Sense of Purpose

Today I want to talk about purpose.

But I am not here to give you the standard commencement about finding your purpose. We are millennials. We will try to do that instinctively.

Instead, I am here to tell you that finding your purpose isn't enough. The challenge for our generation is to creat a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

One of my favorite stories is when JFK went to go visit the NASA space center, and he saw a janitor holding a broom and he asked him what he was doing.

The janitor replied, Mr. President, I am helping put a man on the moon.

Purpose is that feeling that you are part of something bigger than yourself, that you are needed, that you have something better ahead to work for.

Purpose is what creates true happiness.

And you are graduating at a time when this is especially important.

When our parents graduated, that sense of purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community.

But today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs, membership in a lot of communities has been declining, and a lot of people are feeling disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void in their lives.

As I've traveled around, I've sat with children in juvenile detention and opioid addicts, who told me that maybe their lives would have turned out differently if they just had something to do, an after-school program or somewhere to go.

I've met factory workers who know their old jobs aren't coming back and are trying to find their path ahead.

Force our society to keep moving forward, we have a generation challenge-to not only create new jobs, but create a renewed sense of purpose.

I remember that night I launched Facebook from my little dorm in house.

I went to Noch's with my friend.

And I remember telling him clearly that I was excited to connect the Harvard community, but one day someone would connect the whold world.

The thing is, it never even occured to me that someone might be us.

We were just college kids. We do not know anything about that. There were all these great big technology companies with resources. I just assumed one of them would do it.

But this idea was so clear to us, that all people want to connect. So we just kept working on it, day after day after day.

And I know a lot of you are gonna have your own stories just like this. A change in the world that seems to clear that you are sure someone else is going to do it. But they are not. you will.

But it is not enough to have that purpose youself. You also have to  create a sense of purpose for others.

And I found that out the hard way. you see, my hope was never to build a company. I wanted to have an impact. And as all these people started joining us, I just assumed that that is what they wanted to do too, so I never took the time to explain what it was that I hoped we'd build.

A couple years in, some big companies wanted to buy us. I did not want to sell. I wanted to see if we could connect more people.

And we were building the first version of News Feed at that time, and I thought if we could just launch this, it could change how we learn about the world.

Nearly everyone else wanted to ell. Without a sense of higher purpose, this was their starup dream come true, and it tore our company apart.

After one particularly tense argument, one of my close advisors told me if I did not agree to sell the company right now, I would regret the decison for the rest of my life.

Relationships were so frayed that within a year or so every single person on our management team was gone.

That was my hardest time leading Facebook. I believed in what we were doing, but I felt alone.

And worse, it was my fault. I wondered if I was just wrong, an imposter, a 22year-old kid who had no idea how things actually worked.

Now, years later, I understand that is how things work with no sense of higher purpose. It is upt to all of us to create it so we can all keep moving forward together.