Transcriber: Izabela Miśkowicz Reviewer: Ilze Garda
Hi!
Can everybody hear me?
I want to talk about a couple things today.
Three, actually.
Summer camp, the Internet
and making tough choices.
Over the summer,
I spent every waking hour
watching over 25 spectacular fifteen-year-olds,
whether that's hearing about their latest crush
or staying up late at night talking about God.
Being a camp counselor has taught me some really important things.
One of my campers, his name is Jonah,
he's actually right next to me up there,
is brilliant.
Might be the smartest person I've ever met in my entire life.
He understands the nuance of complex concepts
better than I ever could
and every time I talk to him I learn something new.
Jonah also has a twin brother whose name is Micah,
who's impeccably well-dressed, a social butterfly
and attracts friends and attention wherever he goes.
Growing up in parallel to that has been really difficult for Jonah.
So, a couple months back we were at a camper union
and Jonah wasn't acting like himself.
He was frustrated and aggressive.
And I was upset that he wasn't feeling comfortable.
So I pulled him aside and we got to chatting.
And after couple of minutes he turns to me and says:
"Oz,
does happiness exist?
I've been wondering for some time now
and I'm having a hard time thinking
that it's not just some illusion we make up
to feel better about the brokenness of the world around us."
And it took me a minute
to respond because I felt so ashamed and embarrassed.
Not because I hadn't done anything to make his life better
but because I wasn't sure that I disagreed with him.
So I took a moment,
thought to myself:
"When I was his age, what would I have said?
What would I have done?"
When I was 15, I got a chance to meet a different boy.
His name was Elijah and he was 6 years old.
At the age of 6, he was diagnosed with PDD-NOS
which is a condition on the autism spectrum
that affected his interpersonal communication and social skills.
Every Sunday we'd meet up for two hours at the local synagogue
to play basketball, do some arts and crafts,
maybe even get to talking about Thomas the Tank Engine
or how annoying his little brother is.
After a while,
either because he became more confident or comfortable around me
or because the situation escalated,
he started telling me about his family.
How his parents would sometimes get into violent arguments,
or that his father would beat him.
And hearing that I felt terrified and sad
because I knew I had two choices.
One of which was to say something
knowing that he'd be pulled out of the program
and might have more pain caused to him,
or I would live with the guilt of having said nothing.
So when his mom came to pick him up that day,
I told her what he'd said,
and after that I never saw Elijah ever again.
And I felt so guilty because I knew
that what I'd done put him further in harm's way.
I knew I'd done the right thing but it didn't feel good,
it didn't feel glamorous.
I felt still unsettled.
Just to change gears for the time being,
today technology has transformed the way we do good
in some pretty spectacular ways.
We've seen nations toppled by Twitter,
beautiful moments of solidarity on Facebook
and one video drawing the world's attention
to a terrible war crime in Africa.
Controversy or not.
Inspired by these moments, my roommate and I,
his name is Ben Erinsson,
and I think he's in the audience somewhere,
decided we would switch things up
with our fraternity's philanthropy, called Derby Days.
We reached out to our networks and the Internet,
and the people that we were connected to
and asked them to believe in the power of one another.
We worked day in and day out for our goal
of raising $50,000 for cancer research,
with sleepless nights, telling ourselves
that on the other end we'd feel gratified,
like we made a difference and changed something in the world,
that there would be this innate feeling of accomplishment.
We started a hashtag, built a social media presence
that engaged 30,000 people,
planned events that had real meaning and substance to them,
we filmed videos of sorority women
sharing the stories of how cancer had affected their lives,
some of which had never shared those stories with their friends before,
in ways that were so powerful and meaningful
that they brought people to tears.
And after a few weeks
we broke a new GW record
and raised over $80,000 for cancer research.
(Applause)
The next morning I woke up expecting to feel accomplished
and instead I felt empty
and sad.
I was in a dark place.
Instead of seeing the things that were right in front of my eyes,
this beautiful, fantastic thing that we just put together,
I could only hear people complain that their sorority didn't win,
or that their apparel order didn't go through.
The age that we live in
has put us all in a dark place.
Somewhere or another with this expectation
that the world's going to be glamorous
and we sometimes fall short of that.
I was in that dark place after Derby Days,
when I was at the camper union with Jonah,
talking about whether or not happiness exists.
And I could only answer with something I realized in that moment,
I turned to him and said: "Dude!
We create happiness for ourselves in our lives.
Sure,
it's invented.
Yeah sure,
it's different for everyone.
Yeah sure,
sometimes people pretend to be happier than they actually are,
and that's OK,
because it's on us to decide
who we're going to be.
And what makes us happy."
The Internet
has made doing good feel a lot easier
and more glamorous, and more gratifying than it actually is.
I've spent the last 5 years of my life feeling guilty
that I sent a 6-year-old in a harm's way,
trying to do the right thing.
And at one point I kind of realized
there's nothing else I could have done.
And that's kind of how life is sometimes.
One of my favourite quotes,
goes something like this:
"Each of us must hold a note in both of our pockets,
one that says:
"For my sake were the heavens and the earth created".
And the other which says:
"I am but dust and ashes.""
It's our duty to spend our lives endevouring every day
to make the world a better place,
to struggle endlessly in this quest
to fix this ever broken wonder of a universe.
It's not just about what we do and how we feel,
those moments in which we're there for each other
in even the smallest ways,
you and I both know have the greatest impact.
It's not just about feeling good about what we're doing,
it's about realizing that the picture is bigger than us.
Do people whine less because we raised $80 grand for cancer research?
No.
Because gratification comes from in here.
Not from anybody else.
Doing good is harder than the YouTube videos make it seem
because it's not about you.
Selflessness is hard.
And it's uncomfortable.
It's challenging.
Everybody doing a little thing is not enough to see big change.
A million tweets won't feed the hungry or cure the sick.
A YouTube video alone
won't put a kid from an underserved community through college.
But you know what?
I bet your hard work might.
Jonah and Elijah taught me
that happiness is not always what we think that it is.
That doing the right thing doesn't always merit you a parade.
That true happiness comes from selflessness and vulnerability,
not chasing something shiny to fulfill you.
We do good,
because it's the right thing to do.
We're selfless because it's the right thing to do,
not because we need a reminder of our virtue,
because chances are that if you do good, you are good.
And that's good enough.
I dare you to be brave.
The stumbling blocks on our path to changing the world,
exist only in our minds.
We might not feed the world overnight,
but that doesn't excuse us from trying
because we need big dreamers
and even bigger doers
if we are going to make this world whole again,
and I dare you to think that that could be you.
Thank you.
(Applause)