commencement speeches, messages and truth

“… society has falsely defined the “hero’s journey” as moving from weakness to strength, when really it’s the other way around.

You are going to make that journey from strength to weakness. And while it probably won’t be an easy trip, it is a heroic one.

For in learning how to be a nobody, you will learn how not to be a jerk.”

——

John Green at Butler University in 2013

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“First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course.

We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face.

It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.”

———-

Jimmy Carter

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So.

It’s that time of year again when really smart people with, hopefully, a gift of communicating to impart some wisdom before we release the next batch of “world changers” to the world.

I have never given a commencement speech and if asked, while I would do it any time and anywhere, I am sure I would have sleepless nights pondering each word and thought. I do know that I would shamelessly borrow from past president speeches. Not being a republican or democrat myself … I could select the best of the best because … well … presidents of any party have communicated bigger vision and ideas than any individual party — they communicate the future.

I admit.

I love this time of the year because in a world where actions speaks louder than words we find ourselves gathering up words to inspire the actions of the future generation and , well, inevitably our future.

We use words to set some expectations, impart some truths and inevitably inspire some desired behavior.

Words like …

Aaron Sorkin at Syracuse in 2012 “it seems to me that more and more we’ve come to expect less and less of each other, and that’s got to change. Your friends, your family, this school expect more of you than vocational success.”

Is that a popular message to people who think the system is rigged against their success and that the deck is stacked against them more so than any time in the past? In general … Certainly not.

But that’s not the point.

I believe it is a time for truth and hope tied to empowerment.

I believe no one will fix society and the issues, real and perceived, but the people sitting in the audience at a commencement.

Sure.

You and I <and some older folk> can certainly do some things but change, real change, the needed changes … will come from fresh minds with fresh energy to reshape the great society which is America.

We must inspire the young to act, to do, to think … but ultimately be energized to partake in action and not just words.

It was Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address who said “actions speak louder than words” without actually saying it … “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”

We want our young to not be angry, or frustrated, or even with a tinge of despair … but rather confident that they are the architects of change. We want hem to do things which we will never forget. We want them to be the builders of the new version of our Great Society <as Lyndon Johnson called it>.

Johnson spoke of building where people, citizens, are all builders and architects of our fate … and in this case “architects of a greater society.”

We need our young to hear words like this:

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For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.

The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.

Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

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Lyndon Johnson commencement speech

He speaks of building through the expansion of society and progress <material & character> without erosion of community values – community being your fellow citizen, domestic & global, wherein the danger resides in the “loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.”

And he went even further.

For Johnson the opposite of this “great society” was “soulless wealth.” Wealth without purpose and means without meaning.

Well.

Today, we already know that something like 50% of those under 30 do not believe in capitalism nor believe capitalism is good.

We need to fix that belief.

A desire for wealth is healthy to a growing society and individual growth … well … when it is done within some parameters. Let’s call those parameters “meaning, purpose and soul.” But we need to teach the young you need not sacrifice one for the other.

I imagine Johnson borrowed some of his thoughts from Theodore Roosevelt who said:

–

“We appreciate the things of the body are important, but we appreciate also that things of the soul are immeasurably more important.

The foundation stone of national life is, and ever must be, the high individual character of the average citizen.”

 

Theodore Roosevelt

–

What would I like to say?

It is up to you, the next generation, to clear away the residue of immorality and greed and untruth from the foundation stone of American life.

In doing so have I placed a burden upon the young? Maybe.

But that is the burden ‘better than we are today’ must bear.

Would that be popular? Also no.

But if I could figure out how to articulate it well I think young people should mentally tie empowerment to burden of responsibility.

It is work.

And we shouldn’t lie about it.

But at the same time we owe it to them to show the prize – the great society which they can shape … and we actually NEED them to shape.

And maybe the way to do it is to highlight the crossroads where our car, in which we sit idling, currently sits.

Is it a crisis? Most likely not in a true sense.

However.

It is certainly a critical moment with regard to the soul of the country and the belief in what can be done.

Which leads me to Jimmy Carter in 1979.

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The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July.

It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else — public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They’ve come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation’s life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don’t like it, and neither do I. What can we do?

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.

One of the visitors to Camp David last week put it this way: “We’ve got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America.”

We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars, and who carved out a new charter of peace for the world.

We ourselves are the same Americans who just ten years ago put a man on the Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.

———-

Whew.

The promises of our future lie on the path of common purpose … wealth with purpose and life with meaning … in a community spirit.

Or as Barrack Obama said at Wesleyan in 2008:

“Our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition.”

Should you take the path of service, should you choose to take up one of these causes as your own, know that you’ll experience the occasional frustrations and the occasional failures. Even your successes will be marked by imperfections and unintended consequences. I guarantee you, there will be times when friends or family urge you to pursue more sensible endeavors with more tangible rewards. And there will be times where you will be tempted to take their advice.

But I hope you’ll remember, during those times of doubt and frustration, that there is nothing naïve about your impulse to change the world. Because all it takes is one act of service — one blow against injustice — to send forth what Robert Kennedy called that tiny ripple of hope. That’s what changes the world. That one act.

Is telling young people to not ignore their impulse to change the world a responsible act on my part <assuming I would say this>?

I do not believe so.

As long as our commencement messages outline the threat & the challenge <without unnecessary hyperbole> and present them, the young, as the solution <without hyperbole or untruths driving some unrealistic expectations> and, ultimately, show them the horizon … the hope … the prize … I think we are responsible in our messaging.

I expect I am different in my thinking.

Many people want to use a commencement to encourage passion and drive and happiness.

I want to use it to shape the minds and actions of the architects of my future … and our future.

I want to use it to show it is hard work … but world with a purpose and a meaning ‘dynamic beyond their own individual purposes.’

I want to use it to explain that no matter the degree or college or GPA … they are builders. And that builders build … and if they do not than they are simply spectators <and homeless>.

We, anyone who speaks to young people, need to remind ourselves before we open our mouths and utter even one word … these young people are the architects of fate … the builders of what will be … for me, you and everyone.

And maybe that is why I am not sure I would trust my own words and would seek to use the words of presidents, past & present, to communicate the fabulous scope of possibilities … and the incredible burden of responsibility that ultimately resides on the shoulders of these young people.