YOLO = You only live once
YANS = You are not special
Here is one of my favorite quotes from Mr. McCullough's commencement speech:
"We have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point. And we're happy to compromise standards or ignore reality if we suspect that's the quickest way or only way to have something to put on the mantle piece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole."
I enjoyed this speech. It was gentle and thoughtful. His clever layers of hyperbole and generalization emphasized and validated his conclusion of social responsibility:
ReplyDelete“Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion – and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.
Congratulations. Good luck. Make for yourselves, please, for your sake and for ours, extraordinary lives.”