learned that from a third grade drop. Simple lessons, lessons like these. “Son, you’d rather be an hour early than a minute late.” We never knew what time it was at my house because the clocks were always ahead. My mother said, for nearly 30 years, my father left the house at 3:45 in the morning, one day, she asked him, “Why, Daddy?” He said, “Maybe one of my boys will catch me in the act of excellence.”
I want to share a few things with you. Aristotle said, “You are what you repeatedly do.” Therefore, excellence ought to be a habit, not an act. Don’t ever forget that. I know you’re tough. I know you’re seaworthy, but always remember to be kind, always. Don’t ever forget that. Never embarrass Mama. Mm-hmm (affirmative). If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. If Daddy ain’t happy, don’t nobody care, but I’m going to tell you.
Next lesson, lesson from a cook over there in the galley. “Son, make sure your servant’s towel is bigger than your ego.” I want to remind you cadets of something as you graduate. Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity. You all might have a relative in mind you want to send that to. Let me say it again. Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity. Pride is the burden of a foolish person.
John Wooden coached basketball at UCLA for a living, but his calling was to impact people, and with all those national championships, guess what he was found doing in the middle of the week? Going into the cupboard, grabbing a broom and sweeping his own gym floor. You want to make an impact? Find your broom. Every day of your life, you find your broom. You grow your influence that way. That way, you’re attracting people so that you can impact them.
Final lesson. “Son, if you’re going to do a job, do it right.” I’ve always been told how average I can be, always been criticized about being average, but I want to tell you something. I stand here before you before all of these people, not listening to those words, but telling myself every single day to shoot for the stars, to be the best that I can be. Good enough isn’t good enough if it can be better, and better isn’t good enough if it can be best.
Let me close with a very personal story that I think will bring all this into focus. Wisdom will come to you in the unlikeliest of sources, a lot of times through failure. When you hit rock bottom, remember this. While you’re struggling, rock bottom can also be a great foundation on which to build and on which to grow. I’m not worried that you’ll be successful. I’m worried that you won’t fail from time to time. The person that gets up off the canvas and keeps growing, that’s the person that will continue to grow their influence.
Back in the ’70s, to help me make this point, let me introduce you to someone. I met the finest woman I’d ever met in my life. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Back in my day, we’d have called her a brick house. This woman was the finest woman I’d ever seen in my life. There was just one little problem. Back then, ladies didn’t like big old linemen. The Blind Side hadn’t come out yet. They liked quarterbacks and running back. We’re at this dance, and I find out her name is Trina Williams from Lompoc, California. We’re all dancing and we’re just excited. I decide in the middle of dancing with her that I would ask her for her phone number. Trina was the first … Trina was the only woman in college who gave me her real telephone number.
The next day, we walked to Baskin and Robbins Ice Cream Parlor. My friends couldn’t believe it. This has been 40 years ago, and my friends still can’t believe it. We go on a second date and a third date and a fourth date. Mm-hmm (affirmative). We drive from Chico to Vallejo so that she can meet my parents. My father meets her. My daddy. My hero. He meets her, pulls me to the side and says, “Is she psycho?” Anyway, we go together for a year, two years, three years, four years. By now, Trina’s a senior in college. I’m still a freshman, but I’m working some things out. I’m so glad I graduated in four terms, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan.
Now, it’s time to propose, so I talk to her girlfriends, and it’s California. It’s in the ’70s, so it has to be outside, have to have a candle and you have to some chocolate. Listen, I’m from the hood. I had a bottle of Boone’s Farm wine. That’s what I had. She said, “Yes.” That was the key. I married the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my … You all ever been to a wedding and even before the wedding starts, you hear this? “How in the world?” It was coming from my side of the family. We get married. We have a few children. Our lives are great.
One day, Trina finds a lump in her left breast. Breast cancer. Six years after that diagnosis, me and my two little boys walked up to Mommy’s casket and, for two years, my heart didn’t beat. If it wasn’t for my faith in God, I wouldn’t be standing here today. If it wasn’t for those two little boys, there would have been no reason for which to go on. I was completely lost. That was rock bottom. You know what sustained me? The wisdom of a third grade dropout, the wisdom of a simple cook.
We’re at the casket. I’d never seen my dad cry, but this time I saw my dad cry. That was his daughter. Trina was his daughter, not his daughter-in-law, and I’m right behind my father about to see her for the last time on this Earth, and my father shared three words with me that changed my life right there at the casket. It would be the last lesson he would ever teach me. He said, “Son, just stand. You keep standing. You keep stand … No matter how rough the sea, you keep standing, and I’m not talking about just water. You keep standing. No matter what. You don’t give up.” I learned that lesson from a third grade dropout, and as clearly as I’m talking to you today, these were some of her last words to me. She looked me in the eye and she said, “It doesn’t matter to me any longer how long I live. What matters to me most is how I live.”
I ask you all one question, a question that I was asked all my life by a third grade dropout. How you living? How you living? Every day, ask yourself that question. How you living? Here’s what a cook would suggest you to live, this way, that you would not judge, that you would show up early, that you’d be kind, that you make sure that that servant’s towel is huge and used, that if you’re going to do something, you do it the right way. That cook would tell you this, that it’s never wrong to do the right thing, that how you do anything is how you do everything, and in that way, you will grow your influence to make an impact. In that way, you will honor all those who have gone before you who have invested in you. Look in those unlikeliest places for wisdom. Enhance your life every day by seeking that wisdom and asking yourself every night, “How am I living?” May God richly bless you all. Thank you for having me here.
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Here is the full speech
14 December 2014, St Ignatius, University of San Francisco, USA
Thank you very much. My father’s commencement speaker was the great Martin Luther King.
My Father was 20 years old and didn’t show up for that talk so thank you for showing up! Thank you Dean Davis, President Fitzgerald, my friend Dr. Mark Cannice, the rest of the distinguished faculty and invited guests, the families, especially the parents, especially the parents who labored to get here financially, medically...emotionally...and can I get an Amen for the University of San Francisco graduates! I’m honored you graduates would spend such a special moment of your lives with me.
Of course you didn’t really have a choice. I was President Fitzgerald’s decision - a decision by a man who has lived, studied and worked all over the world including Germany, France, Switzerland, Mexico, China and Kenya and who decided I was the one for you to listen to before getting your diplomas.
Really? This Is a question some of those parents who labored to get here may be asking themselves. I mean c’mon, there are 3 other Jon Fishers to choose from in the Bay Area alone and all of them are billionaires!
If it’s any consolation, I don’t think President Fitzgerald was simply inspired in his choice. Some of you graduates attended my lectures at USF - I haunted this university for the last decade banging my fist on chalkboards and desks - pleading with you guys, as you started your projects, your companies, your careers, to marry the right person.
The most traditionally successful people I know were divorced and they told me sacrificing their families wasn’t worth it. Hold your children up high as your greatest inventions because they are.
I invented something many of you use every day and it doesn’t compare to any day with a happy, healthy child.
Don’t step on anyone’s neck to advance your cause, never sue anyone and try not to get sued - you will sleep better at night. I have never been a party to a lawsuit in my technology career and Amen to that!
My wife and I don’t put work before our daughter or each other. The engineers in my company, with similar families, and I have been together for most of our professional lives. We don't waste time commuting to offices to look over shoulders because we trust each other.
We don’t have a holiday party. We don’t have each other over for dinner. We get it done then we see our families.
We’re like a less good looking, legal, married with children version of the Ocean’s Eleven team.
We build good companies that great companies buy and take around the world as our path of least resistance to contributing to the world. Building smaller companies takes a lot less capital and therefore a lot less risk and therefore less of a personal toll. And this works in other industries - financially, my companies look a lot like Seth Rogen's movies - a strict budget, an acceptably sized audience, although much smaller than a blockbuster. He seems like a pretty happy guy too.
I accepted President Fitzgerald’s invitation because I think you can hear the siren call in your lives without it leading to you crashing against the rocks and I think that’s worth sharing.
Not everything in Silicon Valley or any industry or life for that matter need be portrayed as home runs or strike-outs - success or failure - it’s just what you hear about so often because it's what sells newspapers.
You can have an idea that doesn’t yield a better way to do your job or give rise to a new company but changes your life. What’s that worth?
I agreed to join my primary school board that changed my life. I leaned about parenting and education and philanthropy and what motivates people.
Maybe you’ll have an idea about attacking global warming or hatred or poverty or truth in news reporting and maybe you’ll pursue none of those things except you’ll speak from your heart about them to inspire the person you’re going to marry.
I had the idea to give this speech exactly 7 years ago to the day. I sat in this church right there. It was December 14, 2012 that was the day all those children were lost in the Sandy Hook shooting. I wondered what someone standing up here would say to us that day and then I wondered what I would to say to you that day. I thought in an increasingly unrecognizable world- my life trajectory should be recognizable to you.
You can do it. You can do what I’ve done, that is you can be happy in your career and family
And if you want the world to know your name and you’re willing to risk it all to get there, I applaud you, really, and I wish you every success - just remember my name as your back up plan.
I do hope you return to Saint Ignatius once in awhile as I have. I always walked out of this church on a hill feeling better - even on that Sandy Hook day - feeling at the center of things.
Salesforce built the greatest skyscraper in the land just two miles from here for a reason. My father taught physics at both San Francisco State and Stanford and often it was easier to get the great physicists of the century to speak in San Francisco.
About 80% of you graduating today do not call San Francisco your home city but more of you will stay.
A major wealth manager in San Francisco called me last month specifically to ask for a USF graduate to be his chief of staff - a sensitive position for someone he could really trust. I forwarded to President Fitzgerald, Dean Davis and Dr. Cannice all of whom responded enthusiastically in minutes to try to help you. Dr. Cannice later mentioned you should all not take your first position out there quite so seriously as there will be many opportunities.
Returning again today, I know the opportunity to speak to you in this place and time may be my apex at age 46 for a variety of reasons including both sets of parents are still relatively happy and healthy and get to be a part of this. My family is here today. My mother-in-law is here who believes all of this - career, family, inspiration, all of it, is due to grand design. My mother believes this is all due to chance. I think it’s somewhere in the middle.
By the way, this was also the exact opening of my wedding vows. I continued, promising my wife that I would meet her in the middle of our disagreements whether or not they were about our mothers. And while I think having a loving family creates memorable moments that may result in chemical changes in the brain to make us more creative, I think we should also follow Jack Warner’s advice to Einstein paraphrasing “you have your theory of relatively and I have mine - don’t hire a relative.”
I have a house on a hill now that’s built into a cliff - into the rock. “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall..." Matthew 7-24. And Amen to that.
I see these guys eulogizing their fathers from time to time on CNN and it’s so tough and my own father is right here. And he is , not was , is a great father. He’s really good guy you know? I aspire to that. I aspire to that first before anything else.
And my mother is great - she literally stood in front of me to protect from the world at times.
And my wife - I couldn’t have imagined winding up with such a loving and patient and good person in my life that she got from her mother. And it with such humility that I witness all of this passed down to our little girl. Maybe you’ll see her at the reception - she shines. I took the only path to see you along Tiburon Blvd where some of the most well meaning and resourceful people in town can’t seem to change daily driving habits to fix the traffic problem.
So it is in most towns. How do we sacrifice a lot to save the planet if we can’t even sacrifice a little?
The Union of concerned scientists just forecasted that nearly 4,400 homes in Marin County will be underwater in less than 30 years because of sea level rise so we’ll have to do something. My generation, yours, we will have to do something. For now, I keep searching for ideas like taking our daughter to school on an electric tandem bike. We count the idling cars we pass in traffic. It’s something.
We named our daughter after Emerson who wrote “do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail"
Your degrees today, your work to come are the means to leave a trail. Your family is another. I will look for you in this church in the years to come as you build and find your happiness.
Thank you USF and Go Dons!
20 May 2012, Yale, Connecticut, USA
You look absolutely marvellous. What a sight. Good afternoon. Congratulations to this wonderful class of 2012. Exuberant graduates, relieved parents, loving friends and exhausted professors. I am really so honoured that you've given me the privilege to address me in what is so a special a day for you and special to me as well. My hats off to you. I want to tell you first about this hat. When I arrived I was greeted by a most wonderful and welcoming lady master Pamela Laurens and who said to me, "Would you like to go upstairs and wash up?" I said, "I don't think I need to." She said, looking at me, "Yes, you're right. You already are washed up." Where is Pamela? Anyway, she made up for it. This is her hat. As you heard a few years ago I wrote my memoir. It was called audition. To me life has been a continuous audition.
While writing the book I had to do some research on my family including my paternal grandmother Lilly whom I had never met. She was evidently a very elegant and fastidious woman. On her deathbed she turned to her seven children and told them that she was a virgin. They said, "Well, how is that possible. We are here three sons and four daughters. You must have done something with grandpa." She said, "Yes, I did but I never participated." When I was asked if I would come here today if I would talk with you I said to myself, "These kids are smarter than I am. These kids are younger than I am. They are better educated, but by God I am going to participate." It's a daunting task, because I'm used to talking every day on television, usually with four other women who interrupt me all the time. Today it's a great joy to be able to speak uninterrupted. I was trying to think of what I could tell you that's going to make the least bit of difference in your lives, even 10 minutes from now.
When I went to college I went to a very small college called Sarah Lawrence, back in the middle ages. I had a professor who became very well known. His name was Joseph Campbell and he exhorted us all to follow our bliss. Do what you love, follow your bliss and you will truly be successful. It was great advice, except when I graduated from college I hadn't a clue what I really loved. I had no bliss to follow. When I look at all of you today I think many of you do know what your bliss is. Graduate school, or medicine or law or biology, ecology, sociology. How about none of the above? How many of you in this graduating class truly know what your bliss is? Raise your hands. Isn't that interesting. Not that great a number. How many of you do not know what your bliss is? Raise your hands. Don't be afraid. Most of us don't. I didn't find my bliss until I was in my 30s and then by luck. That's another story.
When you walk out of here and everybody, every friend, every family member says, "What are you going to do? What are you going to do?" Just tell them you haven't yet found your bliss. I did finally find my bliss and I have had a professionally blessed life. As you learned I've interviewed every US president and first lady since Abraham Lincoln. The terrible thing is, is that there are some of you out there who really believe that. It's really been since Richard Nixon. I have interviewed world leaders from Fidel Castro to Vladimir Putin and this past December Syria's Bashar Assad. I should know something about leadership and some message that I could give you. I decided that what I could offer you most today is the wisdom and the stories of some of the most thoughtful people that I have been fortunate enough to talk with over the years. I think their words, rather than just mine, may help to answer your own questions and your own quest for bliss.
Much of what I will talk to you about has to do with choices and much of what you will be facing tomorrow and in the years ahead are choices. Let's start at the top with President Barack Obama, as it happens, as you heard, I interviewed him on the view just this past Tuesday. I asked privately if he had followed his bliss. He said yes. He became a community organiser. Then I asked what jobs does he think are available during these tough economic times. He said the best jobs right now are in science and engineering. If that is your bliss you are fortunate. You will be among the few with a job open for you. In the newer interview I asked the president what, as a young man, he thought he would be doing.
This is what he answered; "I had a bunch of different schemes. For a while I thought I might end up being an architect. I like the idea of building buildings. I didn't know what happened to that. I still really admire architects and I love looking at buildings. Then for a while I thought that I might be a basketball player until I realised that I wasn't good enough to be a professional basketball player. I thought I might be a judge, but then I decided after going to law school that I was probably a little too restless to sit on the bench all day long. The one thing I know I didn't expect was that I was going to be president of the United States." I said, "Well, when you've named all the things you couldn't be, the only thing left is to be president. Isn't it?" He said, "Yeah, I guess if you've got to find some use for yourself this isn't a bad way of doing it."
From president to a woman who wanted to be president, one day she still may be, and that is our secretary of state, Hillary Clinton; One of the most admired women in the world and her personal story is very much about choices. At one point in her history she had one of the biggest choices a person could make. A president's fall from grace, a marriage in shambles, a nation embraced. This from an interview with Hillary Clinton in 2005; "You're life has been about taking chances and making choices Mrs. Clinton. What is the biggest choice that you had to make?"
She said, "Staying married to my husband. I'm often asked why Bill and I stayed together. All I know is that nobody understands me better. No one can make me laugh the way Bill does. Even after all these years he is still the most interesting, energising and fully alive person I have ever met. Everyone has a choice every single day about how to live your life. I know that many people looking at my life would say, 'Oh my goodness. How tough.' I look at it differently. I look at the lessons that I've learned, the opportunities that I've had." I ask, "What's the most important lesson you learned?"
She said that life is a gift and that we learn as we go and that love and hope and faith are truly the most important gifts that we can have and that we can give to one another and that when something difficult happens you have to decide what's important to you, what your priorities are. You have to listen hard to your own heart. There are always going to be people who have different ideas about decisions and choices that you should make, but ultimately we are born alone, we die alone and the life we make, the journey we take is really up to us. From Hillary Clinton to the Dalai Lama. He's one of my all time favourite leaders. A man without a country, a man regarded by many as a God who calls himself a teacher and was given his title when he was two years old, the exiled Dalai Lama of Tibet. I went to talk with him and Dharamsala in India. As you know he's been exiled from Tibet.
I went because we were doing a two hour special called Heaven; Where Is It And How Do We Get There? I talked to a great many religious leaders from the different faiths. Most said the purpose of life is to go to heaven or to paradise. The Dalai Lama, when I asked, said, "The purpose of life is to be happy. How do you get to be happy? Through compassion and warmheartedness. You achieve those qualities in part by abandoning all negative thoughts and feelings of competition." For about three days after the interview I practised what the Dalai Lama had taught me. I practised compassion. I was extremely warm hearted. I was not jealous. I had no negative thinking. I smiled a lot. I was so warmhearted and I was exceedingly boring. In truth, the Dalai Lama did give me a lot to aspire to. His was not a lesson lost. Compassion and warmheartedness. So simple and so hard to do. I've tried to practise both.
While I'm speaking of compassion I want to say a few words to this graduating class about friendship. Look around. Look at the people next to you, the people behind you. The people you say may be the most important take away of your years here. The friends that you have made here at Yale may be the best experience you could have. They will continue to be a part of your life long after you may, heaven forbid, forget the name of your professor and even whatever he taught you. I have little family. I have one daughter. My friends are my family and your friends have been the steady part of your growing experience here at Yale. Treasure them. Make the effort to stay in touch with them beyond Facebook. Treat them with compassion and warm heartedness. Do not lose your friends from your life.
Well, I want to talk now about having it all. Men and women today are faced with choices that a of your parents and grandparents didn't have that is you want to have a private life that's important as well as a career. You want to be involved with your children. You don't want to leave it up to daddy or leave it up to parents. How do you have it all? There are still choices that you will make. One of the greatest problems you will face and one of the greatest joys and perhaps triumphs is balancing this life. The career, the relationship, whatever it may be, the children. I thought what I would do, really because I just love it and it's fun, to tell you about Katharine Hepburn. Do you know who she is? Good. Well, some of you are saying, "Who? Which? What?" She was a great actress. She died in 2003 at the age of 96 and she was a beloved icon, in part because she was so definite about everything. She talked like this and she was very definite.
I remember coming back from the Middle East and we were talking about something. She said, "I see things in black and white. Don't you?" I said, "I've just gotten back from the Middle East. I'm afraid I see things in shades of grey." She said, "Well, I pity you." I talked with her. She had married once very young. Never married again and had a long affair with the actor Spencer Tracy. She had a great career. She never had children and she did not have a great marriage. I said, "Can you have a career and a marriage and children?" She said, "You couldn't when I started. At least you couldn't have a marriage that would please me because the ladies are going to have to be careful that they don't all marry morons." I said, "Why?"
She said, "Well, because they don't deliver the goods as wives. We're very confused. Sexually very confused. Look at the birds and the beast and the male and the female. There are very definite types. We're getting awfully confused. I put on pants 50 years ago and declared a middle road, but I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man." I said, "How so?" She said, "Well, I've just done what I damn well wanted to and I made enough money to support myself and I ain't afraid of being alone." I said, "Is it so hard to have it all? The marriage, the children, the career? I think myself it's very tough. Much of my life has been a balancing act."
She said, "It's impossible. If I were a man I would not marry a woman with a career and I would torture myself as a mother. Suppose little Johnny or little Katie had the mumps and I had an opening night? I'd want to strangle the children. I would really want to strangle the children. I'd be thinking to myself I've got to get into the mood. What's the matter with him. Then out of my way." You see? I said, "If you were a man you would not marry a woman with a career?" She said, "I wouldn't be that big a fool. I'd want her to be interested in me, not a career. A career is fascinating. I don't know what the hell the women are going to do, or the men, so welcome to the life of choices." Then my favourite part of the interview did not have to do with choices.
I said to her, "Do you remember the last time we talked? I did something that I have regretted ever since. We were talking about your getting on and you said, which people don't remember, you said, 'I'm like an old tree.' I said, 'What kind of a tree?' You said, 'I'm like an oak tree.' I said, 'Right, everybody forgets that you said you were like a tree.' On my obituary it's going to say she asked people what kind of tree they want to be. Why did she ask that wonderful Katharine Hepburn what kind of a tree, right?'"
She said, "I wonder what kind of a tree people are all the time. Don't you?" Do you ever wonder what kind of a tree your best friend is?" "Well," she said, "You didn't mean that question? I look out and I know I'm not that damn sycamore in the backyard that drops his branches and is liable to kill people. I'm not a silly piddling little tree. I am a wonderful oak tree. I saw one this big around in the woods. A while oak with branches that go right through the wall. Great like that." Symbolic. That's okay.
Speaker 2: I'll take it off.
Barbara Walters: You'll take it off. We were talking earlier when I was having lunch with some of you about Margaret Thatcher. I didn't write down her interview because I didn't know how many of you would remember her, but then I realised that there was a movie, The Iron Lady. What I learned from Margaret Thatcher was how to live with failure. She had been the first female prime minister, the longest raining prime minister. Then her own party kicked her out. I interviewed her right after she was no longer prime minister. She was in a very depressed stage. She said, "The telephone rings and I think I must answer it and I must go back to Downing Street and then I realise that isn't me." She said it is so important, and you're so young now, and you're just beginning, but you will, I hope not, but you will perhaps have some failure. You will be able to go on, add a new chapter, have a more interesting time even. When I went to ABC to be the first female co-anchor of a network news programme I was a total flop.
The headlines in the paper said, "Barbara Walters, a flop." I was in anguish, but the best thing that happened to me was that I had to work my way back. That's when I did all the interviews that we've talked about. If you have a failure you will rise. You will be fine. You will work your way back. Do not sink into why me, woes me. It's not my fault. To give you an example of that I want to read to you the words of a man named Christopher Reeve. I'm reading this to you because life, sometimes, brings enormous difficulties and challenges that seem just too hard to bear, but bear them you can and bear them you will. Your life can have a purpose. Christopher Reeve's life did. Let me remind you of who he was. He was a fine actor. He was famous for playing Superman in films and he was superb athlete. He sailed, he skiied. Most of all he was a great horseman until 1995 when his horse failed to jump over a hurdle in a riding competition.
The horse fell, he fell with it. He found himself completely paralysed from the neck down, this man who had been this adventurer and actor and athlete. His wife came into him and she said, "Chris, if you want us we will find the way to pull the plug." He was lying in bed with the tubes, completely immobile. She said, "Remember, you are still you." Which had two connotations. You are still you and you are still you. She left the room and a doctor came in, in a white coat with a heavy accent. The doctor said, "I'm a proctologist. Turn over." Reeve looked at this doctor as if he were insane. The doctor said, "I told you. I told you. Turn over." As he was about to try to find some way of getting a nurse, or someone instead of this crazy doctor, he looked up and he realised it was Robin Williams. He had gone to Julliard with Robin Williams and he burst out laughing.
He said, "If I can laugh I can live." These are the words of Christopher Reeve. "You gradually discover, as I'm discovering, that your body is not you. The mind and the spirit must take over. That's the challenge as you move from obsessing about why me and it's not fair and when will I move again, and move into well, what is the potential. Now I see opportunities and potential I wasn't capable of seeing. Every moment is more intense and valuable then it ever was. I've received over 100,000 letters from all over the world. It makes you wonder why do we need disasters to really feel and appreciate each other? I'm overwhelmed by people's support of me. If I can help people understand that this can happen to anybody that's worth it right there, so I really think being in a journey." I said, "Do you think you will walk again?" He said, "I think it's very possible that I will walk again." "And if you don't?"
"Then I won't walk again. As simple as that. Either you do or you don't. It's like a game of cards," he said. "If you think the game is worthwhile then you just play the hand you're dealt. Sometimes you get a lot of face cards and sometimes you don't. I think the game is worthwhile. I really do." He got to the point, after years of doing exercise and experiments where he could breath without a respirator in this throat. For the first time, because he didn't have the tube in his throat, he could smell a rose or taste coffee. That was an enormous accomplishment. He had some feeling in his chest. When I hugged him, the last time I saw him, he could feel the pressure. He could feel the hug. He made a good life, Christopher Reeve did, with his wife Dana and their three children. He lectured, directed films, raised millions of dollars and the consciousness of scientists to promote research into stem cells hoping that he would be able to cure the thousands of people suffering from spinal cord injury.
His life, though very hard, had meaning and purpose. His death in October of 2004 was a great loss. What have I tried to say to you as you enter this brand new chapter of your life and what I hope is going to be a long and fulfilling life with a lot of different hats that you'll be wearing? Don't worry about finding your bliss right now. Not even our president knew what his bliss was, nor did I. One of these days, to your own surprise, your bliss will find you.
No matter what you do don't be like my grandma Lilly. Participate. Be there full force, full heart, full steam ahead. In making choices when in doubt trust your gut. Does this feel right? Does this feel good? Remember the decision is ultimately yours alone to make. Remember this today when you're talking with parents, friends, grandparents. The decision is ultimately yours alone to make. When jealous, angry or afraid try compassion and warmheartedness. Nourish your friends and finally whatever hand you are dealt I hope you will find the game worthwhile. I do. Rarely have I been happier with the hand that I have been dealt then I am today with the honour and pleasure of meeting you. I thank you and I hope that your life will be like a great white oak. I thank you.
7 June 2007, Harvard, Massachussets, USA
President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:
I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”
I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.
I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.
Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.
Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.
One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.
I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.
What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.
But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.
I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.
But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.
It took me decades to find out.
You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.
Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?
For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.
During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.
We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.
If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”
So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”
The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.
But you and I have both.
We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.
If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.
I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.
I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.
All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.
The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.
To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.
Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.
But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”
The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.
We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.
If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.
Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.
Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.
The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.
Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.
The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.
You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.
But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.
I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.
What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?
You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.
Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.
The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.
Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”
Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.
The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.
The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.
At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.
We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.
Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.
What for?
There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?
Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:
Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?
Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?
Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.
My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.
Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.
You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.
Knowing what you know, how could you not?
And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
Good luck.
13 May 2007, University of Southern California, USA
Well, no doubt many of you are wondering why the speaker is so old. Well, the answer is obviously he hasn’t died yet.
And why was the speaker chosen? Well, I don’t know that either. I like to think that the development department had nothing to do with it. Whatever the reason I think it’s very fitting that I'm sitting here because I see one crowd of faces in the rear not wearing robes, and I know, from having educated an army of descendants, who really deserves a lot of the honors that are being given are the people here upfront. The sacrifice and the wisdom and the value transfer that comes from one generation to the next can never be underrated.
And that gives me enormous pleasure as I look at this sea of Asian faces to my left. All my life I’ve admired Confucius. I like the idea of filial piety, the idea that there are values that are taught and duties that come naturally and all that should be passed on to the next generation. And you people who don’t think there’s anything in this idea, please note how fast these Asian faces are rising in American life. I think they have something.
All right, I scratched out a few notes and I’m going to try and just give an account of some ideas and attitudes that have worked well for me. I don’t claim that they are perfect for everybody. Although I think many of them are pretty close to universal values and many of them are can’t fail ideas.
What are the core ideas that have helped me?
Well, luckily, I got at a very early age the idea that the safest way to try and get what you want is to try and deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule so to speak. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. There is no ethos, in my opinion, that is better for any lawyer or any other person to have.
By and large, the people who have this ethos win in life and they don’t win just money, just honors and emoluments. They win the respect, the deserved trust, of the people they deal with, and there is huge pleasure in life to be obtained from getting deserved trust. And so the way to get it is to deliver what you’d want to buy if the circumstances were reversed.
Occasionally, you find a perfect rogue of a person, who dies rich and widely known. But mostly, these people are fully understood by the surrounding civilization, and when the cathedral is full of people at the funeral ceremony, most of them are there to celebrate the fact that the person is dead.
And that reminds me of the story of the time when one of these people died and the minister said, “It’s now time for someone to say something nice about the deceased.”
And nobody came forward.
And nobody came forward.
And nobody came forward.
And finally one man came up and he said, “Well, his brother was worse.”
That is not where you want to go! That’s not the kind of funeral you want to have. You'll leave entirely the wrong example.
A second idea that I got very early was that there is no love that’s so right as admiration-based love, and that love should include the instructive dead. Somehow, I got that idea and I lived with it all my life and it’s been very very useful to me.
A love like that celebrated by Somerset Maugham and his book “Of Human Bondage”… that’s a sick kind of love, it’s a disease. And if you find yourself in a disease like that my advice to you is turn around and fix it. Eliminate it.
Another idea that I got, and this may remind you of Confucius too, is that wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not something you do just to advance in life. Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty.
And there’s a corollary to that proposition which is very important. It means that you’re hooked for lifetime learning, and without lifetime learning you people are not going to do very well. You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You’re going to advance in life by what you’re going to learn after you leave here.
If you take Berkshire Hathaway, which is certainly one of the best-regarded corporations in the world and may have the best long-term investment record in the entire history of civilization, the skill that got Berkshire through one decade would not have sufficed to get it through the next decade with the achievements made. Without Warren Buffett being a learning machine, a continuous learning machine, the record would have been absolutely impossible.
The same is true at lower walks of life. I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than when they got up and boy does that help—particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.
Alfred North Whitehead said it one time that “the rapid advance of civilization came only when man invented the method of invention” and, of course, he was referring to the huge growth of GDP per capita and all the other good things that we now take for granted, which started a few hundred years ago and before that all was stasis.
So, if civilization can progress only when it invents the method of invention, you can progress only when you learn the method of learning.
I was very lucky. I came to law school having learned the method of learning and nothing has served me better in my long life than continuous learning. And if you take Warren Buffett and watched him with a time clock, I would say half of all the time he spends is sitting on his ass and reading. And a big chunk of the rest of the time is spent talking one on one either on the telephone or personally with highly gifted people whom he trusts and who trust him. In other words, it looks quite academic, all this worldly success.
Academia has many wonderful values in it. I came across such a value not too long ago. It was several years ago, in my capacity as a hospital board chairman. I was dealing with a medical school academic. And this man over years of hard work had made himself know more about bone tumor pathology than almost anybody else in the world. And he wanted to pass this knowledge on to the rest of us.
And how was he going to do it? Well, he decided to write a textbook that would be very useful to other people. And I don’t think a textbook like this sells two thousand copies if those two thousand copies are in all the major cancer centers in the world.
He took a year sabbatical, he sat down in front of his computer and he had all the slides because he saved them and organized them and filed them. He worked 17 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a year and that was his sabbatical. At the end of the year, he had one of the great bone tumor pathology textbooks in the world. When you’re around values like that, you want to pick up as much as you can.
Another idea that was hugely useful to me was that I listened in law school when some wag said, “A legal mind is a mind that when two things are all twisted up together and interacting, it's feasible to think responsibly about one thing and not the other.”
Well, I could see from that one sentence that was perfectly ridiculous, and it pushed me further into my natural drift, which was into learning all the big ideas and all the big disciplines so I wouldn’t be a perfect damn fool who was trying to think about one aspect of something that couldn’t be removed from the totality of the situation in a constructive fashion. And what I noted, since the really big ideas carry 95 percent of the freight, it wasn’t at all that hard for me to pick up all the big ideas and all the big disciplines and make them a standard part of my mental routines.
Once you have the ideas, of course, they are no good if you don’t practice. You don’t practice, you lose it.
So, I went through life constantly practicing this model of disciplinary approach. Well, I can’t tell you what that’s done for me. It’s made life more fun. It’s made me more constructive. It’s made me more helpful to others. It’s made me enormously rich. You name it, that attitude really helps.
Now there are dangers there, because it works so well, that if you do it, you will frequently find you are sitting in the presence of some other expert—maybe even an expert that’s superior to you, supervising you—and you will know more than he does about his own specialty, a lot more. You will see the correct answer when he’s missed it.
That is a very dangerous position to be in. You can cause enormous offense by helpfully being right in a way that causes somebody else to lose face. And I never found a perfect way to solve that problem. I was a great poker player when I was young, but I wasn’t a good enough poker player so people failed to sense that I thought I knew more than they did about their subjects, and it gave a lot of offense. Now I’m just regarded as eccentric, but it was a difficult period to go through. And my advice to you is to learn sometimes to keep your light under a bushel.
One of my colleagues, also number one in his class in law school—a great success in life, worked for the supreme court, etc.—he knew a lot and he tended to show it as a very young lawyer and one day the senior partner called him in and said, “Listen, Chuck, I want to explain something to you. Your duty under any circumstances is to behave in such a way that the client thinks he’s the smartest person in the world. If you have any little energy and insight available after that, use it to make your senior partner look like the smartest person in the world. And only after you’ve satisfied those two obligations do you want your light to shine at all.”
Well, that may be very good advice for rising in a large firm. It wasn’t what I did. I always obeyed the drift of my nature and if other people didn’t like it I didn’t need to be adored by everybody.
Another idea, and by the way, when I talk about this multidisciplinary attitude I’m really following a very key idea of the greatest lawyer of antiquity, Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero is famous for saying, “A man who doesn’t know what happened before he was born goes through life like a child.” That is a very correct idea of Cicero’s. And he’s right to ridicule somebody so foolish as not to know what happened before he was born.
But if you generalize Cicero as I think one should, there are all these other things that you should know in addition to history, and those other things are the big ideas in all the other disciplines. And it doesn’t help you just to know them enough just so you can prattle them back on an exam and get an A. You have to learn these things in such a way that they’re in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life.
If you do that, I solemnly promise you that one day you’ll be walking down the street and look to your right and left and think, “My heavenly days! I’m now one of the few most competent people of my whole age forward.” If you don’t do it, many of the brightest of you will live in the middle ranks or in the shallows.
Another idea that I got—and it was encapsulated by that story the Dean recounted about the man who wanted to know where he was going to die and he wouldn’t go there—that rustic let that idea have a profound truth in his hand.
The way complex adaptive systems work and the way mental constructs work; problems frequently get easier and I would even say usually are easier to solve if you turn around in reverse. In other words, if you want to help India, the question you should ask is not, “How can I help India?” You think, “What’s doing the worst damage in India? What would automatically do the worst damage and how do I avoid it?”
You’d think they are logically the same thing, they’re not. Those of you who have mastered algebra know that inversion frequently will solve problems which nothing else will solve. And in life, unless you’re more gifted than Einstein, inversion will help you solve problems that you can't solve in other ways.
But to use a little inversion now, “What will really fail in life? What do you want to avoid?”
Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability. If you’re unreliable, it doesn’t matter what your virtues are, you’re going to crater immediately. So doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability.
Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one’s mind. You’ve seen that. You see a lot of it on TV. You know preachers, for instance, you know they’ve all got different ideas about theology and a lot of them have minds that are made of cabbage. But that can happen with political ideology. And if you're young, it’s easy to drift into loyalties. And when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind so you want to be very careful with this ideology. It’s a big danger.
In my mind, I got a little example I use whenever I think about ideology and it’s these Scandinavian canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools in the Aaron Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100 percent. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology.
I have what I call an “iron prescription” that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is I say, “I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it.” I think only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.
Now, you can say that’s too much of an iron discipline. It’s not too much of an iron discipline. It’s not even that hard to do. It sounds a lot like the iron prescription of Ferdinand the Great, “It’s not necessary to hope in order to persevere.” That probably is too tough for most people. I don’t think it’s too tough for me, but it's too tough for most people.
But this business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very very important thing in life if you want to have more correct knowledge and be wiser than other people. A heavy ideology is very likely to do you in.
Another thing, of course, that does one in is the self-serving bias to which we are all subject. You think that your little me is entitled to do what it wants to do and, for instance, why shouldn’t the true little me overspend my income?
Well, there once was a man who became the most famous composer in the world, but he was utterly miserable most of the time and one of the reasons was he always overspent his income. That was Mozart. If Mozart can’t get by with this kind of asinine conduct, I don’t think you should try it.
Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought. Self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse. You do not want to drift into self-pity.
I have a friend who carried a big stack of linen cards about this thick, and when somebody would make a comment that reflected self-pity, he would take out one of the cards, take the top one off the stack and hand it to the person, and the card said, “Your story has touched my heart. Never have I heard of anyone with as many misfortunes as you.”
Well, you can say that’s waggery, but I suggest that every time you find you’re drifting into self-pity—I don’t care what the cause, your child could be dying of cancer, self-pity is not going to improve the situation—just give yourself one of those cards. It’s a ridiculous way to behave and when you avoid it you get a great advantage over everybody else, almost everybody else, because self-pity is a standard condition and yet you can train yourself out of it.
And, of course, a self-serving bias, you want to get out of yourself: thinking that what’s good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on the subconscious tendency to serve one’s self. It’s a terribly inaccurate way to think and, of course, you want to drive that out of yourself because you want to be wise, not foolish.
You also have to allow for the self-serving bias of everybody else, because most people are not gonna remove it all that successfully, the only condition being what it is. If you don’t allow for self-serving bias in your conduct, again, you’re a fool.
I watched the brilliant Harvard Law Review-trained general counsel of Salomon lose his career. And what he did was, when the CEO was aware some underling had done something wrong, the general counsel said, “Gee, we don’t have any legal duty to report this, but I think it’s what we should do. It’s our moral duty.”
Of course, the general counsel was totally correct, but, of course, it didn’t work. It was a very unpleasant thing for the CEO to do and he put it off and put it off and, of course, everything eroded into a major scandal and down went the CEO and the general counsel with him.
The correct answer in situations like that was given by Ben Franklin. He said, “If you want to persuade, appeal to interest not to reason.” The self-serving bias is so extreme. If the general counsel said, “Look, this is going to erupt. It’s something that will destroy you, take away your money, take away your status. It’s a perfect disaster.” It would have worked! You want to appeal to interest. You want to do it of lofty motives, but you should not avoid appealing to interest.
Another thing: perverse incentives. You don’t want to be in a perverse incentive system that’s causing you to behave more and more foolishly or worse and worse. Incentives are too powerful a controller of human cognition and human behavior, and one of the things you are going to find in some modern law firms is billable hour quotas and I could not have lived under a billable hour quota of 2,400 hours a year. That would have caused serious problems for me. I wouldn’t have done it and I don’t have a solution for you for that. You have to figure it out for yourself, but it’s a significant problem.
And you particularly want to avoid working directly under somebody you really don't admire and don't want to be like. It's very dangerous. We're all subject to control to some extent by authority figures—particularly authority figures that are rewarding us. And that requires some talent.
The way I solved that is I figured out the people I did admire and I maneuvered cleverly, without criticizing anybody, so I was working entirely under people I admired. And a lot of law firms will permit that if you're shrewd enough to work it out. And your outcome in life will be way more satisfactory and way better if you work under people you really admire. The alternative is not a good idea.
Objectivity maintenance. Well, we all remember that Darwin paid special attention to disconfirming evidence, particularly to disconfirm something he believed and loved. Well, objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you’re going to be a correct thinker. And they were talking about Darwin’s attitude—special attention to the disconfirming evidence—and also to checklist routines. Checklist routines avoid a lot of errors. You should have all this elementary wisdom and then you should go through and have a checklist in order to use it. There is no other procedure that will work as well.
A last idea that I found very important is I realized very early that non-egality would work better in the parts of the world I wanted to inhabit. What do I mean by non-egality? I mean John Wooden, when he was the number one basketball coach in the world. He just said to the bottom five players, “You don't get to play. You're sparring partners.”
The top seven did all the playing. Well, the top seven learned more—remember the learning machine—because they were doing all the playing. And when he got to that system, why, Wooden won more than he'd ever won before.
I think the game of life, in many respects, is getting a lot of practice into the hands of the people that have the most aptitude to learn and the most tendency to be learning machines. And if you want the very highest reaches of human civilization, that’s where you have to go. You do not want to choose a brain surgeon for your child among fifty applicants, all of them just take turns during the procedure. You don’t want your airplanes designed that way. You don’t want your Berkshire Hathaway’s run that way. You want to get the power into the right people.
I frequently tell the story of Max Planck, when he won the Nobel prize and went around Germany giving lectures on quantum mechanics. And the chauffeur gradually memorized the lecture and he said, “Would you mind, professor Planck, just because it's so boring staying in our routines, would you mind if I gave the lecture this time and you just sat in front with my chauffeur's hat?” And Planck said, “Sure.”
And the chauffeur got up and he gave this long lecture on quantum mechanics, after which a physics professor stood up in the rear and asked a perfectly ghastly question. And the chauffeur said, “Well, I'm surprised that in an advanced city like Munich I get such an elementary question. I'm going to ask my chauffeur to reply.”
Well, the reason I tell that story is not entirely to celebrate the quick wittiness of the protagonist. In this world, we have two kinds of knowledge. One is Planck knowledge—the people who really know. They've paid the dues, they have the aptitude.
Then, we've got chauffeur knowledge—they have learned to prattle the talk and they have a big head of hair. They may have fine timbre in the voice. They really make a hell of an impression. But in the end, they've got chauffeur knowledge. I think I've just described practically every politician in the United States.
And you are going to have the problem in your life of getting the responsibility to the people with the Planck knowledge and away for the people who have the chauffeur knowledge. And there are huge forces working against you.
My generation has failed you to some extent. We are delivering to you, in California, a legislature where only the certified nuts from the left and the certified nuts from the right are allowed to serve and none of them are removable. That’s what my generation has done for you, but you wouldn’t like it to be too easy would you?
Another thing that I found is an intense interest of the subject is indispensable if you are really going to excel. I could force myself to be fairly good in a lot of things, but I couldn’t be really good in anything where I didn’t have an intense interest. So, to some extent, you’re going to have to follow me. If at all feasible you want to drift into doing something in which you really have a natural interest.
Another thing you have to do, of course, is have a lot of assiduity. I like that word because it means “sit down in your ass until you do it.”
I’ve had marvelous partners all my life. I think I got them partly because I tried to deserve them and, partly, because I was wise enough to select them and, partly, maybe it was some luck. But two partners that I chose for one little phase of my life had the following rule and they created a little design-build construction team. And they sat down and said, “Two-man partnership. Divide everything equally. Here’s the rule: Whenever we're behind in our commitments to other people, we will both work 14 hours a day until we're caught up.”
Well, needless to say, that firm didn’t fail! The people died rich. It’s such a simple idea.
Another thing, of course, is life will have terrible blows, horrible blows, unfair blows. Doesn’t matter. And some people recover and others don’t. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well. Every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something and your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion. That is a very good idea.
And you may remember the epitaph which Epictetus left for himself: “Here lies Epictetus, a slave, maimed in body, the ultimate in poverty, and favored of the gods.”
Well, that’s the way Epictetus is now remembered. He said big consequences. And he was favorite of the Gods! He was favored because he became wise, and he became manly. Very good idea.
I got a final little idea because I’m all for prudence as well as opportunism. My grandfather was the only federal judge in his city for nearly forty years and I really admired him. I’m his namesake. And I’m Confucian enough that, even now, I sit here and I’m saying, “Well, Judge Munger would be pleased to see me here.”
So I'm Confucian enough, all these years after my grandfather is dead, to carry the torch for my grandfather's values. And, grandfather Munger was a federal judge at a time when there were no pensions for widows of federal judges. So if he didn't save from his income, why, my grandmother would have been in penury. And being the kind of man he was he underspent his income all his life and left her in comfortable circumstances.
Along the way, in the thirties, my uncle's bank failed and couldn't reopen. And my grandfather saved the bank by taking over a third of his assets—good assets—and putting them into the bank and taking the horrible assets in exchange. And, of course, it did save the bank.
While my grandfather took a loss, he got most of his money back eventually. But I've always remembered the example. And so when I got to college and I came across Houseman, I remember the little poem from Houseman, and that went something like this:
“The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers' meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.”
You can say, “Who wants to go through life anticipating trouble?” Well, I did! All my life, I've gone through life anticipating trouble. And here I am, well along on my eighty-fourth year, and like Epictetus, I've had a favored life. It didn't make me unhappy to anticipate trouble all the time and be ready to perform adequately if trouble came. It didn't hurt me at all. In fact, it helped me. So I quick claim to you Houseman and Judge Munger.
The last idea that I want to give you, as you go out into a profession that frequently puts a lot of procedure, and a lot of precautions, and a lot of mumbo-jumbo into what it does, this is not the highest form which civilization can reach. The highest form that civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust. Not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another.
That's the way an operating room works at the Mayo Clinic. If a bunch of lawyers were to introduce a lot of process, the patients would all die. So never forget, when you're a lawyer, that you may be rewarded for selling this stuff, but you don't have to buy it. In your own life, what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust. And if your proposed marriage contract has forty-seven pages, my suggestion is you not enter.
Well, that’s enough for one graduation. I hope these ruminations of an old man are useful to you. In the end, I’m like the Old Valiant-for-Truth in The Pilgrim’s Progress: “My sword I leave to him who can wear it.”
Self portrait, Arno Rafael Minkkinen
June 2004, New England School of Photography, Waltham, Masachussets, USA
We are in the midst of sea change – a tidal wave might be more accurate – with the medium of photography. While the lens is still firmly fixed to the camera body, the body itself appears to have imploded. The inner workings, that is—the guts of the camera from Talbot’s days (when cameras were called “mousetraps” by his wife who was always tripping over them) have changed faster than anyone expected.
The digital camera, the D-SLR, has become the new tool for lens-based professionals and artists almost overnight. Everywhere. We all have them now. But the pictures have not changed. Nor have the ground rules for making them. The need for pictures that make a mark on our lives, that give meaning to experience, that park themselves deep in our consciousness, the way new music always does, has never been greater, the appetite for lens-based visual culture stands above most other mediums of communication hands down.
In the art world, photography has stepped forward as the most important art medium of our times.
Roberta Smith, writing for New York Times a few years back, put it this way (and I am paraphrasing here): “In the last 30 years no medium has had a more profound effect on art than the medium of photography.” This, mind you, comes from one of America’s foremost critics of sculpture!
There is a bus station in Helsinki I want to introduce you to, a bus station just next to Eliel Saarinen’s famous train station. Surrounded by Jugenstil architectural gems like the National Theater and the National Art Museum, the bus station makes a cool backdrop for Magnum wannabees armed with D-SLRs and vintage Leica’s.
You might find yourself there sometime, too.
But getting back to the bus station and what makes it famous, at least among the students I teach at UMass Lowell, the University of Art & Design Helsinki, École d’Art Appliqués in Lausanne, or the many workshops I give in Tuscany, Maine and Santa Fe, is the metaphor it offers students and professionals alike for creative continuity in a life-long journey in photography, the metaphor it provides to young artists seeking to discover their own unique vision one day.
The Helsinki Bus Station: let me describe what happens there.
Some two-dozen platforms are laid out in a square at the heart of the city. At the head of each platform is a sign posting the numbers of the buses that leave from that particular platform. The bus numbers might read as follows: 21, 71, 58, 33, and 19.
Each bus takes the same route out of the city for a least a kilometer stopping at bus stop intervals along the way where the same numbers are again repeated: 21, 71, 58, 33, and 19.
Now let’s say, again metaphorically speaking, that each bus stop represents one year in the life of a photographer, meaning the third bus stop would represent three years of photographic activity.
Ok, so you have been working for three years making platinum studies of nudes. Call it bus #21.
You take those three years of work on the nude to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the curator asks if you are familiar with the nudes of Irving Penn. His bus, 71, was on the same line. Or you take them to a gallery in Paris and are reminded to check out Bill Brandt, bus 58, and so on.
Shocked, you realize that what you have been doing for three years others have already done.
So you hop off the bus, grab a cab (because life is short) and head straight back to the bus station looking for another platform.
This time you are going to make 8×10 view camera color snapshots of people lying on the beach from a cherry picker crane.
You spend three years at it and three grand and produce a series of works that elicit the same comment: haven’t you seen the work of Richard Misrach? Or, if they are steamy black and white 8×10 camera view of palm trees swaying off a beachfront, haven’t you seen the work of Sally Mann?
So once again, you get off the bus, grab the cab, race back and find a new platform. This goes on all your creative life, always showing new work, always being compared to others.
What to do?
It’s simple. Stay on the bus. Stay on the f*cking bus.
Why, because if you do, in time you will begin to see a difference.
The buses that move out of Helsinki stay on the same line but only for a while, maybe a kilometer or two. Then they begin to separate, each number heading off to its own unique destination. Bus 33 suddenly goes north, bus 19 southwest.
For a time maybe 21 and 71 dovetail one another but soon they split off as well, Irving Penn is headed elsewhere.
It’s the separation that makes all the difference, and once you start to see that difference in your work from the work you so admire (that’s why you chose that platform after all), it’s time to look for your breakthrough.
Suddenly your work starts to get noticed. Now you are working more on your own, making more of the difference between your work and what influenced it.
Your vision takes off.
And as the years mount up and your work takes begins to pile up, it won’t be long before the critics become very intrigued, not just by what separates your work from a Sally Mann or a Ralph Gibson, but by what you did when you first got started!
You regain the whole bus route in fact. The vintage prints made in twenty years ago are suddenly re-evaluated, and for what it is worth, start selling at a premium.
At the end of the line—where the bus comes to rest and the driver can get out for a smoke or better yet a cup of coffee—that’s when the work is done. It could be the end of your career as an artist or the end of your life for that matter, but your total output is now all there before you, the early (so-called) imitations, the breakthroughs, the peaks and valleys, the closing masterpieces, all with the stamp of your unique vision.
Why, because you stayed on the bus.
When I began photography I was enamored with the work of Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, and Jerry Uelsmann. I was on their platforms. Each told me that it was possible to use your mind to make pictures. As a copywriter on the Minolta account (before I became a photographer) I wrote: “What happens inside your mind can happen inside a camera.” I took that credo and made it my own. Not with multiple images like Uelsmann or in sequences like Michals. But it was Ralph Gibson’s images that haunted me.
There was this one picture in particular of hands coming up over the prow of boat he made in 1970 that I loved. I had picture of my foot coming over the prow of a Finnish rowboat the other way made in 1976. I am sure his image had inspired mine even though I wasn’t thinking about it when I made my picture.
In 1989, there was a show in Antibes called Three Masters of the Surreal with Eikoh Hosoe, the great Japanese master, Ralph Gibson, and humbly, myself. At the party after the vernissage, I told Ralph about my trepidations when I first began photography. He nodded his head and said, “When I first saw your work (this was in 1975 or thereabouts), I had that feeling of something familiar.” But then he was quick to add: “But you know, it didn’t take you long to find your way.”
I had found the difference. Ralph went on to photograph women and walls, color and surreal light. I continued my bus route less haunted, more assured.
So, our best chance of making our voice and vision heard is to find that common attribute by which the work can be recognized, by which audiences are made curious. It can happen early, as my teacher Harry Callahan stated it: you never get much better than your first important works. And they come soon.
At an auction in London at Sotheby’s a few years back, one of my pieces came up for bidding. It shows my upside down face with mouth wide open on a boardwalk in Narragansett, Rhode Island. When the auctioneer announced the piece, certainly he or she didn’t describe it as a student work, which, in fact, it was. I had made it for Harry’s class.
And it is why I teach. Teachers who say, “Oh, it’s just student work,” should maybe think twice about teaching.
Georges Braque has said that out of limited means, new forms emerge. I say we find out what we will do by knowing what we will not do.
And so, if your heart is set on 8×10 platinum landscapes in misty southern terrains, work your way through those who inspire you, ride their bus route and damn those who would say you are merely repeating what has been done before. Wait for the months and years to pass and soon your differences will begin to appear with clarity and intelligence, when your originality will become visible, even the works from those very first years of trepidation when everything you did seemed so done before.
We can do a whole lot of things in art, become ten different artists, but if we do that, there is great danger that we will communicate very little in the end. I say ride the bus of your dreams and stay the course.
In closing, I now want to take you to Switzerland where I also teach.
Stand back, stand back, far enough so you can see your own mountain top, then head straight for it knowing it will disappear from sight for most of your life as you meander the hidden forest trails that lift you ever higher even as many sections force you to drop down into the mountainside pockets of disappointment or even despair, but you will be climbing soon enough and always headed towards your goal.
There will be those special occasions, and may there be many of them, when the fruits of your labors are suddenly made visible, to be celebrated, when you will again see that peak, only closer now, giving you the confidence to step forward ever more briskly and bravely.
At one point the tree line will thin out the way hair on the top of old man begins to bald away but air will be clear and the path sure.
At the top you will delight in what you have accomplished as much as become aware of peaks far higher than what you had ever dreamed of, peaks that from the distance when you first saw them were hard to judge for their heights.
But now you see them way up there but your climbing days are done.
If you look up to those lofty peaks with raging jealousy, you will end your days in sadness and regret.
If you look down at the path you came up, you can become proud or even arrogant if you like of every step you took.
But if you skim the horizon with your eyes and take in the gorgeous sweep of panorama before you, you will know peace and rare humility.
We do not have to be number one in this world. We only have to be number one to ourselves. There is a special peace that comes with such humility, one that showers respect on you from your peers both above and below you.
When you reach this peak in life, you’ve reached the highest peak of them all.
God can’t bless both sides of a football field any more than she or he should bless one country over another.
You can’t be number one without having a number deux, tres, quatro, or funf.
It’s a lesson we are back in the classrooms of America learning I think. I hope.
When I see bumper stickers that read my son made the dean’s list, I see all the sons and daughters that didn’t. Tracey Moffatt has this poignant series of works dedicated to athletes who’ve come in fourth place: no gold, no silver, not even bronze. Being number uno? Stardom is no dream to chase. We just need to be good. And make good work.
So, be the caretaker of your vision. Make it famous. And above all, remember, that art is risk made visible.
Good luck and see you out there. You’re going to be great.
1 June 2018, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA
I want to start with a story. One night, on my surgery rotation, during my third year of medical school, I followed my chief resident into the trauma bay in the emergency department. We’d been summoned to see a prisoner who’d swallowed half a razor blade and slashed his left wrist with the corner of the crimp on a toothpaste tube. He was about thirty, built like a boxer, with a tattooed neck, hands shackled to the gurney, and gauze around his left wrist showing bright crimson seeping through.
The first thing out of his mouth was a creepy comment about the chief resident, an Asian-American woman. I won’t say what he said. Just know he managed in only a few words to be racist, sexist, and utterly menacing to her. She turned on her heels, handed me the clipboard, and said, “He’s all yours.”
I looked at the two policemen with him to see what they were going to do. I don’t know what I expected. That they’d yell at him? Beat him? But they only looked at me impassively, maybe slightly amused. He was all mine.
So what now?
Graduates, wherever you go from here, and whatever you do, you will be tested. And the test will be about your ability to hold onto your principles. The foundational principle of medicine, going back centuries, is that all lives are of equal worth.
This is a radical idea, one ultimately inscribed in our nation’s founding documents: we are all created equal and should be respected as such. I do not think it a mere coincidence that among the fifty-six founding fathers who signed the declaration of our independence was a physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush. He was a committed revolutionary and abolitionist precisely because of his belief in the principle.
We in medicine do not always live up to that principle. History has been about the struggle to close the gap between the aspiration and the reality. But when that gap is exposed—when it turns out that some people get worse or no treatment because of their lack of money, lack of connections, background, darker skin pigment, or additional X chromosome—we are at least ashamed about it. We believe a C.E.O. and a cabbie with the same heart disease deserve the same chance at survival.
Hospitals are one of the very few places left where you encounter the whole span of society. Walking the halls, you begin to understand that the average American is someone who has a high-school education and thirty thousand dollars a year in per-capita earnings, out of which thirty per cent goes to taxes and another thirty per cent to housing and health-care costs. (These Americans are also told, by the way, that people like them, the majority of the population, have no future in a knowledge economy, because, hey, what can anyone do about it, anyway?) Working in health care, you also know, more than most, that we incarcerate more people than any other economically developed country; that thirty per cent of adults carry a criminal arrest record; that seven million people are currently incarcerated, on parole, or on probation; and that a massive and troubling proportion of all of them are mentally ill or black.
Most people don’t have this broad vantage. We all occupy our own bubbles. Trust in others, even our neighbors, is at an historic low. Much of society has become like an airplane boarding line, with different rights and privileges for zones one to ninety-seven, depending on your wealth, frequent-flier miles, credit rating, and S.A.T. scores; and many of those in line think—though no one likes to admit it—that they deserve what they have more than the others behind them. Then the boarding agent catches some people from zone eighty-four jumping ahead of the people in zone fifty-seven, and all hell breaks loose.
Insisting that people are equally worthy of respect is an especially challenging idea today. In medicine, you see people who are troublesome in every way: the complainer, the person with the unfriendly tone, the unwitting bigot, the guy who, as they say, makes “poor life choices.” People can be untrustworthy, even scary. When they’re an actual threat—as the inmate was for my chief resident—you have to walk away. But you will also see lots of people whom you might have written off prove generous, caring, resourceful, brilliant. You don’t have to like or trust everyone to believe their lives are worth preserving.
We’ve divided the world into us versus them—an ever-shrinking population of good people against bad ones. But it’s not a dichotomy. People can be doers of good in many circumstances. And they can be doers of bad in others. It’s true of all of us. We are not sufficiently described by the best thing we have ever done, nor are we sufficiently described by the worst thing we have ever done. We are all of it.
Regarding people as having lives of equal worth means recognizing each as having a common core of humanity. Without being open to their humanity, it is impossible to provide good care to people—to insure, for instance, that you’ve given them enough anesthetic before doing a procedure. To see their humanity, you must put yourself in their shoes. That requires a willingness to ask people what it’s like in those shoes. It requires curiosity about others and the world beyond your boarding zone.
We are in a dangerous moment because every kind of curiosity is under attack—scientific curiosity, journalistic curiosity, artistic curiosity, cultural curiosity. This is what happens when the abiding emotions have become anger and fear. Underneath that anger and fear are often legitimate feelings of being ignored and unheard—a sense, for many, that others don’t care what it’s like in their shoes. So why offer curiosity to anyone else?
Once we lose the desire to understand—to be surprised, to listen and bear witness—we lose our humanity. Among the most important capacities that you take with you today is your curiosity. You must guard it, for curiosity is the beginning of empathy. When others say that someone is evil or crazy, or even a hero or an angel, they are usually trying to shut off curiosity. Don’t let them. We are all capable of heroic and of evil things. No one and nothing that you encounter in your life and career will be simply heroic or evil. Virtue is a capacity. It can always be lost or gained. That potential is why all of our lives are of equal worth.
In medicine, you are asked to open yourself to others’ lives and perspectives—to people as well as to circumstances you do not and perhaps will not understand. This is part of what I love most about this profession. It aims to sustain bedrock values that matter across all of society.
But the work of preserving those values is hard. When I began my story, I made a point of not telling you the inmate’s crime, although one of the policemen told me. I wasn’t sure whether it’d change how open you’d be to putting yourself in my shoes as I wrestled with what to do.
The man’s vital signs were normal. He had no abdominal tenderness. An X-ray showed the razor hadn’t perforated his gastrointestinal tract. I put on gloves and unwrapped his blood-soaked dressing. I held pressure. He’d made numerous slashes but none deep enough to reach an artery. I’d heard that inmates sometimes swallowed blades wrapped in cellophane or inflicted wounds on themselves that, though not life-threatening, were severe enough to get them time out of prison. This man had done both.
I tried to summon enough curiosity to wonder what it had taken to push him over that edge, but I couldn’t. I only saw a bully. As I reluctantly set about suturing together the long strips of skin on his forearm, he kept up a stream of invective: about the hospital, the policemen, the inexpert job I was doing. I don’t do well when I feel humiliated. I had the urge to tell him to shut up and be a little appreciative. I thought about abandoning him.
But he’d controlled himself enough to hold still for my ministrations. And I suddenly remembered a lesson a professor had taught about brain function. When people speak, they aren’t just expressing their ideas; they are, even more, expressing their emotions. And it’s the emotions that they really want heard. So I stopped listening to the man’s words and tried to listen for the emotions.
“You seem really angry and like you feel disrespected,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I am. I am angry and disrespected.”
His voice changed. He told me that I have no idea what it was like inside. He’d been in solitary for two years straight. His eyes began to water. He calmed down. I did, too. For the next hour, I just sewed and listened, trying to hear the feelings behind his words.
I didn’t understand him or like him. But all it took to see his humanity—to be able to treat him—was to supply that tiny bit of openness and curiosity.
Graduates, you have studied for thousands of hours on end. You will be licensed to make diagnoses and prescribe an armament of drugs and procedures. Most of all, you will be given trust to see human beings at their most vulnerable and serve them. That trust is earned because of your values, your commitment to serving all as equals, and your openness to people’s humanity. The renewal of these values is why we’re all so grateful to be here—and so grateful that you will carry those values on, beyond us.
1 March 2010, Plebe Class, West Point, New York, USA
My title must seem like a contradiction. What can solitude have to do with leadership? Solitude means being alone, and leadership necessitates the presence of others—the people you’re leading. When we think about leadership in American history we are likely to think of Washington, at the head of an army, or Lincoln, at the head of a nation, or King, at the head of a movement—people with multitudes behind them, looking to them for direction. And when we think of solitude, we are apt to think of Thoreau, a man alone in the woods, keeping a journal and communing with nature in silence.
Leadership is what you are here to learn—the qualities of character and mind that will make you fit to command a platoon, and beyond that, perhaps, a company, a battalion, or, if you leave the military, a corporation, a foundation, a department of government. Solitude is what you have the least of here, especially as plebes. You don’t even have privacy, the opportunity simply to be physically alone, never mind solitude, the ability to be alone with your thoughts. And yet I submit to you that solitude is one of the most important necessities of true leadership. This lecture will be an attempt to explain why.
We need to begin by talking about what leadership really means. I just spent 10 years teaching at another institution that, like West Point, liked to talk a lot about leadership, Yale University. A school that some of you might have gone to had you not come here, that some of your friends might be going to. And if not Yale, then Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and so forth. These institutions, like West Point, also see their role as the training of leaders, constantly encourage their students, like West Point, to regard themselves as leaders among their peers and future leaders of society. Indeed, when we look around at the American elite, the people in charge of government, business, academia, and all our other major institutions—senators, judges, CEOs, college presidents, and so forth—we find that they come overwhelmingly either from the Ivy League and its peer institutions or from the service academies, especially West Point.
So I began to wonder, as I taught at Yale, what leadership really consists of. My students, like you, were energetic, accomplished, smart, and often ferociously ambitious, but was that enough to make them leaders? Most of them, as much as I liked and even admired them, certainly didn’t seem to me like leaders. Does being a leader, I wondered, just mean being accomplished, being successful? Does getting straight As make you a leader? I didn’t think so. Great heart surgeons or great novelists or great shortstops may be terrific at what they do, but that doesn’t mean they’re leaders. Leadership and aptitude, leadership and achievement, leadership and even excellence have to be different things, otherwise the concept of leadership has no meaning. And it seemed to me that that had to be especially true of the kind of excellence I saw in the students around me.
See, things have changed since I went to college in the ’80s. Everything has gotten much more intense. You have to do much more now to get into a top school like Yale or West Point, and you have to start a lot earlier. We didn’t begin thinking about college until we were juniors, and maybe we each did a couple of extracurriculars. But I know what it’s like for you guys now. It’s an endless series of hoops that you have to jump through, starting from way back, maybe as early as junior high school. Classes, standardized tests, extracurriculars in school, extracurriculars outside of school. Test prep courses, admissions coaches, private tutors. I sat on the Yale College admissions committee a couple of years ago. The first thing the admissions officer would do when presenting a case to the rest of the committee was read what they call the “brag” in admissions lingo, the list of the student’s extracurriculars. Well, it turned out that a student who had six or seven extracurriculars was already in trouble. Because the students who got in—in addition to perfect grades and top scores—usually had 10 or 12.
So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.” I had no doubt that they would continue to jump through hoops and ace tests and go on to Harvard Business School, or Michigan Law School, or Johns Hopkins Medical School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey consulting, or whatever. And this approach would indeed take them far in life. They would come back for their 25th reunion as a partner at White & Case, or an attending physician at Mass General, or an assistant secretary in the Department of State.
That is exactly what places like Yale mean when they talk about training leaders. Educating people who make a big name for themselves in the world, people with impressive titles, people the university can brag about. People who make it to the top. People who can climb the greasy pole of whatever hierarchy they decide to attach themselves to.
But I think there’s something desperately wrong, and even dangerous, about that idea. To explain why, I want to spend a few minutes talking about a novel that many of you may have read, Heart of Darkness. If you haven’t read it, you’ve probably seen Apocalypse Now, which is based on it. Marlow in the novel becomes Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen. Kurtz in the novel becomes Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando. But the novel isn’t about Vietnam; it’s about colonialism in the Belgian Congo three generations before Vietnam. Marlow, not a military officer but a merchant marine, a civilian ship’s captain, is sent by the company that’s running the country under charter from the Belgian crown to sail deep upriver, up the Congo River, to retrieve a manager who’s ensconced himself in the jungle and gone rogue, just like Colonel Kurtz does in the movie.
Now everyone knows that the novel is about imperialism and colonialism and race relations and the darkness that lies in the human heart, but it became clear to me at a certain point, as I taught the novel, that it is also about bureaucracy—what I called, a minute ago, hierarchy. The Company, after all, is just that: a company, with rules and procedures and ranks and people in power and people scrambling for power, just like any other bureaucracy. Just like a big law firm or a governmental department or, for that matter, a university. Just like—and here’s why I’m telling you all this—just like the bureaucracy you are about to join. The word bureaucracy tends to have negative connotations, but I say this in no way as a criticism, merely a description, that the U.S. Army is a bureaucracy and one of the largest and most famously bureaucratic bureaucracies in the world. After all, it was the Army that gave us, among other things, the indispensable bureaucratic acronym “snafu”: “situation normal: all fucked up”—or “all fouled up” in the cleaned-up version. That comes from the U.S. Army in World War II.
You need to know that when you get your commission, you’ll be joining a bureaucracy, and however long you stay in the Army, you’ll be operating within a bureaucracy. As different as the armed forces are in so many ways from every other institution in society, in that respect they are the same. And so you need to know how bureaucracies operate, what kind of behavior—what kind of character—they reward, and what kind they punish.
So, back to the novel. Marlow proceeds upriver by stages, just like Captain Willard does in the movie. First he gets to the Outer Station. Kurtz is at the Inner Station. In between is the Central Station, where Marlow spends the most time, and where we get our best look at bureaucracy in action and the kind of people who succeed in it. This is Marlow’s description of the manager of the Central Station, the big boss:
He was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold. . . . Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy—a smile—not a smile—I remember it, but I can’t explain. . . . He was a common trader, from his youth up employed in these parts—nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust—just uneasiness—nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . . faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. . . . He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him—why? . . . He originated nothing, he could keep the routine going—that’s all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one pause.
Note the adjectives: commonplace, ordinary, usual, common. There is nothing distinguished about this person. About the 10th time I read that passage, I realized it was a perfect description of the kind of person who tends to prosper in the bureaucratic environment. And the only reason I did is because it suddenly struck me that it was a perfect description of the head of the bureaucracy that I was part of, the chairman of my academic department—who had that exact same smile, like a shark, and that exact same ability to make you uneasy, like you were doing something wrong, only she wasn’t ever going to tell you what. Like the manager—and I’m sorry to say this, but like so many people you will meet as you negotiate the bureaucracy of the Army or for that matter of whatever institution you end up giving your talents to after the Army, whether it’s Microsoft or the World Bank or whatever—the head of my department had no genius for organizing or initiative or even order, no particular learning or intelligence, no distinguishing characteristics at all. Just the ability to keep the routine going, and beyond that, as Marlow says, her position had come to her—why?
That’s really the great mystery about bureaucracies. Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all. Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they’re done. Just keeping the routine going.
I tell you this to forewarn you, because I promise you that you will meet these people and you will find yourself in environments where what is rewarded above all is conformity. I tell you so you can decide to be a different kind of leader. And I tell you for one other reason. As I thought about these things and put all these pieces together—the kind of students I had, the kind of leadership they were being trained for, the kind of leaders I saw in my own institution—I realized that this is a national problem. We have a crisis of leadership in this country, in every institution. Not just in government. Look at what happened to American corporations in recent decades, as all the old dinosaurs like General Motors or TWA or U.S. Steel fell apart. Look at what happened to Wall Street in just the last couple of years.
Finally—and I know I’m on sensitive ground here—look at what happened during the first four years of the Iraq War. We were stuck. It wasn’t the fault of the enlisted ranks or the noncoms or the junior officers. It was the fault of the senior leadership, whether military or civilian or both. We weren’t just not winning, we weren’t even changing direction.
We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of expertise. What we don’t have are leaders.
What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.
Now some people would say, great. Tell this to the kids at Yale, but why bother telling it to the ones at West Point? Most people, when they think of this institution, assume that it’s the last place anyone would want to talk about thinking creatively or cultivating independence of mind. It’s the Army, after all. It’s no accident that the word regiment is the root of the word regimentation. Surely you who have come here must be the ultimate conformists. Must be people who have bought in to the way things are and have no interest in changing it. Are not the kind of young people who think about the world, who ponder the big issues, who question authority. If you were, you would have gone to Amherst or Pomona. You’re at West Point to be told what to do and how to think.
But you know that’s not true. I know it, too; otherwise I would never have been invited to talk to you, and I’m even more convinced of it now that I’ve spent a few days on campus. To quote Colonel Scott Krawczyk, your course director, in a lecture he gave last year to English 102:
From the very earliest days of this country, the model for our officers, which was built on the model of the citizenry and reflective of democratic ideals, was to be different. They were to be possessed of a democratic spirit marked by independent judgment, the freedom to measure action and to express disagreement, and the crucial responsibility never to tolerate tyranny.
All the more so now. Anyone who’s been paying attention for the last few years understands that the changing nature of warfare means that officers, including junior officers, are required more than ever to be able to think independently, creatively, flexibly. To deploy a whole range of skills in a fluid and complex situation. Lieutenant colonels who are essentially functioning as provincial governors in Iraq, or captains who find themselves in charge of a remote town somewhere in Afghanistan. People who know how to do more than follow orders and execute routines.
Look at the most successful, most acclaimed, and perhaps the finest soldier of his generation, General David Petraeus. He’s one of those rare people who rises through a bureaucracy for the right reasons. He is a thinker. He is an intellectual. In fact, Prospect magazine named him Public Intellectual of the Year in 2008—that’s in the world. He has a Ph.D. from Princeton, but what makes him a thinker is not that he has a Ph.D. or that he went to Princeton or even that he taught at West Point. I can assure you from personal experience that there are a lot of highly educated people who don’t know how to think at all.
No, what makes him a thinker—and a leader—is precisely that he is able to think things through for himself. And because he can, he has the confidence, the courage, to argue for his ideas even when they aren’t popular. Even when they don’t please his superiors. Courage: there is physical courage, which you all possess in abundance, and then there is another kind of courage, moral courage, the courage to stand up for what you believe.
It wasn’t always easy for him. His path to where he is now was not a straight one. When he was running Mosul in 2003 as commander of the 101st Airborne and developing the strategy he would later formulate in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual and then ultimately apply throughout Iraq, he pissed a lot of people off. He was way ahead of the leadership in Baghdad and Washington, and bureaucracies don’t like that sort of thing. Here he was, just another two-star, and he was saying, implicitly but loudly, that the leadership was wrong about the way it was running the war. Indeed, he was not rewarded at first. He was put in charge of training the Iraqi army, which was considered a blow to his career, a dead-end job. But he stuck to his guns, and ultimately he was vindicated. Ironically, one of the central elements of his counterinsurgency strategy is precisely the idea that officers need to think flexibly, creatively, and independently.
That’s the first half of the lecture: the idea that true leadership means being able to think for yourself and act on your convictions. But how do you learn to do that? How do you learn to think? Let’s start with how you don’t learn to think. A study by a team of researchers at Stanford came out a couple of months ago. The investigators wanted to figure out how today’s college students were able to multitask so much more effectively than adults. How do they manage to do it, the researchers asked? The answer, they discovered—and this is by no means what they expected—is that they don’t. The enhanced cognitive abilities the investigators expected to find, the mental faculties that enable people to multitask effectively, were simply not there. In other words, people do not multitask effectively. And here’s the really surprising finding: the more people multitask, the worse they are, not just at other mental abilities, but at multitasking itself.
One thing that made the study different from others is that the researchers didn’t test people’s cognitive functions while they were multitasking. They separated the subject group into high multitaskers and low multitaskers and used a different set of tests to measure the kinds of cognitive abilities involved in multitasking. They found that in every case the high multitaskers scored worse. They were worse at distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information and ignoring the latter. In other words, they were more distractible. They were worse at what you might call “mental filing”: keeping information in the right conceptual boxes and being able to retrieve it quickly. In other words, their minds were more disorganized. And they were even worse at the very thing that defines multitasking itself: switching between tasks.
Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.
I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing.
I used to have students who bragged to me about how fast they wrote their papers. I would tell them that the great German novelist Thomas Mann said that a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. The best writers write much more slowly than everyone else, and the better they are, the slower they write. James Joyce wrote Ulysses, the greatest novel of the 20th century, at the rate of about a hundred words a day—half the length of the selection I read you earlier from Heart of Darkness—for seven years. T. S. Eliot, one of the greatest poets our country has ever produced, wrote about 150 pages of poetry over the course of his entire 25-year career. That’s half a page a month. So it is with any other form of thought. You do your best thinking by slowing down and concentrating.
Now that’s the third time I’ve used that word, concentrating. Concentrating, focusing. You can just as easily consider this lecture to be about concentration as about solitude. Think about what the word means. It means gathering yourself together into a single point rather than letting yourself be dispersed everywhere into a cloud of electronic and social input. It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube—and just so you don’t think this is a generational thing, TV and radio and magazines and even newspapers, too—are all ultimately just an elaborate excuse to run away from yourself. To avoid the difficult and troubling questions that being human throws in your way. Am I doing the right thing with my life? Do I believe the things I was taught as a child? What do the words I live by—words like duty, honor, and country—really mean? Am I happy?
You and the members of the other service academies are in a unique position among college students, especially today. Not only do you know that you’re going to have a job when you graduate, you even know who your employer is going to be. But what happens after you fulfill your commitment to the Army? Unless you know who you are, how will you figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life? Unless you’re able to listen to yourself, to that quiet voice inside that tells you what you really care about, what you really believe in—indeed, how those things might be evolving under the pressure of your experiences. Students everywhere else agonize over these questions, and while you may not be doing so now, you are only postponing them for a few years.
Maybe some of you are agonizing over them now. Not everyone who starts here decides to finish here. It’s no wonder and no cause for shame. You are being put through the most demanding training anyone can ask of people your age, and you are committing yourself to work of awesome responsibility and mortal danger. The very rigor and regimentation to which you are quite properly subject here naturally has a tendency to make you lose touch with the passion that brought you here in the first place. I saw exactly the same kind of thing at Yale. It’s not that my students were robots. Quite the reverse. They were intensely idealistic, but the overwhelming weight of their practical responsibilities, all of those hoops they had to jump through, often made them lose sight of what those ideals were. Why they were doing it all in the first place.
So it’s perfectly natural to have doubts, or questions, or even just difficulties. The question is, what do you do with them? Do you suppress them, do you distract yourself from them, do you pretend they don’t exist? Or do you confront them directly, honestly, courageously? If you decide to do so, you will find that the answers to these dilemmas are not to be found on Twitter or Comedy Central or even in The New York Times. They can only be found within—without distractions, without peer pressure, in solitude.
But let me be clear that solitude doesn’t always have to mean introspection. Let’s go back to Heart of Darkness. It’s the solitude of concentration that saves Marlow amidst the madness of the Central Station. When he gets there he finds out that the steamboat he’s supposed to sail upriver has a giant hole in it, and no one is going to help him fix it. “I let him run on,” he says, “this papier-mâché Mephistopheles”—he’s talking not about the manager but his assistant, who’s even worse, since he’s still trying to kiss his way up the hierarchy, and who’s been raving away at him. You can think of him as the Internet, the ever-present social buzz, chattering away at you 24/7:
I let him run on, this papier-mâché Mephistopheles and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt. . . .
It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to . . . the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat. . . . I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit—to find out what I could do. No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work,—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know.
“The chance to find yourself.” Now that phrase, “finding yourself,” has acquired a bad reputation. It suggests an aimless liberal-arts college graduate—an English major, no doubt, someone who went to a place like Amherst or Pomona—who’s too spoiled to get a job and spends his time staring off into space. But here’s Marlow, a mariner, a ship’s captain. A more practical, hardheaded person you could not find. And I should say that Marlow’s creator, Conrad, spent 19 years as a merchant marine, eight of them as a ship’s captain, before he became a writer, so this wasn’t just some artist’s idea of a sailor. Marlow believes in the need to find yourself just as much as anyone does, and the way to do it, he says, is work, solitary work. Concentration. Climbing on that steamboat and spending a few uninterrupted hours hammering it into shape. Or building a house, or cooking a meal, or even writing a college paper, if you really put yourself into it.
“Your own reality—for yourself, not for others.” Thinking for yourself means finding yourself, finding your own reality. Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice, whether it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else. That’s what Emerson meant when he said that “he who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.” Notice that he uses the word lead. Leadership means finding a new direction, not simply putting yourself at the front of the herd that’s heading toward the cliff.
So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself.
Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today. Even if they merely reflect the conventional wisdom of their own day, they say something different from what you hear all the time. But the great books, the ones you find on a syllabus, the ones people have continued to read, don’t reflect the conventional wisdom of their day. They say things that have the permanent power to disrupt our habits of thought. They were revolutionary in their own time, and they are still revolutionary today. And when I say “revolutionary,” I am deliberately evoking the American Revolution, because it was a result of precisely this kind of independent thinking. Without solitude—the solitude of Adams and Jefferson and Hamilton and Madison and Thomas Paine—there would be no America.
So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better. But there’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship. Of course friendship is the opposite of solitude; it means being with other people. But I’m talking about one kind of friendship in particular, the deep friendship of intimate conversation. Long, uninterrupted talk with one other person. Not Skyping with three people and texting with two others at the same time while you hang out in a friend’s room listening to music and studying. That’s what Emerson meant when he said that “the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude.”
Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask. Feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities.
This is what we call thinking out loud, discovering what you believe in the course of articulating it. But it takes just as much time and just as much patience as solitude in the strict sense. And our new electronic world has disrupted it just as violently. Instead of having one or two true friends that we can sit and talk to for three hours at a time, we have 968 “friends” that we never actually talk to; instead we just bounce one-line messages off them a hundred times a day. This is not friendship, this is distraction.
I know that none of this is easy for you. Even if you threw away your cell phones and unplugged your computers, the rigors of your training here keep you too busy to make solitude, in any of these forms, anything less than very difficult to find. But the highest reason you need to try is precisely because of what the job you are training for will demand of you.
You’ve probably heard about the hazing scandal at the U.S. naval base in Bahrain that was all over the news recently. Terrible, abusive stuff that involved an entire unit and was orchestrated, allegedly, by the head of the unit, a senior noncommissioned officer. What are you going to do if you’re confronted with a situation like that going on in your unit? Will you have the courage to do what’s right? Will you even know what the right thing is? It’s easy to read a code of conduct, not so easy to put it into practice, especially if you risk losing the loyalty of the people serving under you, or the trust of your peer officers, or the approval of your superiors. What if you’re not the commanding officer, but you see your superiors condoning something you think is wrong?
How will you find the strength and wisdom to challenge an unwise order or question a wrongheaded policy? What will you do the first time you have to write a letter to the mother of a slain soldier? How will you find words of comfort that are more than just empty formulas?
These are truly formidable dilemmas, more so than most other people will ever have to face in their lives, let alone when they’re 23. The time to start preparing yourself for them is now. And the way to do it is by thinking through these issues for yourself—morality, mortality, honor—so you will have the strength to deal with them when they arise. Waiting until you have to confront them in practice would be like waiting for your first firefight to learn how to shoot your weapon. Once the situation is upon you, it’s too late. You have to be prepared in advance. You need to know, already, who you are and what you believe: not what the Army believes, not what your peers believe (that may be exactly the problem), but what you believe.
How can you know that unless you’ve taken counsel with yourself in solitude? I started by noting that solitude and leadership would seem to be contradictory things. But it seems to me that solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.
30 May 2010, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA
As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.
At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”
I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”
What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.
Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans — plodding as we are — will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications. I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton — all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.
How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?
I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.
I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.
Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!
June 2018, St Ignatius College, Riverside, Sydney, Australia
Full video is on SBS website, where story first ran
I’ve been working towards this speech for four years. In those four years, I have come to understand who I am and how to not be sorry for being myself.
The first time I told someone I was gay I was 13. It took me 18 months after realising that I was gay to tell my parents. Coming out was a scary experience. Even though I knew my parents loved me there is always a fear that comes with telling those you love something important and I was afraid of changing myself in their eyes.
Life was easier living as the straight eldest son. I had spent so long behind the façade of a confident, heterosexual man that I wasn’t sure if I knew how to be me. I think a part of me wanted to hold onto who I’d always appeared to be … something safe. Announcing yourself to the world is pretty terrifying because… what if the world doesn’t like you?
I decided that it was finally time to tell someone the truth. It wasn’t easy, but I told my mum that I thought I might be gay. She said to me that she loved me and that nothing could change that. The next day my dad simply said: “I don’t mind” and that he’ll “always love me”.
That night I went to bed and knew that I’d done something big – I’d told those closest to me exactly who I was and now I got the chance to be myself. Last year I came out to my two younger brothers and I finally got the chance to exhale. I got to be more me than I had been in a really long time. I found that nothing really had changed with my family.
I was still the boy that my mum teases daily and that my dad relies upon for just about anything to do with technology. After years of not being true to myself and denying who I really was, I had overcome my fear. So, to my wonderful family. Thank you for loving me and accepting me as your son and for letting me be exactly who I am.
While my family handled the news of my sexual identity perfectly, outside of home, being gay has not always been easy. I have been the subject of countless rumours and unpleasant jokes. Telling friends was difficult and came with a lot of anxiety. My main fear was no longer being accepted, of losing my friends, and being the subject of derogatory jokes.
I didn’t know it was possible to be myself at school. I felt that if I was gay - or different - I could never be accepted. I quickly grew tired of hiding behind the mask I’d made for myself.
I struggled with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Sometimes these were made worse due to what might seem like minor things going on in the classroom or playground. For example; we routinely use the word ‘gay’ as a synonym for something bad. Often this term isn’t being used in a homophobic manner but the impact these words can have on a young man coming to terms with his sexuality can be immeasurable. It was these, seemingly small, yet cumulative experiences that made me feel like I would never be accepted.
After a rough week, I talked to my parents and they suggested I see the school counselling team. Seeking support was the first and biggest step towards accepting who I was. Talking to someone when we need help is integral. We need to challenge the belief a lot of men have where we put off asking for help, hoping it will all just go away.
Once I started to accept who I was and realised that I couldn’t do it all alone, I found my life getting a lot brighter. I’ve become a lot happier at school, I’ve met new people and come to understand who my real friends are. All of this seemed impossible to the boy I was a mere 12 months ago.
I’ve been so fortunate over the years to have friends who love and accept me for who I am. My friends have stood by me when things got hard and would step up when I needed support. To the boys who see me having a boyfriend as normal as having a girlfriend, I’d like to say thank you for accepting me and allowing me to be me. Having friends who appreciate you for who you are is one of the most important parts of life. They make the good times even better and help us through the bad ones.
To our school, the teachers, my head of house, to our counsellors, Mr Lowe and Dr Hine, I would also like to say thanks. Thank you for accepting that we are all unique. And that there are many ways for us to be a member of our wolf pack. We are so privileged to be at a school that empowers and respects diversity.
Adolescence is a time for the discovery of oneself, uncovering who you truly are and with that comes the fear and uncertainty of real acceptance. But as I have learned, denying who you are takes away your ability to be accepted by others and to accept others in return. In my experience, denying who you are only limits our ability to be happy and to give happiness. A life living behind a mask is not one any person should have to live.
So, with that in mind, my message to you all is this:
Surround yourself with the people who let you live as your true self and never be afraid of asking for help. Find your own identity and be comfortable with who you are. Being different, whether it’s being gay or being part of another minority group, can be challenging but it does not have to be scary and isolating.
We, the students, have a unique and special opportunity to mould our community to be something great. One of support and encouragement, where we advocate for one another. Where we stand up and care for each other. This means that when it’s time for us to say to the world “this is me, this is who I truly am”, our friends will stand by us and accept us for who we are. Everyone here, sitting in this room is your brother. As your brothers, you might not like them all the time but you’d be damned if you left them to fend for themselves especially if they are struggling or feeling alone.
Be the friends that call out that unintentionally homophobic or racist joke. Stand up for your friend when you hear rumours about what they did on the weekend. Be the change you want to see and others will follow. I believe that this school can become something special. Maybe it will be somewhere safe where we can learn from each other and be who we are, welcoming people who are different than us. But we can only do this together.
I have come a long way from the scared Year 8 boy who would hide in his room in the dark. Since then, I have come to know who I am and what I stand for. Accepting and loving who you are is one of the greatest challenges you will ever encounter. Every person in this room is currently, or will at some point, experience this challenge. No amount of school or tests can teach us to love and accept ourselves and others. But every single one of you can help, in your own way, by accepting others for exactly who they are."
16 May 2018, Yankee Stadium, New York City, USA
Bonjour tout le monde! Merci et félicitations!
I am very happy to be here with you today, deeply honored. Thank you for that kind introduction, Niobe. Andy, it’s wonderful to see you again. I am so grateful for the honor you and NYU have given me today. Now, you know — you may not know, but Andrew is an honorary Canadian and British Columbian because, like me, he studied at the University of British Columbia back in the day. It makes me proud that Canada was part of Andrew’s formation, just as NYU has helped form so many amazing Canadians, including two members of my own staff.
I’m actually told that 180 of the NYU class of 2018 are Canadians. Hello! Welcome, my friends!
I have to say, to be here now, speaking with all of you — in Yankee Stadium, one of the greatest places in one of the greatest cities on Earth — is more than a little humbling. My friends, you are now NYU graduates — the best and the brightest. You have great potential and possibilities. And therefore, you have enormous responsibility, too. So today, I’d like to talk about the nature of both those things, and I’d like to offer you a challenge. One that I think is essential for your future success as individuals, and as the leaders that you are becoming.
Among the many things I admire about NYU, is that about a fifth of the students are international. And a similar proportion are the very first in their families to go to college. This group is truly diverse in every possible way. And I think that is an extraordinarily valuable and important thing. When I graduated in the early 1990s, I went on a trip around the world with a few good friends — who actually remain good friends to this day, which is sort of a miracle.
We trekked and traveled, mostly over land, from Europe to Africa to Asia. And that remains one of the great formative experiences of my life. It was an amazing adventure.
Le voyage s’est aussi avéré essentiel à mon éducation au sens plus large du terme, parce que j’ai dû, pour la première fois en tant qu’adulte, rencontrer, échanger et tisser des liens d’amitié avec des gens qui ne partageaient toujours pas mes opinions, mes expériences, mes idées et mes valeurs.
It was also a really important contributor to my continued, broader education. Because it forced me, really for the first time as an adult, to meet, engage, befriend people whose views and experiences, ideas, values and language were very different from my own. When a kid from Montreal meets a Korean fisherman living in Mauritania, befriends a Russian veteran of their Afghan war, or a shopkeeper and his family living in Danang, interesting conversations always happen. Now, maybe some of you have talked about doing something like a great trip like that after graduation. But I’d be willing to bet one of the first things you heard was a warning: “You can’t do that in this day and age. It’s not safe!” But here’s my question: Is it really just the issue of physical safety that makes our loved ones so anxious at the idea of us getting out there, or is it the threat that if we look past our frames — the frames of our own lives, of our own community’s structured values and belief systems — to truly engage with people who believe fundamentally different things, we could perhaps be transformed into someone new and unfamiliar to those who know and love us?
See, there’s no question that today’s world is more complex than it was in the mid-1990s. There are serious and important problems that we are grappling with and will continue to grapple with.
But we are not going to arrive at mutual respect, which is where we solve common problems, if we cocoon ourselves in an ideological, social or intellectual bubble. Now, we can see it all around us — there’s a peculiar fascination with dystopia in our culture today. You see it everywhere on film and TV, but the truth is that, on balance, we have the good fortune to live in a time of tremendous possibility and potential; a time when it is within our grasp to eliminate extreme poverty, to end terrible diseases like malaria and TB, and to offer a real chance at an education to everyone on this planet.
But for us to move forward, to keep moving and moving forward, we have to do it together — all together. Humanity has to fight our tribal mindset. We go to the same church? Cool, you’re in my tribe. You speak my language? You’re in my tribe. You’re an NYU alumni? You’re in my tribe. You play Pokémon Go? You’re a vegetarian? You like the Yankees? You go to the gun range? You’re pro-choice? Tribe, tribe, tribe. But of course, its not the “belonging” part that is the problem, it’s the corollary: You are part of my tribe, and they are not.
Whether it’s race, gender, language, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic origin, or our beliefs and values themselves — diversity doesn’t have to be a weakness. It can be our greatest strength. Now often, people talk about striving for tolerance. Now, don’t get me wrong: there are places in this world where a little more tolerance would go a long way, but if we’re being honest right here, right now, I think we can aim a little higher than mere tolerance.
Think about it: Saying “I tolerate you” actually means something like, “Ok, I grudgingly admit that you have a right to exist, just don’t get in my face about it, and oh, don’t date my sister.” There’s not a religion in the world that asks you to “tolerate thy neighbor.” So let’s try for something a little more like acceptance, respect, friendship, and yes, even love. And why does this matter? Because, in our aspiration to relevance; in our love for our families; in our desire to contribute, to make this world a better place, despite our differences, we are all the same.
And when you meet and befriend someone from another country or another culture who speaks a different language or who worships differently, you quickly realize this. And here’s my main point, and the challenge I’m offering you today. Our celebration of difference needs to extend to differences of values and belief, too. Diversity includes political and cultural diversity. It includes a diversity of perspectives and approaches to solving problems. See, it’s far too easy, with social media shaping our interactions, to engage only with people with whom we already agree — members of our tribe. Well, this world is and must be bigger than that.
So here is my request: As you go forward from this place, I would like you to make a point of reaching out to people whose beliefs and values differ from your own. I would like you to listen to them, truly listen, and try to understand them, and find that common ground. You have a world of opportunity at your fingertips. But as you go forward from here, understand that just around the corner, a whole different order of learning awaits, in which your teachers will come from every station in life, every education level, every belief system, every lifestyle. And I hope you will embrace that. You have been students, you will continue to learn all your lives, but now it is also time for you to become leaders.
In every generation, leaders emerge because they one day awake to the realization that it’s not up to someone else to fix this problem, or take up that cause. It’s up to them. So now is the time for you to lead.
Leaders. Now, I’m sure that’s a word that’s been tossed around you and at you quite a bit over the past few hours, days, weeks and years. Leaders of tomorrow. Leaders of today. But what does it mean? What attributes does a 21st century leader need to have? What do people need most from their leaders today and tomorrow? Now, I think you need to be brave. Really brave. And I know, when you think of courageous leaders, you think of those folks who stood implacably and fearlessly, anchored in their sense of rightness, willing to pit their ideals against all comers, against the slings and arrows aimed their way. Well, I don’t think that’s brave enough. I don’t think that’s good enough for what our shared future will ask of you. I actually don’t think it’s ever been good enough.
Let me tell you a bit about Wilfrid Laurier, a promising young lawyer at the end of the 19th century, who would go on to become my second-favorite Prime Minister. He was raised and educated as a proud, Catholic French-Canadian, an exemplary representative of one side of the two identities that had come together to found Canada just a few decades before. The two solitudes — the other half being English-speaking, Protestant, and fiercely loyal to the British Crown — accommodated each other, cooperated together, and generally put up with each other to build our country, but still felt all too well the divisions and fault lines that had led them through almost a millennium of tensions and wars between English and French. It was impressed upon young Wilfrid by his teachers and elders that he must stand up unflinchingly for the values and the identity of his heritage, those beliefs and approaches that were his birthright, and would be his legacy. That, they told him, was leadership.
But Wilfrid grew to believe otherwise. He realized that it’s actually easy to stand rooted in the conviction that you are right, and either wait for others to come to you, or wait for your chance to impose your rightness on others. He saw that it’s actually harder to seek compromise, to dig deep into yourself, your ideas and convictions, honestly and rigorously, to see where you can give and where you do need to stand, while opening yourself up to the other point of view, to seek out and find that common ground. And that remains Wilfrid Laurier’s political legacy, more than 100 years later. To let yourself be vulnerable to another point of view — that’s what takes true courage. To open yourself to another’s convictions, and risk being convinced, a little, or a lot, of the validity of their perspective.
Now that’s scary: discovering that someone you vehemently disagree with might have a point. Might even be right. But it shouldn’t be scary, or threatening. Particularly to all of you, who have worked so hard these past years to pursue truth, to learn, to grow. Being open to others is what has gradually led Canadians to the understanding that differences can and must be a source of strength, not of weakness. And I say “gradually,” because 20th century Canadian history is filled with counter-examples and terrible setbacks that we are still trying to remedy today, most notably the systemic marginalization and oppression of Indigenous Peoples. We’re not perfect, of course, but that sense of openness, respect for other points of view, and acceptance of each other really does underpin our approach as we try to solve the great problems of our time. And not because we’re nice — but of course we are — but because by bringing together diverse perspectives, you get a much better shot at meeting those challenges. And that’s how we come back to you and the leaders the world needs you to be.
Leadership has always been about getting people to act in common cause. “We’re going to build a new country! We’re going to war! We’re going to the moon!” It usually required convincing, or coercing, a specific group to follow you. And the easiest way to do that has always been through tribal contrasts: “They believe in a different God! They speak a different language! They don’t want the same things as we do.” But the leadership we need most today and in the years to come is leadership that brings people together. That brings diversity to a common cause. This is the antithesis of the polarization, the aggressive nationalism, the identity politics that have grown so common of late. It’s harder, of course. It’s always been easier to divide than unite. But mostly, it requires true courage. Because if you want to bring people around to your way of thinking, you need to first show them that you are open to theirs. That you are willing to enter into a conversation that might change your mind. Show respect for their point of view, and you have a better chance of actually having them listen to yours. And regardless of what happens, you will have had a genuine exchange that focused on understanding, not on winning a debate or scoring points. And you will both be improved for it.
Let me be very clear: this is not an endorsement of moral relativism or a declaration that all points of view are valid. Female genital mutilation is wrong, no matter how many generations have practiced it. Anthropogenic climate change is real, no matter how much some folks want to deny it. But here’s the question: do you want to win an argument and feel good about how superior you are? Or do you actually want to change behaviors and beliefs? See, it’s been pointed out that one of the many differences between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis was that Davis preferred to win a debate, while Lincoln would rather win the war. And that’s the question: Do you want to win an argument or do you want to change the world?
“With malice toward none, and charity toward all.” Let those greatest words of this country’s greatest president guide your ambitions, your hopes for yourselves, your families, your country, your planet. There is no shortage of cynicism and selfishness in the world. Be their answer, their antidote. I am abundantly optimistic about the future because of you. It is yours to make and mold and shape. The world eagerly awaits, indeed requires, your ideas. Your initiative. Your enterprise. Your energy. Your passion and compassion. Your idealism, and your ambition. But remember that true courage is the essential ingredient in all your efforts.
Congratulations, Class of 2018. Now go change the world.
Merci!
23 May 2018, Harvard Law School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Dean Manning, graduates, class marshalls, families and faculty:
It is such an honor to stand before you today, on this very special day of celebration and accomplishment for you and your families, in this annual season of advice-giving. That is why I am here. I am very much hoping you can give me some advice.
I’ll soon be in the job market myself.
I feel truly privileged by your invitation. Congratulations to the Harvard Law Class of 2018! To be here in this place that has produced so many of our nation’s leaders and our finest legal minds is deeply humbling. An institution that gave the world Oliver Wendell Holmes, a majority of the current Supreme Court, and not only Barack but Michelle Obama, too — well, it all has me wondering if I didn’t somehow receive this invitation by mistake.
I’ll always remember the decadent celebration after graduation at my beloved alma mater, BYU. Bowl after bowl of rocky road, double fudge chunk and butter pecan. Hey, when you’re Mormon, ice cream is all you’ve got.
I am not only humbled by this place, I am also humbled by this moment in the life of our country. You see, you are set to inherit the world in just the nick of time.
I am also especially humbled given the fact that I come to you today from the political class. In utter seriousness, it is I who could benefit from listening to you today rather than speaking to you, as I am not so sure that there is much distilled wisdom to be imparted from Washington these days, given what has lately become the tawdriness of my profession. I am here today as representative of a co-equal branch of our federal government — which is failing its constitutional obligations to counteract the power of the president, and in so doing is dishonoring itself — at a critical moment in the life of our nation.
And so, with humility, let me suggest that perhaps it is best to consider what I have to say today as something of a cautionary tale —
-about the rule of law and its fragility;
-about our democratic norms and how hard-won and vulnerable they are;
-about the independence of our system of justice, and how critically important it is to safeguard it from malign actors who would casually destroy that independence for their own purposes and without a thought to the consequences;
-about the crucial predicate for all of these cherished American values: Truth. Empirical, objective truth;
-and lastly, about the necessity to defend these values and these institutions that you will soon inherit, even if that means sometimes standing alone, even if it means risking something important to you, maybe even your career. Because there are times when circumstances may call on you to risk your career in favor of your principles.
But you — and your country — will be better for it. You can go elsewhere for a job, but you cannot go elsewhere for a soul.
Not to be unpleasant, but I do bring news from our nation’s capital. First, the good news: Your national leadership is… not good. At all. Our presidency has been debased by a figure who has a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction and division and only a passing familiarity with how the constitution works.
And our Article I branch of government, the Congress (that’s me), is utterly supine in the face of the moral vandalism that flows from the White House daily. I do not think that the founders could have anticipated that the beauty of their invention might someday founder on the rocks of reality television, and that the Congress would be such willing accomplices to this calamity. Our most ardent enemies, doing their worst (and they are doing their worst), couldn’t hurt us more than we are hurting ourselves.
Now, you might reasonably ask, where is the good news in that?
Well, simply put: We may have hit bottom.
(Oh, and that’s also the bad news. In a rare convergence, the good news and bad news are the same — our leadership is not good, but it probably can’t get much worse.)
This is it, if you have been wondering what the bottom looks like. This is what it looks like when you stress-test all of the institutions that undergird our constitutional democracy, at the same time. You could say that we are witnesses to history, and if it were possible to divorce ourselves from the obvious tragedy of this debacle, I suppose that might even be interesting, from an academic perspective. The way some rare diseases are interesting to medical researchers.
But this is an experience we could and should have avoided. Getting to this state of distress did not occur naturally. Rather, this was thoroughly man-made. This disease of our polity is far too serious to not be recognized for what it is, the damage it threatens to do to our vital organs is far too great for us to carry on as if all is well. All is not well. We have a sickness of the spirit. To complete the medical metaphor, you might say that we are now in critical condition.
How did we arrive at a moment of such peril, wherein a president of the United States publicly threatens— on Fox & Friends, historians will note — to interfere in the administration of justice, and seems to think that the office confers on him the ability to decide who and what gets investigated, and who and what does not? And just this week, the President — offering an outlandish rationale, ordered an investigation into the investigation of the Russian attack on our electoral process — not to defend the country against further attacks, mind you, but to defend himself. Obviously, ordering investigations is not a legitimate use of presidential power.
I pick this egregious example of recent presidential conduct not because it is rare in terms of this president’s body of work, but because it so perfectly represents what we have tragically grown accustomed to in the past year and a half. Who would have thought that we would ever see encouragement coming from the White House for chants at rallies calling for the jailing of a defeated political opponent. When you don’t even know that there are limits on presidential power, then you might not even care when you are abusing that power.
How did this happen to us? And what might we learn from it? How did we get swept up in this global resurgence of the authoritarian impulse, which now has democracies teetering on the brink, strongmen placing themselves above the law, and in our own country a leader who reveres some of the most loathsome enemies of democracy in our time?
Have we really grown tired of democracy? Are we watching its passing, cheered on by the America First crowd even as we cast aside global institutions that have fostered freedom, prosperity and peace for more than a half-century?
For just a moment, let us marvel at the miracle that is the rule of law. We have seldom been moved to pause for such an appreciation, as we have been too busy taking it for granted and assuming its inviolability — like gravity. But unlike Newton’s Laws, the rule of law was neither innate nor inevitable. What goes up must come down is a piece of cake compared to curbing the impulses of man and asking free people to abide rules and norms that form a country, and foster civilization.
It took centuries of war and sacrifice and social upheaval and more war and great civil rights struggles to establish the foundational notion that no one is either above the law or unworthy of the protections afforded by a robust legal system, a system that took us from feudal servility to a constitutional model that is the envy of the world. And will continue to be, with your help.
We trace the beginnings of this radical egalitarianism — of the awesome and leveling effect of the law – to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which saw the death of the divine right of kings, as even the monarch from that point forward would be subject to the law — and the parliament even threw in a bill of rights for good measure.
But we are now testing the durability of this idea that William III first had the good sense to agree to, an idea which was then forged and tempered over the ensuing centuries. And we are seeing its vulnerabilities. In other parts of the world where democracy’s roots are not so deep, we are seeing it being torn down with sickening ease and shocking speed. And worse, we are seeing the rise of simulated democracies, Potemkin democracies, democracies in appearance and affect only.
Rule of thumb: If the only acceptable outcome in a matter of law or justice is a result that is satisfactory to the leader, then you might live in a democracy that is in trouble. If the leader attacks the legitimacy of any institution that does not pay him obeisance — say, the independent judiciary, or the free press — then you might live in a democracy that is in trouble. Further to that point: when a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him “fake news,” it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.
It will be the work of your generation to make sure that this degradation of democracy does not continue — to see to it that our current flirtation with lawlessness and authoritarianism does not become a heritable trait to be passed down from this presidency.
The rule of law is an elemental value, a value that preceded and gave rise to our Constitution. It is not an ideology subject to the pendulum swings of politics, or something to be given a thumbs-up or thumbs-down in a call-in to your favorite morning show. It is the basis of our system of self-governance. America without the rule of law is no longer America.
I am a conservative Republican, a throwback from the days when those words actually meant something, before the collapse of our politics into the rank tribalism we currently endure. My sounding this alarm against a government that was elected under the Republican banner and that calls itself conservative makes me no less Republican or conservative. And opposing this president and much of what he stands for is not an act of apostasy — it is, rather, an act of fidelity.
Because we forget this fact far too often, and it bears repeating a thousand times, especially in times such as these: Values transcend politics.
As a conservative Republican, I dare say that my idea of government may differ with the beliefs of many of you here today. I will be thoroughly presumptuous and assume that in terms of policy prescriptions, we disagree on much. (Call me crazy.)
But I have long believed that the only lasting solutions to the problems before us must involve both sides. Lawmaking should never be an exercise in revenge, because vengeful people are myopic, self-interested, and not fit to lead. I believe that our government should include people who believe as I do, just as I believe it must include people who believe as my friend Tim Kaine does, or as my friend Cory Booker does, to name but two.
The greatness of our system is that it is designed to be difficult, in order to force compromise. And when you honor the system, and seek to govern in good faith, the system works.
Which brings us back to our current peril. It is a testament to our times — and to the inflection point that we face — that I am here today. For, setting aside the usual requirements of politics, and the usual ways that politics keeps score, the things that normally divide us seem trivial compared to the trials that have now been visited upon our democracy.
In the face of these challenges, we agree on something far more important than a legislative program, even more important than our thoughts on the proper role of government in the economy and in the lives of individuals: We agree on the need to safeguard the health and survival of constitutional democracy in America and the preservation of the American idea itself — at a time when the values underpinning our constitutional system and that extraordinary idea are under threat, from the top.
The values of the Enlightenment that led to the creation of this idea of America — this unique experiment in world history — are light years removed from the base, cruelly transactional brand of politics that in this moment some people mistakenly think is what it means to make America great.
To be clear, we did not become great — and will never be great — by indulging and encouraging our very worst impulses. It doesn’t matter how many red caps you sell.
The historian Jon Meacham, in his splendid new book, The Soul of America, reassures that history shows us that “we are frequently vulnerable to fear, bitterness, and strife.” The good news, he says, “is that we have come through such darkness before.”
Perhaps. But not with both nuclear weapons and Twitter. And certainly not with such an anomalous presidency as this one. But I take your point, Mr. Meacham, and am heartened by it.
We will get through this, of course. But at the moment, we are in it, and we must face it squarely. Because too much is at stake for us to turn away, to leave it to others to defend the things we hold most dear.
A culminating event such as the election of our current president scrambles normal binary notions of politics, and I am as disoriented as many of you are at this dealignment. We find that many of the day’s biggest issues simply don’t break down neatly to familiar ideas of left v. right, but rather more along these lines:
— Do you believe in democracy, or not?
— Are you faithful to your country, or to your party?
— Are you loyal to the law and the Constitution, or to a man?
— Do you reflexively ascribe the worst motives to your opponents, but somehow deny, excuse, or endorse every repulsive thing your compatriot says, does or tweets?
These questions have sent some of us wandering into the political wilderness. And it is in that wilderness where your wonderful letter of invitation reached me.
Well, the wilderness suits me fine. In fact, I so love the way Washington has become that in recent years, during congressional recesses, I have taken to stranding myself on deserted islands in the middle of the ocean to detoxify all these feelings of love out of my system. I am not kidding.
I once spent a week alone, voluntarily marooned, on a tiny island called Jabonwod, a remote spit of sand and coconut trees in the central Pacific, about 7,000 miles from Washington.
As penance, and determined to test my survival skills, I brought no food or water, relying solely on what I could catch or collect. That, it turned out, was the easier part. More difficult was dealing with the stultifying loneliness that set in on the first night and never left me.
By day three, for companionship, I began to mark the hermit crabs that wandered through my camp with a number, just to see if they would reoccur. By the end of the week I had 126 numbered friends. I still miss number 72, who rarely left my side after developing an addiction to coconut scraps. I was less fond of number 12, who pinched my big toe.
Now, I would not recommend such drastic measures to escape your situation, but I hope that should you be presented with the hard choice, you too will eschew comfort and set out into the wilderness rather than compromise your conscience.
From my cautionary tale to you today, I urge you to challenge all of your assumptions, regularly. Recognize the good in your opponents. Apologize every now and then. Admit to mistakes. Forgive, and ask for forgiveness. Listen more. Speak up more, for politics sometimes keeps us silent when we should speak.
And if you find yourself in a herd, crane your neck, look back there and check out your brand, ask yourself if it really suits you. From personal experience, I can say that it’s never too late to leave the herd.
When you peel off from the herd, your equilibrium returns. Food tastes better. You sleep very well. Your mind is your own again. You cease being captive to some bad impulses and even worse ideas.
It can strain relationships, to be sure, and leave you eating alone in the senate dining room every now and then. But that’s okay. To revise and extend a remark the president himself may recognize: You might say that I like people whose minds weren’t captured.
That one was for you, Senator McCain. We’re all pulling for you.
Politically speaking, I have not changed my beliefs much at all. But my goodness, how I have changed. How can we live through these abnormal times and not be changed?
Our country needs us now. Our country needs you.
We need each other, and it is a scoundrel who would prosper politically by turning us against each other.
From our time, let us send a message into the future that we did not fail democracy, but that we renewed it. That a patchwork of populist resentments and authoritarian whims that for a while succeeded in its cynical mission of discord had the ultimate effect of shaking us from our complacency, reminding us of who we are and of our responsibilities to each other. Of reawakening us to our obligations as citizens.
Let us be able to say in the future that we faced these forces that would threaten the institutions of our liberty and tear us apart and that we said: NO.
I leave you today with more good news and bad news. This time I will start with the bad news, which is: All of this is yours to fix. All of it.
And that of course is also the good news: All of this is yours to fix, and our country could not be more fortunate than to have people of your high character, strong principle and awesome talent soon taking the helm.
I grew up as a kid on the F-Bar Ranch in rural Arizona, and if we needed to gauge the condition of the range or to measure the damage after a flood, we would find the highest hill or butte and ride our horses to the top. From such a vista we could dispatch cowboys to gather cattle, machinery to shore up roads, or workers to repair fences — to restore some semblance of order.
There are no tall buttes in Washington. But it is nonetheless our obligation to assess the condition of our politics, then to mitigate and repair the damage.
It is the story of America, though, that we will be better for the hard lessons of this experience. We are much better and more decent than Washington shows us to be. We are a good people. And we are a deeply resourceful and resilient nation, and our greatness is based on no one man — no one man who “alone can fix it,” but rather on enduring ideas of self-governance and the rule of law that have been a model for the world for centuries. Ideas that can be mocked, but not marred.
No, there are no high buttes in Washington, but still we must gain the high ground, and survey the damage. And the thing about gaining the high ground is from up there you can see beyond the damage, too. You can see everything. Everything that is good and decent.
That is the job before us — to get through this, and beyond it. And you’re just the ones to take us there.
Thank you. And once again, congratulations to the Harvard Law Class of 2018!
10 May 2018, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Here are some quotes from the speech. We are still chasing down a full video /transcript.
I think what will define you is your courage. Becase that is the virtue on which all others depend.
It is up to you to pick your battles, the things you care about, and your choices that you make every day .
When I look at the world today I see that courage is needed more than ever. At a time when women all over the world face physical abuse, restrictions on their ability to work, own property, travel, and even have custody over their children, we need courage.
At a time when the LGBT community in every country struggles for equal rights, freedom from imprisonment, and even death, we need courage.
At a time when more journalists are imprisoned around the world than any time in the last three decades, and even here at home the media is under attack from the White House, we need courage.
At a time when our politicians try to conflate the terms refugee and terrorist and make us fear one another, we need courage.
We need young people with the courage to say, ‘This is our world now, and there are going to be some changes.
I believe you the class the 2018 will show courage, and my generation is counting on you.
Courage, as they say, is contagious. People who have had the courage to to change their societies — in India, in South Africa, in the United States — inspire each other and create rights for future generations.
My advice isn’t that you have to be Gandhi or Mandela or Martin Luther King or that you should be a human rights activist or get jobs where the salary decreases at every turn. To quote the poet Robert Frost “There will be moments in your life where two roads diverge in the wood, and when that happens, be courageous.”
When I told people I was coming to Vanderbilt, I kept being told the same thing: ‘You know, it’s the Harvard of the South.’ Having spent time here, I’d say that Harvard is the Vanderbilt of the North.
13 May 2018, Duke University,
Hello, Blue Devils! It’s great to be back.
It’s an honor to stand before you—both as your commencement speaker and a fellow Duke graduate.
I earned my degree from the Fuqua School in 1988. In preparing for this speech, I reached out to one of my favorite professors from back then. Bob Reinheimer taught a great course in Management Communications, which included sharpening your public speaking skills.
We hadn’t spoken for decades, so I was thrilled when he told me: he remembered a particularly gifted public speaker who took his class in the 1980s…
With a bright mind and a charming personality!
He said he knew—way back then—this person was destined for greatness.
You can imagine how this made me feel. Professor Reinheimer had an eye for talent. And, if I do say so, I think his instincts were right…
Melinda Gates has really made her mark on the world.
I’m grateful to Bob, Dean Boulding, and all of my Duke professors. Their teachings have stayed with me throughout my career.
I want to thank President Price, the Duke Faculty, and my fellow members of the Board of Trustees for the honor of speaking with you today. I’d also like to recognize this year’s honorary degree recipients.
And most of all, congratulations to the class of 2018!
No graduate gets to this moment alone. I want to acknowledge your parents, grandparents and friends here cheering you on, just as they have every step of the way. Let’s give them our thanks.
Today especially, I remember my mother, who watched me graduate from Duke. I wouldn’t have been there that day—or made it here today—without her support.
Let’s give our special thanks to all the mothers here today, on Mother’s Day.
I have wonderful memories here. Studying—and not studying—with people I still count as friends to this day. Cheering at Cameron for every victory.
Cheering even louder when that victory is over Carolina.
Look back over your shoulder fondly and say goodbye to act one of your life. And then quickly look forward. Act two begins today. It’s your turn to reach out and take the baton.
You enter the world at a time of great challenge.
Our country is deeply divided—and too many Americans refuse to hear any opinion that differs from their own.
Our planet is warming with devastating consequences—and there are some who deny it’s even happening.
Our schools and communities suffer from deep inequality—we fail to guarantee every student the right to a good education.
And yet we are not powerless in the face of these problems. You are not powerless to fix them.
No generation has ever held more power than yours. And no generation has been able to make change happen faster than yours can. The pace at which progress is possible has accelerated dramatically. Aided by technology, every individual has the tools, potential, and reach to build a better world.
That makes this the best time in history to be alive.
Whatever you choose to do with your life…
Wherever your passion takes you.
I urge you to take the power you have been given and use it for good. Aspire to leave this world better than you found it.
I didn’t always see life as clearly as I do now. But I’ve learned the greatest challenge of life is knowing when to break with conventional wisdom.
Don’t just accept the world you inherit today.
Don’t just accept the status quo.
No big challenge has ever been solved, and no lasting improvement has ever been achieved, unless people dare to try something different. Dare to think different.
I was lucky to learn from someone who believed this deeply. Someone who knew that changing the world starts with “following a vision, not a path.” He was my friend and mentor, Steve Jobs.
Steve’s vision was that great ideas come from a restless refusal to accept things as they are. And those principles still guide us at Apple today.
We reject the notion that global warming is inevitable.
That’s why we run Apple on 100% renewable energy.
We reject the excuse that getting the most out of technology means trading away your right to privacy.
So we choose a different path: Collecting as little of your data as possible. Being thoughtful and respectful when it’s in our care. Because we know it belongs to you.
In every way, at every turn, the question we ask ourselves is not ‘what can we do’ but ‘what should we do’.
Because Steve taught us that’s how change happens. And from him I learned to never be content with things as they are.
I believe this mindset comes naturally to young people…and you should never let go of that restlessness.
So today’s ceremony isn’t just about presenting you with a degree, it’s about presenting you with a question.
How will you challenge the status quo? How will you push the world forward?
Fifty years ago today—May 13th, 1968—Robert Kennedy was campaigning in Nebraska, and spoke to a group of students who were wrestling with that same question.
Those were troubled times, too. The U.S. was at war in Vietnam. There was violent unrest in America’s cities. And the country was still reeling from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King a month earlier.
Kennedy gave the students a call to action. When you look across this country, and when you see peoples’ lives held back by discrimination and poverty… when you see injustice and inequality. He said, you should be the last people to accept things as they are.
Let Kennedy’s words echo here today.
“You should be the last people to accept [it].”
Whatever path you’ve chosen…
Be it medicine, business, engineering, the humanities—whatever drives your passion. Be the last to accept the notion that the world you inherit cannot be improved.
Be the last to accept the excuse that says, “that’s just how things are done here.” Duke graduates, you should be the last people to accept it.
And you should be the first to change it.
The world-class education you’ve received—that you’ve worked so hard for—gives you opportunities that few people have.
You are uniquely qualified, and therefore uniquely responsible, to build a better way forward. That won’t be easy. It will require great courage.
But that courage will not only help you live your life to the fullest—it will empower you to transform the lives of others.
Last month I was in Birmingham to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination. And I had the incredible privilege of spending time with women and men who marched and worked alongside him.
Many of them were younger at the time than you are now. They told me that when they defied their parents and joined the sit-ins and boycotts, when they faced the police dogs and firehoses, they were risking everything they had—becoming foot soldiers for justice without a second thought.
Because they knew that change had to come.
Because they believed so deeply in the cause of justice.
Because they knew, even with all the adversity they had faced, they had the chance to build something better for the next generation.
We can all learn from their example. If you hope to change the world, you must find your fearlessness.
Now, if you’re anything like I was on graduation day, maybe you’re not feeling so fearless.
Maybe you’re thinking about the job you hope to get, or wondering where you’re going to live, or how to repay that student loan. These, I know, are real concerns. I had them, too. But don’t let those worries stop you from making a difference.
Fearlessness means taking the first step, even if you don’t know where it will take you. It means being driven by a higher purpose, rather than by applause.
It means knowing that you reveal your character when you stand apart, more than when you stand with the crowd.
If you step up, without fear of failure… if you talk and listen to each other, without fear of rejection… if you act with decency and kindness, even when no one is looking, even if it seems small or inconsequential, trust me, the rest will fall into place.
More importantly, you’ll be able to tackle the big things when they come your way. It’s in those truly trying moments that the fearless inspire us.
Fearless like the students of Parkland, Florida—who refuse to be silent about the epidemic of gun violence, and have rallied millions to their cause.
Fearless like the women who say “me, too” and “time’s up”… women who cast light into dark places, and move us toward a more just and equal future.
Fearless like those who fight for the rights of immigrants… who understand that our only hopeful future is one that embraces all who want to contribute.
Duke graduates, be fearless.
Be the last people to accept things as they are, and the first people to stand up and change them for the better.
In 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech at Page Auditorium to an overflow crowd. Students who couldn’t get a seat listened from outside on the lawn. Dr. King warned them that someday we would all have to atone, not only for the words and actions of the bad people, but for “the appalling silence and indifference of the good people, who sit around and say, ‘Wait on time.’”
Martin Luther King stood right here at Duke, and said: “The time is always right to do right.” For you, graduates, that time is now.
It will always be now.
It’s time to add your brick to the path of progress.
It’s time for all of us to move forward.
And it’s time for you to lead the way.
Thank you—and congratulations, Class of 2018!
16 May 2018, Virginia Military Academy, Virginia, USA
Maintain and protect who you are, and remember that being a person with integrity is the most valuable asset you have. Don’t ever let anyone take it from you. Carefully consider the values and the culture of the organizations in which you seek to work. Look for employers who set high standards for personal conduct and who reward ethical leadership. Identify mentors who exemplify integrity and leadership excellence. Developing as a leader largely comes from also practicing good followership.
