Commencement Speeches 2008

May 20, 2008

Marriage:
First, who you marry is far more important than what career you choose. Over the course of a life that has taken me across three continents, I have met many accomplished men and women. And I have always been astonished by the number who give more thought to choosing the job they may hold for a couple of years than to choosing the spouse to whom they will pledge - before God and their friends - to remain with until death they do part.

Children:
Second, no professional achievement - no matter how extraordinary - can match the thrill of seeing the absolute love and confidence reflected in the trusting eyes of a child who calls you Mom or Dad.

Happiness:
Finally, you will not find lasting happiness by pursuing it. Happiness is the byproduct of a contented life. And the surest path to a contented life is to put the needs of others before your own.

Sex:
Sex is powerful because it is more than the merely physical. It makes rational men and women irrational. It ties us to people when we would rather be free. And in the right circumstances, it gives us a glimmer of the divine.

For a complete text, Click Here

May 17, 2008

Parents
My first message to the Bentley students today then is to truly honor and appreciate your parents. No one will ever love you quite like your parents do, and although they have no doubt made plenty of mistakes in helping you to grow up, they've also done the very best job that they knew how to do. They've also made far more sacrifices on your behalf than you will ever really know. Please forgive them for their mistakes and imperfections and fully love them and honor them while you can, because the simple truth is that you won't always have them with you as you move further along your life journey.

Follow Your Heart
(Second Message)
Since death is real and inevitable for all of us, how then should we live our lives? For me the answer to this question has been clear since I was young: We should commit ourselves to following our hearts and doing what we most love and what we most want to do in life.
...There are two important aspects to following your heart.
First, we need to develop our self-awareness skills so that we can know when we are truly following our hearts and when we've lost our way. ...
The second key to successfully following your heart is that you will need to learn how to deal with fear.

Love
My third message to the Bentley graduates today is to emphasize the absolute importance of love as the cardinal virtue to nurture and cultivate in your lives. I don't believe there is anything more important in life than love. I'm not talking about romantic love here, or "Eros", which is a very wonderful state of intoxication, but which also tends to fade over time. Rather, I'm talking about love as care and compassion, which actively flows out of our hearts toward other people and sentient beings through empathy and appreciation.

Gratitude
Being alive is absolutely extraordinary and there are endless things to be thankful and grateful for.

Forgiveness
Nothing stops the flow of love in our lives quicker than the various judgments we make toward others and the grievances that we allow to fester in our minds against other people. What we don't fully understand is how much we harm ourselves with our judgments and grievances, because if we did understand we would stop indulging ourselves with them. Instead, we would see them for the poisons that they truly are.

Generosity
It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of practicing generosity. The virtue of generosity does not merely apply to giving money, but primarily to the gift of ourselves-our time and our service to others. True generosity should not be thought of as some kind of self-sacrifice where what we give to others comes at our own expense-their gain is our loss. Rather it is an extension of love from our own hearts, which takes genuine delight in the flourishing of other people.

Challenges
... today is that life has many, many difficulties and challenges-it isn't easy. We all will face many disappointments, frustrations, losses, and injustices, as well as inevitable illness, aging, and eventually death. I believe the best way to deal with most of the difficulties and challenges that come our way are to see them as opportunities to help us grow-lessons that are presented to us to help us go further than we have gone before.

Self-pity
Self-pity is a remarkably self-destructive emotion, which you should consciously work to eliminate from your emotional life because it dis-empowers you and moves you away from being able to follow your heart.

Challenge: What is your own heart calling you to do? Whatever it is, have the courage to follow it. The grand adventure of your own life now lies open before you. Seize the Day!

To read the entire speech, Click Here

May 25, 2008

Speakers
Good speakers inspire and motivate audience members to do such things as wear hard hats more often, meet sales quotas, give better customer service or clean up trash in the office lunch room. Your primary responsibility as a good speaker is to inspire. If you're not motivated to even do this, it may be better to send an e-mail.

Pranks:
They say something about the community that enacts them. Pranks require a sense of trust and belonging among members of the community. Anthropologists have even found that playing a prank on somebody can be an effort to bring them into the group. Good pranks require flexibility, creativity, daring, teamwork and upending the natural order of things.

Change
"It goes without saying the world you (graduates) are entering is far different from the one I beheld when I wrote my senior thesis. When I left this stage, diploma in hand, my peers and I could reasonably plot a career path. Now, the only constant is change. According to some analysts, you will be required to change careers an average of eight times.

More than the great skills the graduates have acquired here at Bethel, their success may depend on the ability to adapt and risk doing things that couldn't be foreseen. The pranksters among the class of 2008 already know that executing the kind of prank people will appreciate - although be it perhaps only later - requires good judgment and a sense of adventure.

Remember, in life to keep that sense of curiosity, that sense of adventure and play with the rules of life's game and honor the rules when they deserve to be honored and employ teamwork.

Source: The Newton Kansan

June 6, 2008

Here are some excerpts of his speech about how the Grameen Bank, which he founded makes a difference in the world.

...I had no idea whether my life would someday be relevant to anyone else's. But in the mid-seventies, out of frustration with the terrible economic situation in Bangladesh I decided to see if I could make myself useful to one poor person a day in the village next door to the university campus where I was teaching. I found myself in an unfamiliar situation. Out of necessity I had to find a way out. Since I did not have a road-map, I had to fall back on my basic instinct to do that. At any moment I could have withdrawn myself from my unknown path, but I did not. I stubbornly went on to find my own way. Luckily, at the end, I found it. That was microcredit and Grameen Bank.

Rules and Proceedures
...When people ask me, "How did you figure out all the rules and procedures that is now known as Grameen system ?" My answer is : "That was very simple and easy. Whenever I needed a rule or a procedure in our work, I just looked at the conventional banks to see what they do in a similar situation. Once I learned what they did, I just did the opposite.

Banks
...They (conventional banks) are owned by the rich, ours is owned by the poorest, the poorest women to boot.

...microcredit was born in 1976.
Today Grameen Bank lends money to 7.5 million borrowers, 97 per cent women. They own the bank. The bank has lent out over $ 7.0 billion in Bangladesh over the years. Globally 130 million poor families receive microcredit. Even then banks have not changed much. They do not mind writing off a trillion dollars in a sub-prime crisis, but they still stay away from lending US $100 to a poor woman despite the fact such loans have near 100 per cent repayment record globally.

Business Framework
Conventional businesses are based on the theoretical framework provided by the designers of capitalist economic system. In this framework 'business' has to be a profit-maximizing entity. The more aggressively a business pursues it, the better the system functions æ we are told. The bigger the profit, the more successful the business is; the more happy investors are. In my work it never occurred to me that I should maximize profit. All my struggle was to take each of my enterprises to a level where it could at least be self-sustaining. I defined the mission of my businesses in a different way than that of the traditional businesses.

As I was doing it, obviously I was violating the basic tenet of capitalist system æ profit maximization. Since I was engaged in finding my own solution to reach the mission of my business, I was not looking at any existing road maps. My only concern was to see if my path was taking me where I wanted to go. When it worked I felt very happy. I know maximization of profit makes people happy. I don't maximize profit, but my businesses are a great source of my happiness. If you had done what I have done you would be very happy too! I am convinced that profit maximization is not the only source of happiness in business. 'Business' has been interpreted too narrowly in the existing framework of capitalism. This interpretation is based on the assumption that a human being is a single dimensional being. His business-related happiness is related to the size of the profit he makes. He is presented as a robot-like money-making machine.

Profit-Maximizing
If you are a businessman you have to wear profit-maximizing glasses all the time. As a result, only thing you see in the world are the profit enhancing opportunities. Important problems that we face in the world cannot be addressed because profit-maximizing eyes cannot see them.

Other Outcomes
While focusing on microcredit we saw the need for other types of interventions to help the rural population, in general, and the poor, in particular. We tried our interventions in the health sector, information technology, renewable energy and on several other fronts.
...Grameen Danone company as a social business in Bangladesh. This company produces yogurt fortified with micro-nutrients which are missing in the mal-nourished children of Bangladesh. Because it is a social business, Grameen and Danone, will never take any dividend out of the company beyond recouping the initial investment. Bottom line for the company is to see how many children overcome their nutrition deficiency each year.
...Grameen Credit Agricole Microfinance Foundation to provide financial support to microfinance organizations and social businesses.
...We created a small water company to provide good quality drinking water in a cluster of villages of Bangladesh. This is a joint venture with Veolia, a leading water company in the world.
...We have already established an eye-care hospital specializing in cataract operation, with a capacity to undertake 10,000 operations per year. This is a joint venture social business with the Green Children Foundation created by two singers in their early twenties, Tom and Milla, from England and Norway.

Rich Person/Poor Person
I can tell you very emphatically that in terms of human capability there is no difference between a poor person and a very privileged person. All human beings are packed with unlimited potential. Poor people are no exception to this rule. But the world around them never gave them the opportunity to know that each of them is carrying a wonderful gift in them. The gift remains unknown and unwrapped. Our challenge is to help the poor unwrap their gift.

How to Bring Change
Three basic interventions will make a big difference in the existing system : a) broadening the concept of business by including "social business" into the framework of market place, b) creating inclusive financial and healthcare services which can reach out to every person on the planet, c) designing appropriate information technology devices, and services for the bottom-most people and making them easily available to them.

Your generation has the opportunity to make a break with the past and create a beautiful new world. We see the ever-growing problems created by the individual-centered aggressively accumulative economy. If we let it proceed without serious modifications, we may soon reach the point of no return. Among other things, this type of economy has placed our planet under serious threat through climatic distortions. Single-minded pursuit of profit has made us forget that this planet is our home; that we are supposed to make it safe and beautiful, not make it more unlivable everyday by promoting a life-style which ignores all warnings of safety.

The Challenge
There are two clear tasks in front of you - 1) to end poverty in the world once for all, and 2) to set the world in the right path to undo all the damage we have done to the environment by our ignorance and selfishness.

To read or hear the entire address, Click Here.

May 25, 2008

Women
Hester Prynne was right; women must take the lead
in speaking these truths, not because we are essentially different or have been socialized to be resisters, but because we have a psychological advantage when it comes to resisting gender norms and values that deform human nature. Our initiation into the gender codes and scripts of patriarchy typically occurs at a later time in development than it does for men. The division of girls into the good and the bad, the idealized and the degraded, the loved and the despised, the pure and the defiled, occurs at adolescence, when girls come to be seen as young women and gain reproductive capacity. For boys, the game of the good guys vs. the bad guys and the policing of the gender binary, where being a boy means not being a girl and also being on top, begin around the age of four or five. What this means is that girls can more readily see and speak about what boys have also experienced but being younger, are less able to articulate and resist: a loss that is psychologically destabilizing.

When women stop talking about gender, when we don't have the words or the concepts, when our honest voices are dismissed as stupid or crazy or bad or wrong, this liberatory conversation stops. The Love Laws are tightened, and the tensions between democracy and patriarchy seemingly disappear. There is no problem, we are told, really, no problem. And yet that's not what we see. Why are we at war again? Why in an age of increasing economic inequality and global warming have abortion and gay marriage became wedge issues in American politics?

The challenge now of women's education and specifically women's higher education is to lead a new conversation about gender. To take on the creative challenge of redesigning the house and building a new framework. Thus we will come to the end of the old play, having gained the tools to write one that is new.

Personal Relationships
As your graduation speaker, I am supposed to give you advice, so I have two suggestions: When you hear yourself judging yourself or condemning other women, try substituting curiosity: how interesting, you might say: look what I'm doing, or look what she is doing. Ask questions, they will take you much further.
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...ask yourself: what surprised you in the course of your education, what discoveries have you made, what most gripped you, where and with whom were you most engaged? These are touchstones to take with you, surfaces to rub future choices against to see if they meet your gold standard.

Persistence
The difficulty with life choices, as one eleven-year-old girl told me, describing her quandary over whether or not to go to camp for the summer, is that "you've got to choose but you'll never know," what would have happened had you chosen differently. I discovered that rejection is not the end of the world; the sky doesn't fall, but it's good to get mad, to persist, and to stand up for yourself and your work. Any creative work involves risk; it's a leap into the unknown. As a student once said to me, it's like "moving in darkness," you have to feel your way.

Change
In one way or another, a woman needs to discover that she has the power to change the situation in which she finds herself. And this discovery often marks a turning point in women's lives.

And so I say to you--spirited women of the class of 2008: engage with the pressing issues of your time, recognize the chaos that surrounds you, see where force is used and freedom suppressed, and also listen for the honest voice within yourself, listen to your body and pay attention to your feelings--they will alert you to false relationship and false authority; connect your mind with your heart, take the risk of doing the work you want to do, risk love and value friendship, savor joy and the pleasures of life, and in the midst of it all, preserve your sense of humor and sleep at night.

To read or hear the entire address, Click Here

June 7, 2008

Speaking on changes he's experienced over the course of his career...especially with respect to technology.

Congratulations graduates of the Fischler School of Education and Human Resources. You have demonstrated intelligence, perseverance, and great tolerance for uncomfortable chairs for long periods of time. Many of you completed much of your coursework before laptops and wireless connectivity allowed you to endure tedious lectures by updating your Facebook page. To all of you, my deepest admiration.

And to you guests - the parents, spouses, children and friends of these graduates. Congratulations to you as well. I'll bet you did more than your fair share of the cooking and cleaning while these folks were in school. School as their excuse for not doing housework is now officially ended.

I've just completed my 30th year as an educator - as a classroom teacher, school librarian and technology director. They can fire me anytime and I will have a pension. Let me tell you - that's an incredibly liberating feeling. I would like to visit with you for just a few minutes today about what I've learned about change - from the trenches - over the course of my career.

Throughout my career I've looked through three lens - a parent lens, an educator lens and, most recently, a technology lens. My comments will be colored by these lenses.

*******

...Become a co-learner.

Quite a controversy has developed about the concept of digital immigrants vs digital natives. The theory goes that oldies but goodies like me will forever become uncomfortable in the digital landscape - unlike our students for whom the Internet is about as remarkable as electric lights or indoor plumbing is to us. Some find the theory accurate; others find it insulting. These are not mutually exclusive conclusions, by the way.

I have to admit that I don't "get" the thrill of Facebook. I am leery of the information I find in Wikipedia - not so much that the facts are wrong, but that the facts may be right today and wrong tomorrow. When I was first introduced to YouTube, my first inclination was to upload the video of my colonoscopy.

Technology, I admit, often causes me no small degree of cognitive dissonance.

But I find myself delighted when a young person becomes the teacher. I love the story of a frustrated teacher who found Google suddenly blocked in her district. After fussing a bit, she felt a tug on her sleeve. "Hey, teacher. Try google.ca (the Canadian version of Google). It's not blocked and works just the same."

The secret to survival and change in the 21st century will be considering ourselves co-learners with our students able to teach us...

Oh, and do you have your Professional Learning Network established? Are you connecting to fellow professionals from around the world via e-mail, listervs, Ning, Twitter, chat, Skype, podcasts, blogs, del.icio.us, RSS feeds and webinars? Are you an Educator 2.0?

To read or hear the entire address, Click Here.

June 14, 2008

Ten Things I Think I Think for OU Class of 2008
1. I think you shouldn't script your life at 21 or 22. Be ready for anything. Be open to anything.

2. I think entitlement lasts about a week out in the world. After that, no one cares who you are. They care what you can do.

3. I think you should read for a half-hour every day ... and Us Weekly doesn't count.

4. I think you should be prepared for failures, and you should use those to learn. Most of you have been schooled in Self-Esteemville growing up. Bill Gates had a great line for this: "Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not.''

5. I think you won't trust your parents when they tell you this, but I hope you trust me: You'll be a lot happier 10 years from now when you go to buy your first house if you put some of your graduation money from Uncle Herb in the bank on Monday instead of buying that new MP3 player.

6. I think, once you lay down roots somewhere, you'll feel better about yourself if you volunteer to do something for someone or some cause at least once a week.

7. I think if you don't vote in this presidential election I am personally going to find out where you live and come and yell at you.

8. I think the one truth you'll learn is you don't have to drink 15 beers to have fun.

9. I think the Browns are going to make the playoffs this year.

10. I think you should remember it's a big world out there. Did you know the United States has just 4 percent of the world's population? For every one of us, there are four and a half Chinese people. Live in the universe. Don't go thinking you're the center of it.

Finally: I think I'm in danger of boring a lot of fathers out there right now, and maybe some mothers too. So I'll say good-bye, and good luck. Have great lives.

To read the entire address, Click Here.

May 31, 2008

Values
The education you received at Randolph-Macon College isn't meant to be the same you could receive at scores of colleges, public or private, in Virginia or across the country. You've been given an education that says it's not enough to have a skill, not enough to have read all the books, or know all the facts. Values really do matter. Its only justification, this extraordinary place, is because it has a special mission-training young men and women to help shape and influence the moral tone and fiber of our nation and our world. And that now means, as graduates, you have a special obligation and responsibility. Graduating from Randolph-Macon has given you incredible advantages over others in your generation. Yes, I've heard the sometimes dissenting views from Ivy Leaguers. You think you have it bad; you should indeed try to be a Buffalo Bills fan in Washington, D.C.

Honor
You have something others would give anything for. You believe in your God, in your country, in your family, in your school, in yourself, and in your values. Remember the message our parents and grandparents and teachers repeated and repeated and have tried so hard to instill in us-the belief if you worked hard and played fair, things really would turn out all right. And after working and interviewing senators and governors and meeting popes and interviewing Presidents, I think they're right.

Contribute
It is now your turn. You'll have the opportunity to be doctors and nurses and teachers and lawyers, bankers and social workers, soldiers, journalists, entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and more. And in those vital professions, your contributions can be enormous. You can help save lives, provide posterity, record history, prevent disease, train young minds. Your family, your education, your values have prepared you for this challenge.

Challenges
...Remember the people struggling alongside you and below you, the people who haven't had the same opportunity, the same blessings, the same Randolph-Macon education-eight children a day shot dead in the streets of America, 25 percent of eighth graders never graduating from high school, 35 million adults in our country without a high school education....
...But unless we instill in our young the most basic social skills and cultural and moral values, we'll be a very different society....
...We must motivate, inspire, yes, insist our children respect one another, love thy neighbor as thyself. We must teach our children they are never, never entitled, but they are always, always loved.
And we must do everything in our power to make sure schools are meaningful, skills are learnable, jobs are available, that we protect our environment, and make our world, their world safe and secure. No matter what profession you choose, you must try even in the smallest ways to improve the quality of life of all children in this great country.

Make a commitment today as you graduate that you will volunteer just a few hours a week in the months and years and decades ahead. No matter what your political philosophy, see if there is a child you can tutor or mentor or coach or help. Some are sick. Some are lonely. Some are uneducated. Most have little control over their fate. Give them a hand. Give them a chance. Give them their dignity.

A Final Thought
But before I go, a final thought: Have a onderful life. Take care of one another. Be careful tonight. And for the rest of your life, work hard, laugh often, and keep your honor. Of course, go Yellow Jackets!

To read or hear the entire address, Click Here.

May 23, 2008

...So I ask you. How does it feel? What's really going on inside? What's the big question in your head? Your heart?

These are the questions that I like to call The Unanswerables - partly because they are so big you can never get your brain or heart entirely around them, partly because they change with every day of your life, and are entirely dependent on how you feel and what's happening to you. These are the questions that will have so much to do with your future. Ask yourself the unanswerable questions in order to find out what's really going on beneath the pat answers, the rehearsed responses, and what the media tells you to think.
So ask yourself:
What do you want?
What do you fear?
And what is your secret?

What better way to find out your next step than by identifying the things you really desire, are really afraid of, and really need to hide?

Asking questions is all about being in the NOW - and actively processing the things you observe to help you make the next step. The education you've received here at SDSU will help you immensely with that ongoing process. But not even a stellar education guarantees success. In order to get where you want to go, you will need to combine your resources, knowledge, your network of friends, your money, your faith and your energy in a way that creates an identity that works for you, that suits your place in the world and where you want to go. You will need to invent the best way to get there, for yourself. But how? That's why I say:

Be a hybrid.
Be good for the environment.
Be good for the economy...

.....

...I'm not telling you to go out there and find yourself an African American or Bulgarian boy or girl friend and have a kid, but I am saying that you can if you want. You have the power, the right, the responsibility, and the chance to be true now about who you really are, how you really feel: to combine what you've learned with what you see before you and do something tangible - and beautiful - to make the world better.

But how? What happens next? Good question. When I ask myself, this is what I do. Create art whenever possible; you can do it. Save gas. Walk more. Eat fresh and in moderation. Vote wisely and often. Love strongly and without fear. Read a lot - one of the most important things you can derive from the university experience is the ability to read the fine print! Be curious. Open your mind and your heart. And use them actively. Invent. Create. Combine.

And yes, buy a hybrid vehicle. It's really good for the environment, and the bank account!
Be a hybrid in as many ways as you feel good doing so.
You'll be good for the world.
And the world will be good to you.

To read or hear the entire address, Click Here.

May 17, 2008

Bill Shore delivers an inspirational commencement speech in which he kept to three points:

- 1) He tells of his very surprising background and how it did not adversely affect his accomplishments.

- 2) "... share in common these world-changing powers: to share your strength and create community wealth, and to bear witness."

- 3) "try to let the world see you for who you really are"

Here are excerpts of his speech:

Introduction

First I must break the news to you that while you probably feel you have finally reached the point where you no longer have to worry about being graded, I am afraid that is not the case. I have been out of college for more than 30 years and just received another report card, perhaps my most important ever. From my father-in-law...

Because of the pressing business at hand, I will say only three things to you this morning about my experiences and your opportunities, and then sit down.

First, as much as I appreciated that generous introduction, you should know that while everything that President LeBlanc said is true, that is not who I am. At least it is not, and of course could not be, all of who I am. Yes, it is true that I worked in government and started Share Our Strength and that we raised more than $200 million and that I was included as one of America's Best Leaders in U.S. News and World Report, but that is only part of who I am.

I am also the son of a loving mother who died from a drug overdose. I am someone who has jumped on a plane every Saturday for the last 10 months to visit one of my closest family members - in prison. I was a principal architect of three losing presidential campaigns, one of which spent more than four years paying off its debts. And oh, after graduating law school I failed the bar exam. Twice. I tell you this not for sensationalism's sake or to gain sympathy, or even to get and hold your attention, as desperately as I'd like to do that for the next 10 minutes.

I tell you this to persuade you that no life, not even a successful life, perhaps especially not a successful life, is lived as an unbroken string of successes. And indeed the shortcomings, failures and even bad luck that are an inevitable part of being human need not hinder your success in the least if you know what to take from and do with them.

I also tell you this in the hope that whenever you think you know someone you will try to remember that you usually only know what they have chosen to let you know, or what others have told you about him or her. You won't and can't know what they carry with them, what St. Exupery referred to when saying "what's essential is invisible to the eye," and whether it has made them stronger or weaker, richer or poorer, better or worse. Being ever conscious of this may not make you more successful, but it will make your life richer in immeasurable ways.

Second, as diverse as you are in your intellect, appetites, energies, appearance and ambition, you share in common these world-changing powers: to share your strength and create community wealth, and to bear witness.

One is the power to share your strength, whatever particular strength it may be. Share Our Strength was built on the belief that everyone has a strength to share, sometimes a gift that you may take for granted but that can be deployed to benefit others. I'm talking about something more than writing a check once you are financially successful, or volunteering at a food bank or homeless shelter. I'm talking about giving of yourself, of your unique value added, as chefs have done by cooking at food and wine benefits or by teaching nutrition and food budgeting skills to low-income families. In the same way we have engaged authors, architects, public relations and marketing executives, and numerous others. ...

... Another is the power to create community wealth. When we created Share Our Strength, we wanted to be a grantmaker but not a re-grantor; we wanted to create new wealth rather than just redistribute wealth. ...

... An age-old issue expounded upon at moments like this is the choice you face between doing well and doing good, between creating wealth and serving the public interest, and what I am here to tell you today is that for the first time in history, it is no longer a choice of one or the other, but an unprecedented challenge for your generation to create wealth to serve the public interest. ...

Finally, and perhaps most important, is the power to bear witness. Whether you graduated magna cum laude or by begging your professors to pass you, each and every one of you has this gift in equal measure. The power to bear witness is the power to go, see, feel and share what you have felt.

I went to Ethiopia during a famine and to New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina. What I really wanted to do was to go and see for myself what had happened and how the victims were coping. I wanted to go and see and allow myself to feel things about what I'd seen, and then share what I'd felt. I had less of a sense that I could effect change than that I would be changed by the emotions - sadness, sympathy, despair, anger, outrage and ultimately hope - that are the inevitable response to such a situation.

That is what it means to bear witness. You "bear" witness because what you experience weighs on you. And one way to accommodate such a weight is to redistribute and share the load.

When something affects us powerfully, we often say we have been moved. The literal implication is having started out in one place and ending up in another. In this way being moved means being transformed and personal transformation is what powers social change. It's what Gandhi meant when he said "be the change you want to see in the world." ...

...Bearing witness has always been the essential prerequisite for changing society's most grievous conditions, for righting injustice, for reaching out to those in need. In the 21st century bearing witness is destined to become an even more powerful tool for advancing social change. ...

...Take the opportunity to do so in your own way and time. Go somewhere you haven't been and see something you haven't yet seen. Look until you feel something and then tell someone what you've seen and felt. This is what it means to bear witness. This is what it takes to change the world.

Third and finally, try to let the world see you for who you really are, as I have tried to do today. Not because it will always be attractive or appealing, but because in the long run you really don't have a choice. People will figure it out anyway, and even if they don't, you surely will. ...

... No one spoke more eloquently about the need to share our strengths than the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote:

We are others harvest
We are each others business
We are each others magnitude
And bond.

I have learned that these words are true. ...

Thank you and congratulations.

To read or hear the entire address, Click Here.

July, 2008

KEEP THE SPARK

Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to you. This day is about you. You, who have come to this college, leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become something in your life. I am sure you are excited. There are few days in human life when one is truly elated. The first day in college is one of them. When you were getting ready today, you felt a tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if not all the time.

Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. ...

They fade
I see students like you, and I still see some sparks. But when I see older people, the spark is difficult to find. That means as we age, the spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull, dejected, aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is lost. So how to save the spark?

Imagine the spark to be a lamp's flame. The first aspect is nurturing - to give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard against storms.

To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve and achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is possible for you. It isn't any external measure - a certain cost to company pay package, a particular car or house. ...

What makes successful people come to work everyday?
They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes them feel alive. Just getting better from current levels feels good. If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to interact with people, you will do better in interviews. If you practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you cannot become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level. Striving for that next level is important.

Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of nature's design. Are you? Goals will help you do that. ...

What kind of Goals?
... Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order. ...

One last thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes. One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga practice. The teacher said - don't be serious, be sincere. ...

However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame.

(1) Disappointment: But it's life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember - if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that's where you want to be.

(2) Frustration: Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.

(3) Unfairness: Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you.

(4) Isolation: But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you.

Send Off
I welcome you again to the most wonderful years of your life. If someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, you eyes will shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is something cool about saying - I come from the land of a billion sparks.

Thank You.

To read the entire address, Click Here.

January 24, 2008

Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I have a few random thoughts.

* You need to register to vote, unless you are on welfare. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again.
* When you do vote, your votes for the House and the Senate are more important than your vote for president. The House controls the purse strings, so concentrate your awareness there.
* Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the president of the country. If someone can't deal honestly with you, send them packing.
* Don't bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it - to take their money by force for your own needs - then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.
* Don't look in other people's pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you earn is yours. Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone.
* Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don't see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.
* Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.
* Finally (and aren't you glad to hear that word), as Og Mandino wrote,

1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being.
2. Use wisely your power of choice.
3. Go the extra mile .. drive home in the dark.

Oh, and put off buying a television set as long as you can. Now, if you have any idea at all what's good for you, you will get the hell out of here and never come back.

Class dismissed'

To read the entire address, Click Here.

June 1, 2008

Some of the advice from his own life's experience.

It is okay to make a mistake
You are going to have to rely on yourself to manage the world, to make the world intelligible and in so doing not allow yourself to be victimized. Identity need not be found in rejection. There are going to be disappointments and defeats along the way. You will make mistakes but don't blame others for your errors, don't deceive yourself. By placing the blame on others you will be unable to judge yourself and this lack of acknowledgment will only further compound your initial error. Admitting a mistake is usually a relief, if not a benefit.

Be your own person
If possible, don't suffer fools gladly. Give little heed to those who will attempt to quell your aspiration for there will be many who want you to be as they are. Give them the shortest shrift possible whether they be friends, classmates, parents, teachers, whom so ever. You must begin to forget all the voices that are buzzing around in your head, and you may find it necessary to say no to the demands of the many who claim that they have only your best interest at heart, because ultimately you cannot become the person they want you to be. Don't forfeit your uniqueness to be like everyone else. There will be many voices of conformity, many preaching defensive platitudes that are driven by fear. Shut them out, if only because what they consider to be the safest solution is always based on the most paranoid condition. Fear is poison. Resist it. Don't talk about what you should do move on to what you need to do, in fact, what you must do, what you want to do, what you love to do....

...There will be many choices, many decisions, many options, many difficulties that will confront you. You may find that most of the presumptions that you now hold no longer apply to your new status; that it may be necessary to step outside of society's definition of what is acceptable. The anxiety you may feel at this moment is one of expectation, a healthy desire to move on. There may be a lot of clichés that you have to get rid of in order to proceed. You may think you are on solid ground only to realize that you are in free fall. If at this juncture you are undecided as to which path you ought to pursue: not to worry. There may be choices you make that prove to be false starts, take them in stride, test many waters, for ultimately the elimination of options will only make your decision more resolute. This is not the time to play it safe, it's the time to take risks, the more the better: if not now, when?

Be inventive
Rather than being told which tools are available for which ends it is more useful to invent your own tools: As Audre Lorde has pointed out, " ... the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Rules are overrated. They need to be changed by every generation. That is your most important mandate: If it's not broken, break it. One way of coming to terms with the prevailing language of a cultural orthodoxy is to reject it. It may be necessary to invent tools and methods about which you know nothing, to act in ways that allow you to utilize the content of your personal experience, to form an obsession and to cut through the weight of your education. Obsession is what it comes down to. It is difficult to think without obsession, and it is impossible to create something without a foundation that is rigorous, incontrovertible, and, in fact, to some degree repetitive. Repetition is the ritual of obsession. Don't confuse the obsession of repetition with learning by rote. I am suggesting a form of inquiry, a procedure to jump start the indecision of beginning.

Persevere
The solution to a given problem often occurs through repetition, a continual probing. The accumulation of solutions invariably alters the original problem demanding new solutions to a different set of problems. In effect, as solutions evolve, new problems emerge. To persevere and to begin over and over again is to continue the obsession with work. Work comes out of work.

But solutions need not only be the result of constant repetition. There is another route, not so structured but rather free-floating and more experimental but no less obsessive. It is to be found in the activity of play. I cannot overemphasize the importance of play. The freedom of play and its transitional character encourage the suspension of beliefs whereby a shift in direction is possible; play ought to be part of the working process. Free from skepticism and self-criticism play allows you to relinquish control. Playful activity provides an alternative way to see, to imagine, to do, to make, to think otherwise. In play there are no ends, there are only means, however, means inadvertently can lead to ends. Rules can be made up as you go along or even in hindsight.

Coupled with obsession is obstinacy and by that I mean, stubbornness, willfulness to persist in spite of the odds and when facing your own helplessness. To follow the arc of your own path and not be dissuaded takes a certain amount of confidence, passion and intensity, for how you do what you do will confer meaningfulness on what you have done. For me process has always taken precedence over results if only because without the "how" there is no "what." Letting process take precedence over results does not necessarily guarantee that something new will emerge. Transgression is difficult to visualize, let alone conceptualize. Recognition takes time. No matter what form your thoughts take, follow them. If you don't care to follow through, others will not take you seriously. There are not going to be a lot of free rides or life savers out there. Most of you are going to leave this privileged bubble and enter the reality of your worth. You must learn to embrace your uncertainty and continually ask questions. Before you arrive at conclusions keep in mind that we are all biased and have built-in prejudices. Be aware of them before you pass judgment. To bring something into existence, to make, to write, to form is already a familiar exercise to you. The challenge is going to be to probe the unfamiliar, to forget the certainties and rather deal with your insecurities and contradictions to achieve the unprecedented.

Your thoughts and reality
Your private thoughts matter and you must protect them. The anomalies that are particular or even peculiar to each of you define the edges of your individuality. Fight for them and nourish them, because finally it's only your own individual perception that's going to give reality a meaning. If you don't make the case for yourself, no one else will. Value your private sensations and sentiments but beware of the distortions by analogy and metaphor. The constant need for referents prevents direct experience. Experience does not always need to be compared and related. The habit of recalling stored imagery subverts both what's present and what's being re-called. Analogies and metaphors fail to impress a solid image on us. I have no problem with the virtual reality on your screens as long as you are aware that it is virtual. My concern is that experience by proxy is a poor substitute for the reality of the interactive space we inhabit. As a sculptor I believe that perception structures thought and that to see is to think and conversely to think is to see. The virtual reality of the media, be it television or internet, limits our perception in that it affects our sense of space. It immobilizes our ability to apprehend actual physical space. Don't let the rhetoric of simulation steal away the immediacy of your experience. Keep it real, keep it in the moment.

No one perceives anything alike, we only perceive as we are and it is our individual reality that counts. Charles Olson said it well:

There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such
many as mass, there are only
eyes in all heads
to be looked out of

Thanks for having me.
Congratulations to each of you.

To read the entire address, Click Here.

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