Most people, I'm guessing, don't remember who their college commencement speakers were. If they do remember, it's a good bet that they don't remember anything in the speech. Due to my freakish memory, I remember both my speaker and what she said (and your birthday and what you said to me in second grade, if I knew you back then). Her name was Linda Wertheimer, senior correspondent for National Public Radio and former host of the much-loved radio newsmagazine, All Things Considered. She told me that women have the power to do great things, and must go out there and do them!
Anyway, if I had been a graduating student at Fordham University this year, I surely would never have forgotten Tom Brokaw's commencement speech.
Here is a passage I found particularly inspiring:
You’ll not solve global warming by hitting the delete button; you’ll not eliminate reckless avarice by hitting backspace; you’ll not make society more just by cutting and pasting. And do not surrender the essence of the human experience to 146 characters on a Twitter or a Facebook, however seductive the temptation.
You’ll not get a Google alert when you fall in love. You may be guided by the unending effort of poets and artists, biologists and psychiatrists to describe that irreplaceable and still mysterious emotion so essential to the human condition but all the search engines in the universe cannot replace the first kiss.
In short, it will do us little good to wire the world, if we short circuit our souls.
Nice kicker, Tom!
No comments:
Post a Comment