2018’s Best Graduation Speeches Are A Recovery Pep Talk
Trust That Inner Voice
Journalist Ronan Farrow at Loyola Marymount University on May 5:
No matter what you choose to do; no matter what direction you go; whether you’re a doctor treating refugees or a financier making money off of foreclosures — and I genuinely hope you don’t do that — you will face a moment in your career where you have absolutely no idea what to do. Where it will be totally unclear to you what the right thing is for you, for your family, for your community. And I hope that in that moment you’ll be generous with yourself, but trust that inner voice. Because more than ever we need people to be guided by their own senses of principle — and not the whims of a culture that prizes ambition, and sensationalism, and celebrity, and vulgarity, and doing whatever it takes to win. Because if enough of you listen to that voice — if enough of you prove that this generation isn’t going to make the same mistakes as the one before — then doing the right thing won’t seem as rare, or as hard, or as special. No pressure or anything.
Make Failure Your Fuel
Soccer star Abby Wambach at Barnard College on May 16:
Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it’s something to be powered by. Failure is the highest octane fuel your life can run on. You gotta learn to make failure your fuel. When I was on the youth national team, only dreaming of playing alongside Mia Hamm – Y’all know her? Good. I had the opportunity to visit the national team’s locker room. The thing that struck me most wasn’t my heroes’ grass stained cleats, or their names and numbers hanging above their lockers. It was a picture. It was a picture that someone had taped next to the door, so that it would be the last thing every player saw before she headed out to the training pitch. You might guess it was a picture of their last big win, or of them standing on a podium accepting gold medals. But it wasn’t. It was a picture of their long time rival, the Norwegian national team celebrating after having just beaten the USA in the 1995 World Cup. In that locker room I learned that in order to become my very best — on the pitch and off — I’d need to spend my life letting the feelings and lessons of failure transform into my power. Failure is fuel. Fuel is power.
Get Back Up And Keep Going
Hillary Clinton at Yale University on May 20:
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, nor 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. On 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 honorable, 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.
Challenge All Of Your Assumptions Regularly
Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake at Harvard Law School on May 23:
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.
Above All Else, Do Not Lie
Writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at Harvard University on May 23:
If I were asked the title of my address to you today, I would say: Above all else, do not lie. Or don’t lie too often. Which is really to say, tell the truth. But lying — the word, the idea, the act — has such political potency in America today that it somehow feels more apt. Above all else, do not lie. I grew up in Nigeria through military dictatorships and through incipient democracies. And America always felt aspirational. When yet another absurd thing happened politically, we would say, ‘This can never happen in America.’ But today, the political discourse in America includes questions that are straight from the land of the absurd. Questions such as, ‘Should we call a lie a lie? When is a lie a lie.’ And so, Class of 2018, at no time has it felt as urgent as now that we must protect and value the truth.
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