“Every day, every year, and for every graduating class, there is a choice to be made. It’s the same option for all grownups, who have to decide to be one of three types of Americans. Those who embrace liberty and freedom for all, those who won’t, or those who are indifferent.” —Tom Hanks, commencement address, Harvard University, 2023 In a world where technology has splintered us into a million different directions, there is a refreshing clarity that happens every May, as the famous and sometimes, infamous, the learned and the artistic, and the popular and politic arrive at the Academy’s podium to give their advice to the next generation.
In all likelihood, most of those within earshot of their rhetoric can’t recall the next day what was said.
But in the media, the zeitgeist and popular culture, it seems that each year, a couple of clarion calls cut through all the clutter of newscasts, social media, and tabloid journalism.
In 2014 Admiral William H. McRaven gave the commencement address at the University of Texas at Austin. While encouraging the students to improve the world, he gave many life lessons that could be of help. However, his talk will probably best remembered as the “make your bed” speech.
Here’s the gist of that takeaway: If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do anothertaskandanotherand another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.
Last year, 2022, the internet blew up with eye-rolling and snark when NYU announced that Taylor Swift would be giving their commencement speech. But it stands to reason that Swift would not be as successful as she has become as a pop singer if she didn’t have something to say.
Her key insights were: “In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong person, underreact, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, selfsabotage, create a reality where only your experience exists, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others,denyanywrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time, rinse, repeat.”
The best thing about commencement speeches is that they offer something for all of us to learn. More times than not, a few sentences or phrases waft into our worlds and cause us to stop, pause and consider the merits of taking stock.
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