- A week before I was due to deliver my speech tonight,
they said, "You've got cancer."
They said, "If you don't get any treatment
"within the next three weeks, you're gonna die."
And then they told me I wouldn't be here tonight
to deliver that speech.
Luckily, that speech isn't about what's to come,
it's about what an amazing year it's been.
And you didn't really expect me to write
a whole other speech from my hospital bed, did you?
It started like this, if I've seen further
it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Bernard of Chartres compared us to dwarves
perched on the shoulders of giants.
He pointed out that we see more and further
than our predecessors.
Not because we have keener vision, nor greater height,
but because we are lifted up
and borne upon the gigantic stature and knowledge.
My middle name is Ross.
I was given it not long before I was born,
because my great uncle Ross, he drowned in Sri Lanka.
Mr Ross Daley was a Christchurch-based
kidney transplant surgeon.
He was known for making a serious difference
to an extraordinary number of people's lives
back when organ transplants were an amazing feat.
All humility aside, he was the best in the world at it.
He came from a working-class background,
the only one of his siblings to go to university,
and he went on to save numerous lives
because he could, because he saw higher things.
He dared to make a difference.
Now we can't all save lives by transplanting organs,
but we can make a difference in our way.
I want to share with you some words
that I hold particularly close to my heart.
Words which mean a lot to me this year
than they ever did before.
It is not the critic who counts,
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles
or whether the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood,
who strives valiantly,
who errs and comes short again and again.
Because there is not effort without error and shortcoming,
but who does actually strive to do the deed,
who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion,
who spends himself on a worthy cause,
who, at the best, knows in the end
the triumph of high achievement
and who, at the worst, if he fails
at least he fails while demonstrating.
So this place shall never be the first cold and timid souls
that know neither victory nor defeat.
While we can't be the best at everything,
or at even times, at anything,
what we can choose to have is moral strength.
I wrote about this before I knew I had cancer,
and now I have a whole new spin on it.
Moral strength is about making a conscious decision
to be a person who doesn't give up
when it would be easy to.
To do so because the journey would be less arduous.
Jim Rohn said, "Let others lead small lives, but not you.
"Let others argue over small things, but not you.
"Let others cry over small hurts, but not you.
"Let others leave their future in someone else's hands,
"but not you."
Of course, doing this will mean at some point
you have to face your fear of falling short.
A fear of looking like a fool,
a fear of not being enough.
And being so, you might admit facing these fears every day.
But here's the thing,
none of us get out of life alive,
so be gallant, be great, be gracious
and be grateful for the opportunities that you have.
The opportunity to learn from the men
that walked before you,
and from those who walk beside you.
I challenge to each of you and to myself
just to continue to grow and to develop for better.
The future is truly in our hands.
Forget about long-term dreams.
Let's be passionately dedicated
to the pursuit of short-term goals, micro ambitious.
Work with passion and pride
of what is in front of us.
We don't know where we might end up
or when it might end up.
I don't know where it goes from here for any of us.
For me, for you, wherever we go and whatever we do,
may we always be friends who met here.
(applause)