When a graduating class sits down to listen to its graduation speaker, graduates are looking for more than everyday advice.
After all, the speaker is very accomplished in their field, possibly famous, and they've been out in the real world and conquered it. What the audience is looking for, and what the speaker is trying to deliver, is a few nuggets of wisdom that will break through the noise of the the day and stay with the graduate forever. Learn this list of sixteen words that help advance the three common themes that emerged among the graduation speeches of 2016: freedom, success and failure.
Freedom:
Freedom is on the mind of every soon-to-be-but-not-quite graduate, if only because their years of schooling may be behind them forever. Both President Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren used words associated with freedom in their addresses this year. The President focused on the fact that the young can view situations without preconceptions; they have the freedom of the unbiased and are not weighed down by prejudice. They are unencumbered by these things that can prove to be a challenge for older people to overcome.
Senator Warren noted the freedom that comes with being able to seize an opportunity when it arises. Freedom can be scary; it takes courage to grab at an opportunity, whatever your age. Warren encouraged the students at Suffolk University to be brave in this way.
A similar kind of bravery is involved in facing problems, whether they be personal or global. Matt Damon advised the graduates of M.I.T. to engage with problems and not run from them, because addressing them is the only way we will conquer them. Damon understands that it can be tempting to avoid problems; many people, because of fortunate circumstances, are free to do so, but he stresses that this will not help in the long run.
Success:
Several speakers this year pointed out the value of thinking of your life as it were a story. Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, thinks that the lifelong narrative becomes a kind of inner voice, serving as a guide to distinguish good from bad. Lin-Manuel Miranda, playwright of the Broadway smash Hamilton, also used the metaphor of life-as-a-story in his speech, but his version was about options and inclusion versus exclusion in the story of one's life. Building the story of your life is filled with constant choices, choices that are not limited to the here and now but rather reverberate, lasting a long time and echoing throughout one's life.
But how does one go about starting to tell the story of one's life? Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, recommends gratitude as a way to keep oneself strong. Making sure to recognize and give thanks to those who have helped you is a good way to take stock of where you've been and where you are headed. In that same vein asking oneself questions can be a great tool, like the one Russell Wilson asked himself when faced with disappointment: "Am I capable of doing what I want to do?" Being able to do something is, after all, the first step in doing it. Steven Spielberg's advice to the Harvard Class of 2016 can be an important next step and one that opens up many doors. Spielberg spoke about the value of intuition, an instinctive sense that doesn't involve rational thought. Spielberg states that intuition says "here's what you could do." Intuition is so important because it is a gateway to possibility and creativity.
Failure:
One constant theme in this year's graduation speeches was the value of failure. Failure is inevitable, but it is also something one can learn from. First Lady Michelle Obama suggested that adversity in one's life is a positive, because it gives you the opportunity to overcome an obstacle. Similarly, author John Green put forward the idea that being vulnerable, a state that most people associate with weakness and disadvantage, is actually important, maybe even crucial, in life, because the openness that is the key to vulnerability can connect you with others. Like Green, Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, cited the valuable nature of something most of us try to avoid: ignorance. Thiel thinks ignorance of limits opens up the mind, and if you are ignorant of things that people say cannot be done, you just might achieve the impossible. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor goes so far as to say that we should cherish our mistakes, holding them close and valuing them as much as our successes, because we learn more from our mistakes, and this has the potential to make us wise.
Without question, it is difficult to feel unencumbered while looking for a job or worrying about student loans, or to show gratitude when doing menial tasks for a mean boss, or to cherish your failure while you're in the middle of failing over and over again. It might be worth it to keep in mind, however, that these graduation speakers are giving oral reports on what they've learned from being out in the real world, and it might be beneficial to take some of their advice to heart.
