*FANTASTIC* Motivational Speech From IN 2020

*FANTASTIC* Motivational Speech From  IN 2020

I know many of you were convinced last nightat about six o’clock local time the world was going to come to an end. Just because it hasn’t doesn’t mean thatit’s not nearby because my appearing today at Yale University is surely one of the fourhorsemen of the apocalypse. Today is your day. Please, do not turn off your electronic devices. Leave your iPhone, your iPad, your Sidekicks,your Droids, your blackberries powered up, recording, photographing, texting out allthat emerges from this stage over the next few minutes. Later on today you can compare your tweets and yourFacebook comments with those of others to figure out if anything memorable went down. You know what, tweet that last sentence Ijust said. Take this speech and set it to music and maybeinsert some crazy kooky graphics. Starin' that video yourself and post on theweb and if it becomes a viral sensation you’ll be equal to any cat playing with a paper bagor any set of twin toddlers talking gibberish to each other, as popular as that cute girlthat sings about Fridays. Just one of the possibilities in our bravenew world, the world you now inherit whether you’d like it or not. The jig is up. The clock has run out and the future witha capital ‘F’ now rests with all of you all because you went to Yale. You are now the anointed, the charge holders,the best and brightest. Each of you is a shining hope for our nationin the world. You are the new wizards who can finally makesense of all the delta vectors and square roots and divided by’s out there that wecall the human race. The generations before you came of age tookon the job and now it’s your turn. I once had a friend, who had a rich uncle,who promised to pay for his college as long as my friend wished to stay in school. “You should stay in school as long as youcan”the rich uncle said “because when you get out of college you’ve got to workevery day for the rest of your life.” You all will come to understand what thatrich uncle meant, just as surely as you will someday wonder where the hell you put yourreading glasses and yell at your own kids to turn the damn music down. On spring days like today, it’s traditionalfor us to ponder the state of the world and implore you all to help make it a better placewhich implies that things are somehow worse today than they were when we were sittingwhere you are right now.I’m not so sure the planet earth is in worse shape than itwas 30, no 18, no four years ago. That’s not to say it’s in better shapeeither. Refraining from waxing nostalgic and comparingour then to your now and avoiding any talk of “You kids these days with your rap andyour ‘hip-hopin’ and your ‘snoopy dogg daddies with the diddy pops’, with your“fiddy” cents and your quarter cents…” That sober look shows that just as world hasgotten to be a better place after all, and has also grown a bit worse at the exact samerate. A one step up and one step back, sort of cosmicbalance between forward progress and cultural retreat that puts mankind on the bell curveof existence. That shows a small segment in joy, ease andcomfort while an equal portion struggle on with little hope in the fortunes of the remainder,either on the rise or on the wane in this confounding tide of so many damn things thatwe grow oblivious to the shifts in the quality of our lives. Graduation Day is the proper occasion to puta toe in the global waters and I think the mercury shows that things are much as theyalways have been. Ten years ago we busied ourselves with trivialstuff imbued with importance and then came 9/11. In 1991 riches were created in new businessesthat had never existed. Then that economic balloon burst.In ’81I had a great job on T.V. and in ’82 Bosom Buddies was cancelled. In ‘71 color T.V. in more living rooms thanever showed young Americans still fighting in combat in Vietnam and in ‘61 satellitesbeamed live images around the world for the very first time but those images were of thebuilding of the Berlin Wall. This ten-year grid shows the same yin yangthing; I’m trying to copyright that. It shows the same yin yang thing. We all have these devices that can make apermanent record of revolutionary change on the other side of the globe as well as hatefilled diatribes from across town. Fewer and fewer in our country go to bed hungrybut do you see how obesity now affects half of our population? No matter how many bargains we find at thelocal You-Mart many of us still struggle to pay the rent and the utilities. Our country is no longer in physical or evenideological war with our enemies, for most of the last century, but in the 11 and halfyears of the third millennium our armed forces have been fighting in the field for nine ofthem. Purchasing intellectual property and the workof artists we admire is a simple as clicking a mouse and paying less than a few bucks. Which means you may find that there is noguarantee in making a living at your chosen discipline. Now some advantages particular to this ageare not to be denied. Boredom seems to have been vanquished. There is always something to do, but hasn’tthis translated into a perpetual distraction in our lives, in the bathroom, at the dinnertable, in the back seat, at a wedding, at a graduation day? There’s always something to check, somethingto tweet, something to watch, something to download, something to share, something tobuy, someone on a voice mail, something to yank at our attention span and it’s allin the palm of our hand for a small monthly service fee. That same technology has allowed for a surplusof celebrities and that is nothing to cheer about. Anyone can enjoy the perks of notoriety now and the duration of fame has been lengthened fromAndy Warhol’s brief 15 minutes to a good 15 months if you’re willing to do certainthings on camera. Though Orwellian language is often the vocabularyof official new speak his boogie man that was the all-seeing big brother has never emergedunless you live in North Korea or run a red light in Beverly Hills or shop online or havedone something stupid in the wrong place at the wrong time in front of someone with acamera and their cell phone and that is everybody. Pardon my junior college Latin, the vulguspopuli has become the all-seeing state and if you cross it, Google search will foreverdisplay your screw-up. So actually there is a big brother but he’snot a malevolent fiction; he’s actually all of us, who lives in our search engines. So no matter how many times I do the calculationsI come up with the social draw. The positives balance the negatives. The x’s equal the y’s and our hopes weighas much as our fears but I hesitate on that last one because fear, good lord, fear isa powerful physiological force of 2011. We here up in stands and surrounding you graduatingclass look to you as we do every year, hoping you will now somehow through your labors freeus from what we have come to fear and we have come to fear many things. Fear has become the commodity that sells ascertainly as sex. Fear is cheap. Fear is easy. Fear gets attention. Fear is spread as fast as gossip and is justas glamorous, juicy and profitable.Fear twist facts into fictions that become indistinguishablefrom ignorance. Fear is a profit-churning goto with the wholemarket being your whole family. I was sitting at the house one day, watchingthe game on T.V.not long ago and along came this promo for the local nightly news. “Are our schools poisoning our children!? That story and summer’s hottest bikinistonight at 11:00.” In that I had school-age kids at the timeI feared that they were in fact being poisoned at school and summer was still a few weeksaway. So I tuned in to get the scoop and the actualnews story of that news broadcast was this. A certain supply of hamburger was found tohave a bit too much of a particular bacteria in it and for safety’s sake was being takenoff the market. That same hamburger was slated for sale toan out of state school system for its cafeterias but it was recalled in time. So answering that news program’s own question,no our schools were not poisoning our childrenbut yes that summer there would be some very hot bikinis at the beach. The early American naval commander John PaulJones said “If fear is cultivated it will become stronger. If faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery.”and this is why I’m a big fan of history because observations in the American coloniesover 200 years ago by Nathan Hale, who lived in that building right over there, translateword for word of the United States in 2011, “For I take that fear to be fear in large-scale. Fear itself intimidating and constant andI take faith to be what we hold in ourselves, our American ideal of self-determination.” Fear is whispered in our ears and shoutedin our faces. Faith must be fostered by the man or womanyou see every day in the mirror. The former forever snaps at our heels anddelays our course. The latter can spur our boot heels to be wandering,stimulate our creativity and drive us forward. Fear or faith, which will be our master? Three men found that they could no longersleep because of their deep seeded fears. This is a story I’m telling. Their lives were in a state of stasis becauseof their constant worries. So they set out on a pilgrimage to find awiseman who lived high in the mountain, so high up above the tree line that no vegetationgrew, no animals lived, not even insects could be found so high up in the mountains in thatthin air. When they reached his cave the first of thethree said “Help me Wiseman for my fear has crippled me.” “What is your fear?” asked the Wiseman. “I fear death.” said the pilgrim. “I wonder when it is going to come for me.” “Death” said the wise men “let me takeaway this fear my friend. Death will not come to call until you areready for its embrace. Know that and your fear will go away.” This calmed that pilgrim’s mind and he feareddeath no longer. The Wiseman then turned to the second pilgrimand said “What is it you fear my friend?” “I fear my new neighbors.” said the second pilgrim.“They are strangerswho observe holy days different than mine. They have way too many kids. They play music that sounds like noise.” “Strangers” said the Wiseman, “I willtake away this fear my friend. Return to your home and make a cake for yournew neighbors. Bring toys to their children. Join them in their songs and learn their waysand you will become familiar with these neighbors and your fear will go away.” When the second man saw the wisdom in thesimple instructions he knew he would no longer fear the family who were his neighbors. There in the cave so high in the mountainsthat nothing could live, the Wiseman turned to the last pilgrim and asked of his fear. “Oh Wiseman, I fear spiders. WhenI try to sleep at night I imagine spidersdropping from the ceiling and crawling upon my flesh and I cannot rest.” “Spiders” said the Wiseman, “no shitwhy do you think I live way up here.” Fear will get the worst of the best of usand peddlers of influence count on that. Throughout our nation’s constant struggleto create a more perfect union, establish justice and assure our domestic tranquility,we battle fear from outside our borders, from within our own hearts every day of our history. Our nation came to be despite fear of retributionfor treason from a kingdom across the sea. America was made strong and diverse becausehere people could live free from the fears that made up their daily lives in whateverland they called the old country. Our history books tell of the conflicts takenup to free people from fear, those kept in slavery in our own states and deliberate wholenations under the rule of tyrants and theologies rooted in fear. The American cause, at its best, has beenthe cultivation of a faith that declares we will all live in peace when we are all freeto worship as we choose, when we are free to express our hearts and when we all seeka place free from fear but we live in the world where too many of us are too ready tobelieve in things that do not exist, conspiracies. Divisions are constructed, the differencesbetween us are not celebrated for making us stronger but are calculated and programedto set us against each other. Our faith is tested by unpredictable providenceand threatened when common sense is corrupted by specific interests speaking from 54 yearsof experience the work towards a more perfect union isa never ending concern. It involves each and every one of us. Evidence that our nation is becoming a betterplace is everywhere but each new day fear is, as the Jersey poet said, “Lurking inthe darkness on the edge of town.” Your rising from bed every morning will givefear it’s chance to grow stronger just as it will afford faith its chance to blossom. You will make the choice to react to one orcreate the other and because you are smart enough to earn your place on this collegeday at Yale University you will sense the moment and you will know what to do. In the meantime ponder this front. In the struggle against ceaseless fear andits ceaseless flow, in the coming months and years veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistanwill finally come home for good after so many tours. Some after many tours that wore the body andthe soul and spilled a great portion of their lives. For all of them, after a long time spent faraway in the harsh realm of war, they’ve returned different from what they were whenthey left. Surely their faith in themselves is shadowedby a fear of not knowing what is expected of them next. No matter what your view of those wars overthere you can affect the future of our nation right here by taking their fears head on. You can imprint the very next pages of thehistory of our troubled world by reinforcing the faith of those returning veterans, allowingthem to rest, aiding in their recovery, if possible their complete recovery. So let those of us who watched and debatedtheir long deployments serve them now as they served when they were asked and as they wereordered. Let’s provide for them their place freefrom fear by educating them if they can learn, by employing them as they transition fromsoldier back to citizen and by empathizing with the new journey they’re starting eventhough we will never fully understand the journey they just completed. We all will define the true nature of ourAmerican identity, not by the parades and the welcome home parties but how we matchtheir time in the service with service of our own. Give it four years, as many years as you’vespent here at Yale. In acts both proactive and spontaneous anddo the things you can to free veterans from the new uncertainty that awaits them, fromthe mysterious fears they will face the day after they come home. Cultivate in them the faith to carry on andthey will do the rest. Your work begins, work that will not be alwaysjoyful to you, labor that may not always fulfill you and days that will seem like one damnthing after the other. It’s true you will now work every day forthe rest of your lives, that full-time job, your career as human beings and as Americansand as graduates of Yale is to stand on the fulcrum between fear and faith, fear at yourback, faith in front of you. Which way will you lean? Which way will you move? Move forward, ever forward and tweet out apicture of the results. It may make you famous. Thank you and congratulations.