It's a little presumptuous of me to write a speech for Commencement since I'm only a graduate this year. But I have perused dozens of Convocation speeches throughout the last four years, so I like to think I’ve got a little expertise. (If you do only one thing I suggest here, read “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” by Mary Schmich. Or watch “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” by Baz Luhrmann. They’re the same thing.) Anyway, here is the speech I would give if I were speaking at Commencement.
Class of 2013,
Congratulations. You made it. After four years of classes and tests, you have finally reached the apex of your college careers and are now ready to begin building the life you’ve always dreamed about. I graduated in December and started that journey by moving to Los Angeles to begin my career. In all that post-grad free time, I’ve done a lot of thinking about what I learned during the last four years. These are lessons I found the most valuable, the ones I’m taking into my new life.
The thing most often discussed around this time is success. After all, the point of a Commencement speech is to have a successful person (preferably famous) explain how you can follow in their footsteps. I am not stereotypically successful (or famous) but that idea is exactly what I want to tell you about. Around this time, our image of success gets distorted, and that’s a problem.
Although we all develop preconceived notions of success, you must live by your own definition. Your success must be exclusively yours. Find what you want to do and work toward it. Sometimes, what we want is simple. Do you want to live in a big house? Find a job where you make a good salary and save your money. Sometimes, what we want is more complex. Do you want to make the world a better place? Make your best effort to be kind and helpful to those around you.
It doesn’t even matter what you want to do. If you’re doing what you love, I believe the world will be better for it.
Don’t compare yourself to others. Far too often we take easily transferable elements from our lives and use them as the metric for success. Salary, job offers, Twitter followers — whatever you choose, it's only a path to disappointment. There will always be someone who makes more money. There will always be somebody who gets a job that would have looked good on your resume. Success is about accomplishing what you choose to accomplish. It’s just a waste of energy to be jealous of someone who has something you didn’t think you wanted until they had it.
But even when you reach your goals, sometimes you may still find yourself wanting more.
Happiness will always be a pursuit, a chase. Happiness will dart around and change course constantly. If you’re lucky, you’ll take hold of it for months or years at a time. But eventually it will slip out of your grasp, and you’ll have to chase it again. You must remain flexible enough to bend to the zig-zagging path you’re being led on. You must constantly listen to how you feel. Know that if you’re unhappy, that may be a sign your happiness is leading you down the road of a new pursuit — it’s giving you a new definition of success.
But what about the worst-case scenario? What if we still don’t accomplish the big goals we set for ourselves? We may not even consider it possible at this stage in our lives, but it happens. Sadly, elements completely outside our control may keep us from reaching our goal. That happens more often than you may think. (If you've started applying for jobs and don’t have one, you’ve probably learned that already.) But in moments like those I think back to my freshman year, when I heard a piece of advice that I live by to this day.
It was 2010. I was sitting on my couch, watching Conan O’Brien get kicked off “The Tonight Show.” Here was a guy who had achieved his wildest dream. He had gotten the thing he had pursued for 20 years. And now, it was being taken away from him on national television. But when he delivered his final speech, he didn’t use the chance to undermine those who made the decision. Instead, he had just one piece of advice.
“Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get,” he said. “But if you work hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen to you. I’m telling you. Amazing things will happen.”
That’s all I’ve tried to do for the last four years. Hopefully, it will work as well for you as it has for me.
Work hard. Be kind. That’s all you can do.
The next few years — or, as far as I know, the next few months — will be frightening, enlightening, entertaining and revelatory. Good luck, Class of 2013. I wish you success, however you choose to define it.