I received videos of two commencement addresses by email this morning. I am sure I will receive more and I have to admit, I always look forward to them this time of year. All those fresh faces in the crowd, the speaker full of sage advice, usually witty vignettes about their own college years and most certainly earnest reflection.
One was Steve Jobs’s 2005 address at Stanford and the other CNN’s medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta’s recent address to the Class of 2012 at his alma mater, The University of Michigan. Both used numbered ideas, imaginary point bullets if you will, that outlined their version of how to handle, look at or best utilize one’s future. Each urged their crowd of twenty one-ish, fidgety, probably hung over college senior listeners to hope, dream, succeed, fail and embrace whatever lies ahead.
I was actually touched and inspired by both speaker’s thoughts. Extremely different personae. Practically polar success stories. One traditional. One anything but. One born of college sweethearts who lived the American dream. The other given up for adoption by a college relationship, taken in by a second choice adoptive family and nonetheless, also lived the American dream.
I listened to their reflections, their guidelines. Both were extremely impressive but neither strayed too far from typical graduation speech text. Find your dream and live it. Live it new each day. Love your family; remember your friends. Know that each day is a gift and could be your last, Steve Jobs’s reflections on this obviously more haunting being recirculated posthumously.
I hear and read these speeches so differently now as a fifty plus year old someone than I did as a twenty something someone. I feel like the parents always nod in ardent agreement with these speakers as their children nod off. I know these kids are hearing bits and pieces as they check their cell phones and chat behind cupped palms. They might even catch the thesis of the address but can they really employ or truly understand the advice at their stage of life?
They are so young.
So I am thinking these addresses as fabulous, well-delivered and well-intentioned as they are, are often more poignant for the parents than they are the students. For some of us, they stir up memories of roads not taken and long forgotten dreams that these students haven’t lived long enough to feel or understand. That said, maybe it is not such a bad thing.
Kids can hear these speeches and be inspired to take the twenty or so years they have lived and build a successful, fulfilling future that should include many decades. And the parents can be reminded that they may only have twenty or so years left and, if they are fortunate, a few decades to finally do what really matters in their lives and make that difference that seemed so easy as an idealistic college graduate.
In spite of my somewhat conflicted sentiments, I hear/read commencement addresses and I feel recharged.
These particular commencement reflections got me out of my bathrobe before noon, inspired me to write this post after a month-long, road trip hiatus and will at least for the rest of the day make me more conscious of how I am spending this particular 24 hours.
Check them out. You may even get a week, a month, a year’s worth of kick-in-the-ass. I was just glad I took the few minutes each to watch and listen…And seriously, could Sanjay be any better looking?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJxmLSjoPYg
http://www.youtube.com/embed/D1R-jKKp3NA