Graduation.
Posted by Linus Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:23:00 GMT
So I finally graduated (well sort of, I have one minor breath class that I need to complete, but close enough). This year’s speaker was Oprah and you can watch the replay below:
It’s extremely similar to Steve Job’s speech a few years back but none-the-less just as inspirational and insightful.
Oprah had a tough childhood. According to Wikipedia, she was born “.. in rural Mississippi to a poor unwed teenaged mother, and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood. Winfrey was raped at the age of nine, and at fourteen, gave birth to a son who died in infancy.” It always amazes me at how someone can come through so much adversity yet still have the drive to follow his or her dreams.
She had three main points - and for those who don’t have the 30 minutes to listen to the entire speech - I want to highlight some of the parts I felt were meaningful.
- On Following Your Feelings…
“When you’re doing the work you’re meant to do, it feels right and every day is a bonus, regardless of what you’re getting paid. It’s true. And how do you know when you’re doing something right? How do you know that? It feels so… Every right decision I’ve made—every right decision I’ve ever made—has come from my gut. And every wrong decision I’ve ever made was a result of me not listening to the greater voice of myself. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. That’s the lesson.”
“Trust your heart and success will come to you…how do I define success? Let me tell you, money’s pretty nice…. But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful. Because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life. What you really want is to be surrounded by people you trust and treasure and by people who cherish you. That’s when you’re really rich.”
- On Coping With Failure…
“Many of you know that, as President Hennessy said, I started this school in Africa… I spent five years making sure that school would be as beautiful as the students. I wanted every girl to feel her worth reflected in her surroundings. So, I checked every blueprint, I picked every pillow. I was looking at the grout in between the bricks. I knew every thread count of the sheets. I chose every girl from the villages, from nine provinces. And yet, last fall, I was faced with a crisis I had never anticipated. I was told that one of the dorm matrons was suspected of sexual abuse.
“That was, as you can imagine, devastating news. First, I cried—actually, I sobbed—for about half an hour. And then I said, let’s get to it; that’s all you get, a half an hour. You need to focus on the now, what you need to do now… And Gayle and I got on a plane and flew to South Africa. And the whole time I kept asking that question: What is this here to teach me? And, as difficult as that experience has been, I got a lot of lessons. I understand now the mistakes I made, because I had been paying attention to all of the wrong things. I’d built that school from the outside in, when what really mattered was the inside out. So, it’s a lesson that applies to all of our lives as a whole. What matters most is what’s inside. What matters most is the sense of integrity, of quality and beauty. I got that lesson. And what I know is that the girls came away with something, too. They have emerged from this more resilient and knowing that their voices have power.”
- On finding Happiness…
“Not a small topic this is, finding happiness. But in some ways I think it’s the simplest of all. Gwendolyn Brooks wrote a poem for her children. It’s called “Speech to the Young : Speech to the Progress-Toward.” And she says at the end, “Live not for battles won. / Live not for the-end-of-the-song. / Live in the along.” She’s saying, like Eckhart Tolle, that you have to live for the present. You have to be in the moment. Whatever has happened to you in your past has no power over this present moment, because life is now.”
“But I think she’s also saying, be a part of something. Don’t live for yourself alone. This is what I know for sure: In order to be truly happy, you must live along with and you have to stand for something larger than yourself. Because life is a reciprocal exchange. To move forward you have to give back. And to me, that is the greatest lesson of life. To be happy, you have to give something back. “