“The only person you are destined to become is the person
you decide to be.”
-Ralph
Waldo Emerson
We walk, my fellow graduates and I, on the seam between
two lives. As we proceed across the stage on Monday, we steel ourselves, take
one last breath, and leap from the familiar and the beloved into the unknown.
Some of us have our entire lives planned out; others of us will take it step by
step, but we share in common the ability to create for ourselves whatever we
are brave enough to claim. Each of us has a store of potential deep enough to
do great things. With so many talented, intelligent, capable people in one
room, the only question is, “what will they choose to be?”
The
outcome of your future is in your hands. There is no person, no affiliation, no
principality, no force on earth that can make you become anything other than
what you choose to be. Futures yet unformed shine with promise from your faces.
I am certain the glow of potential will be replaced with a blaze of success and
glory. But nothing comes free. In our lives, winds of adversity will blow,
which may shake your very foundations. And in these adverse circumstances, you
will make over and over, the choice between anger and love, between convenience
and correctness, between selfishness and altruism. As you make these choices,
you make yourself. You have the power, every day, with every choice, to create
yourself anew. I believe in the caliber of my distinguished classmates. I am
confident that you will make yourself into people from whose existence the
world will benefit. I will be lucky to know you. I’m lucky to know you now.
Thank
you all for changing my life, and Congratulations, Class of 2015.
It’s a great day to be a
Silverwolf.
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