You make me optimistic about our future. So, as you prepare for the next stage of what I know will be a remarkable journey, I will leave you with a few quick pieces of advice, for what they are worth.
First, do what you think is right, not just what is convenient or what is expected or what is easy. While you have this time, think about the values that matter to you the most. Too many graduates, who feel the pressure to immediately start running that race of success, skip the step of asking themselves,What is really important?
And too often they end up as adults who only do what is good for them and say that. Heck with everybody else, and they end up not having a lot of meaningful relationships or not really feeling as if they made a serious contribution to the world.
I hope that instead you decide to moor yourself in values that last, like responsibility, fairness, generosity, and respect for others. That will make you part of the solution instead of part of the problem, and if experience is any guide, it actually makes for a happier life.
Second, listen to each other, respect each other and use all that critical thinking you've develped from your education to help promot the truth. You are the internet generation in the social media generation, it is not just how you shop or listen to music or watch videos. It is part of your social lives, it is the new town square where you will all come together and meet.
In many ways it is been an amazing tool. In your pockets you have access to more information than any group of people in history. It is allowed movements of like-minded people to mobilize on behalf of worthy causes.
But, what is become clear, is that social media can also be a tool that spread conflict, division, and falsehoods to bubully people and promote hate. Too often it shuts us off from each other instead of bringing us together, partly because it gives us the ability to select our own realities independent of facts or science or logie or common sense. We start reading only news and opinions that reinforce our own biases.
As a generation that undertands social media and technology a lot better than anyone, it is gonne be up to you to create online cultures and communities that respect differences of opinion and freedomof speech and also restore the kind of honest informed fact-based debate that is the starting point for tackling the challenges we face.
None of these changes happened overnight or without sustained effort. But they did happen. Usually because young people marched and organize, and voted, and formed alliances, and just lead good lives, and looked after their community and their families and their neighborhoods, and slowly changed hearts and minds. America changed, has always changed, because young people dared to hope.
You do not always need hope when everything is going fine. It is when things seem darkest. that is when you need it the most. Now someone once said, Hope is not a lottery ticket, it is a hammer for us to use in a national emergency to break the glass, sound the alarm, and sprint into action.
That is what hope is. It is not the blind faith that things will get better, it is the conviction that with effort and perseverance and courage and a concern for others, things can get better.
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