Laurel HS Commencement Address 2024: Be the change you want to see in the world.

Graduates, esteemed faculty, proud families,

The world you are entering is dividing itself and going to individual silos. Gone is the value in dialogue. Compromise is seen as weakness. If you disagree with me you are my enemy. My friends, my allies must follow my train of thought. I look to the class of 2024 to do better. As Mahatma Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Do not wait for someone else. Do not look to a government or a program that will bring change. You by your words and deeds show the change this world so desperately needs. 

We gather today at a crossroads. The world you step into is fractured, echoing with the loud and unpleasant noise of entrenched opinions. Dialogue, once a bridge, feels more like a battlefield. Compromise, a tool that built the foundation of our country, is dismissed as weakness.

We are expending a lot of energy on hate, and have forgotten the power of love. We seek vengeance rather than grant forgiveness. Hate leads to division. Love leads to unity. Forgiveness eliminates the hate and replaces it with love.

If you, like me, wish to take the right turn at this time of a societal crossroads then I tell you the truth. Change does not bloom in echo chambers, individual silos, or other solitary confinement. The world you dream of, a world more tolerant, more understanding, more loving and less hateful needs you to live that change, to be that change.

How do we become the change we want to see?

• First, embrace the uncomfortable. Seek out those with opposing views. Engage, not to win, but to understand. Dare to discuss with someone you respect, but someone who holds a counter viewpoint to your own.  Listen to understand. Listen to empathize. Listen to tolerate. You may not reach agreement, but you may have a greater sense of one another.
• Second, celebrate compromise. Compromise is not a surrender of principle. Compromise shows wisdom. Compromise shows strength. Compromise is usually messy but generates progress. Compromise may very well lead to a greater change than any individual silo could create.
• Third, champion empathy. Step outside your own experience. See the world through someone else's eyes. This does not mean abandoning your beliefs, but acknowledging the validity of another's perspective. Challenges to your understanding may lead to a deeper conviction of current opinion, or could lead to an evolution of opinion. You are better by either result.

Remember, graduates, the strength of our community, our Commonwealth, our country, and our world lies not in uniformity, but in the richness of difference. Seek to be exposed to that which is different. It is not a compromise of your values, but rather an exploration of understanding towards your fellow man.

Class of 2024, the world needs you. In the thirty six years since I was a high school graduate, the world certainly is a different place. Ironically, the need is still the same. We as a society look to you for hope. We want you to accomplish things previous generations never did. We want you to be the next great entrepreneur, inventor, scholar, leader.

Together, you have the power to have a future of tolerance, understanding, even beautiful compromise. You have the power to be a generation that restores the value in each and every individual’s humanity.

So my message for you concludes where it begins, change. Drive change through your thoughts, deeds, and actions. Perhaps 30 plus years from now, you can look back and say the world is better because we were brave enough to be the change we wanted to see in the world.