Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Say NO to YOLO! Say YES to YANS!

I heard this yesterday on Rush Limbaugh's program, so I was delighted today that it popped up on a website. It meant I did not have to go look for it! This video is worth the 12 minutes and 46 seconds to watch. It's a message that all young people need to hear today.


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."




1 comment:

  1. I enjoyed this speech. It was gentle and thoughtful. His clever layers of hyperbole and generalization emphasized and validated his conclusion of social responsibility:

    “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.”

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