High School Graduation Speech

Speakers who have stood at this podium and others like it across the world have constantly urged the gowned and capped students below to go out and achieve to their utmost potential. Although you might be surprised at my decision, I will not be telling you to do this. I will be asking you to achieve, but it is a different kind of achievement that I ask of you today. Surely, in the future, some of you may become very wealthy, others of you very happy, and some of you at least mildly famous -- this is natural and good and is to be expected in the natural order of things. And for those of you who do not end up extraordinarily wealthy or famous, let me give this reassurance -- you too can be happier than your wildest expectations. And if you are happy, then what is the use of wealth or fame but to take that happiness away.

But what I ask of you today, not just those who will be wealthy or famous, but to each and every individual sitting before me today, is to achieve to your utmost potential humanity. Each of us is born with the ability to feel compassion for our fellow man; even as babies we cry when we hear other children in the nursery shed tears. However, somewhere along the line, we loose this ability to feel compassion for others. Instead, we begin to gain enjoyment for the pain that others feel. We start to find pain, disaster, and hurt in others amusing. Perhaps this is as a result of too many motivational speakers telling high school graduates to go out and achieve to their utmost potential when this is not realistic, and in some cases undesirable. All that this advice does is tell high school graduates is the only thing that matters is success. But this, my friends, is a destructive lie. What matters is happiness and compassion for others. When we loose this drive to achieve against all odds and instead gain the desire to achieve happiness and to help others, we become the solution to world problems such as global warming, stereotyping and injustice, and war.