My generation experienced nothing like that. For the most part, we had it rather easy.
You graduate in much hard times. The awful contagion that now spreads among us tends to afflict the old more harshly than the young, so you may or may not feel your own life at risk. Some of you, however, have lost relatives or friends to this virus, or struggled with it yourselves.
Many of you have seen jobs disappear felt the economic devastation inflicted by this pandemic. Each and every one of you has lost something precious and irreplaceable.
In far too many ways, you have seen how fragile our world is. So much vanished so fast: scholarly projects, artistic performances, athletic competitions, even the simple pleasures of sharing meals or hugging friends. this ordeal affects us all, but it comes at a particularly formative moment in your lives.
So what will you do with this hardship? the losses are real and painful. What they took from you was beyond your control. What you take from them, however-that is at least partly up to you.
It is thus worth asking: how will you remember these difficult times when you look back on them many years from now?Might you say, do you want to say, after Oliver Wendell Holmes, that "In our youths, our lives were touched by tragedy, and so it was given to us to learn that life is a profound and passionate thing?" I have no doubt that you will continue to impress us with your achievements in the years to come.
I believe, however, that your class has the chance to be the start of something truly extraordinary, to aprreciate anew the value of ordinary human experience and to cooperate afresh for the common good.
You enter a world that needs not only your talent, but also your insight, your courage, and your compassion. With those qualitie and with the education you complete today, you have the opportunity to chart a new course. I hope you seize that opportunity.
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