Transcriber: Micaela Fernández Reviewer: Anna Sobota
Think of a celebrity, one that you follow,
admire or just kind of curious to meet.
What if I told you that the only thing
standing between you and them was six people?
Sounds kind of crazy, maybe a little unrealistic,
but it’s true and becomes possible
through the “Theory of the Six Degrees of Separation”,
which is basically the theory that tells us
that we are all at most six people away from any given person on Earth.
The theory was developed in the 60s and essentially states that
two individuals are separated by, at most, five connections.
To put it simply, the saying “a friend of a friend”
when put together in a chain multiple times,
can connect us to anyone else because we all have friends who have other friends
and they might even be friends with each other,
which is all to say that we’re connected to everyone.
This could be your favorite actor, singer,
the person who lives across the street from you
who you’ve never actually had a conversation with
or even the president of a country.
My goal here today is to encourage you to rethink human connections,
the relationships that you have with the people around you.
I believe that if we just learn to work together,
we can get so much farther
than if we were just insistent on staying alone.
What I have discovered over the past few weeks
is that we are all a lot more connected than we realize,
in spite of our increasing polarization
between political parties and social classes.
We all know a lot of people who know a lot of people
and we meet more every day.
Whether you're buying coffee from a barista at Starbucks
or getting food from the lunch ladies at school,
making connections is a lot easier than you think.
We are constantly expanding our network and with the addition of social media,
this idea is even more applicable.
We can contact people who we’ve never even met,
all with a simple DM.
On the other hand,
as cool as it is to acknowledge the fact that we aren’t so separated after all,
it’s also really important to acknowledge the fact that
that means that we have a huge impact on those around us.
Everything we do, everyone we speak to, well, it all adds up.
Giving a stranger a compliment, for example, can make their day
but saying something mean can just as easily ruin it.
It’s the basic principle of
“if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
In the same way we are all connected,
it can be really easy to drive people apart.
For example,
if giving a stranger a compliment is a way to positively impact someone,
imagine the things we could all do.
The ways we could all benefit by literally just caring.
Effort and thought can go such a long way and, with the right tools and motivation,
I hope to someday live in a world
where we can all work together towards a common goal.
Now, I’m only 17.
I haven’t had the chance to make real connections yet,
because I’m still young
and I haven’t really left the environment of my school.
Every day, I work and I see the people around me.
But I realize that we all have our own strengths and our own weaknesses.
We all need to be able to look at the world around us
and think about where we are versus where we could be,
and then figure out ways that we can get there.
Chances are people you already know are willing and able to help you.
And by looking at these relationships from a new perspective,
you can get such a long way.
However, I'm not trying to encourage you to go
and manipulate those around you in order to get ahead,
but instead to be able to look at yourself
and realize that you and every other person
is capable of helping another.
When there is a mutual agreement and a benefit,
I don't see it as manipulation, but as a partnership,
one that can get us to wherever we want to be.
I’ve spent the majority of my life
in the same school with the same people and the same classmates,
so my environment doesn’t change too much on a daily basis.
But what does change is the world outside of the four walls
that make up the campus of my school
and soon I, along with the rest of the class of 2023,
I’m going to need to know how to navigate life out there,
and that can be very scary.
It kind of feels like we’re expected
to go from kids to adults practically overnight.
But over the past couple of years,
I've realized that I've always been a people person.
I like talking to people I don't know.
I like the idea that we are all living our own lives
and figuring things out as we go the same as the next person.
Which all connects to a concept that I’ve been fascinated with
since around the time I was in middle school:
Sonder.
It’s defined as a realization that
each random passerby is living a life as vivid and as complex as their own.
I like the idea because it forces us to get out of our own heads
and really look at the world around us.
Everyone you know and everyone you don’t know has a goal for themselves.
A dream that they someday wish to achieve.
If nothing else, we all have this in common.
And when we work together,
we’re able to unite these goals and expand them across groups of people.
When we work together,
we can get further than we’ve ever imagined.
We all have our own strengths and our own weaknesses, right?
Now, I’ve found that I’m quite resilient.
I work hard but I do have a tendency to sometimes give up.
So, when things get difficult,
I turn towards the people around me and ask for help.
Because we have all our own strengths and weaknesses,
I can take my falls and bridge them with another person’s strengths.
And it can take us very far.
We are all connected and we are all here to benefit each other.
Whether you know millions of people
who are successful and high class with high profiles
or you don’t,
we are all able to use these ideas, these ideas of the Six Degrees of Separation,
sonder and human connections in general and turn them into something great.
We are all here to benefit each other.
I hope to someday live in a world
where we can all work together towards a common goal.
After all, we’re all human, we’re all flawed,
but we're also all talented in different ways.
Ways that benefit each other
and ways that potentially could change the world.
The way I see it, it's not just about making connections.
It’s about making human connections,
ones that matter
and that stay with us for the rest of our lives.
Thank you.
(Applause)