[APPLAUSE]
KEALOHA WONG: How's it going?
[CHEERS]
Cool.
[LAUGHS] Seriously, it's so good to be back here on campus.
I've got to say, graduating from here,
then chasing a pipe dream to become a professional poet
was probably the most roundabout way
to be invited back to speak here at MIT.
[LAUGHTER]
But here we are.
So thank you, President Reif.
Thank you, administration, faculty, distinguished alumni,
and trustees.
Thank you to the grandparents, the parents, and the siblings.
The uncles and aunties, the friends and extended families.
All of you are here because you were a significant part
of this journey.
All the support, the wisdom, the advice,
and the love you've given made this possible for these MIT
grads, the class of 2020 and 2021.
With all my heart, congratulations.
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
You made it here today, and so today, for a moment,
I want you to think about your life.
I want you to think about what you stand for
and realize that all the mistakes you've ever made
and all the expectations that have ever
been placed on you by the people you don't and the people you
don't, they all mean nothing in the long term.
For every year you live, the universe
will be around for billions and billions.
And for every friend you've made,
there are billions yet to be born that you will never meet.
In the grand scheme of things, we are nobody.
And yet at the same time, we are everything.
We are X and Y chromosomes.
We are GCA and T genomes.
We are complex carbohydrates, simple proteins, soft tissue,
hard-wired neurons.
We are strong bonds linked in nervous systems.
And while this Earth's surface is covered with 60%-something
saltwater, we are walking bags made of 60%-something
saltwater, merely mimicking the environment that we evolved
from.
We are the lump sum of billions of years of evolution,
an accumulation of mutations from single-celled organisms
to multicellular animals.
From tiny sea creatures to fish to amphibians to
reptiles to mammals to primates to humans.
From all of these ancestors, from
the first anatomically modern Homo
sapiens that emerged in the lush savannas of East Africa,
and every single one of our ancestors
who survived and thrived, who migrated around this planet,
they all led to each and every single one of us
right here, right now converge in Killian Court
at this single point in the space-time continuum
to celebrate your accomplishment.
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
So for this moment, I humbly ask--
I humbly ask you to reflect on your ancestors.
From some of mine in Hawaii, [SPEAKING HAWAIIAN]
the branches grow because of the trunk,
which is our way of saying that, without our ancestors,
we would not be here.
So let your ancestors be here with us through you.
Know that we exist because they did too.
Know that, through them, there are
millions of stories that led to you and the knowledge
that you've accumulated.
From them and from this institution
is an accumulation of knowledge from around this world
over thousands and thousands of years.
You sit on the tip of the spear frontier of the next generation
of thinkers, the next generation of innovators,
the next generation of leaders.
You all represent that.
The roughly 25 under--
I'm sorry, the 2,500 of you here celebrating today,
and the roughly 3,500 of you out there celebrating elsewhere,
we're all here for you.
The members of the worldwide classes of 2020 and 2021
and the MIT chapter of humanity, each and every single one of us
align in this epic poem we are all telling.
So the question is, what will you stand for?
In the short line that will summarize your life,
how will you spend your days?
Who will you make metaphors with,
and who will you rhyme with, and what role
will you play in our stanza?
Because on a very real level, all of us here collectively,
we are ancestors in training, the future in the making.
For we will forever shift the way that humans behave
through the technology and the policy
that we make, through the scientific discoveries
and the progress in industries and the problems that we solve
and the art that we are a part of.
Through the people that we touch, and through the people
that they touch, and the people that
touch us in a positive feedback loop of brilliance.
Together, we are like a thermonuclear fusion reactor,
a release of energy in this plasma of people,
blasting out particles of inner genius
out with an energy equal to the amount of mass converted times
the speed of light squared.
Our limits will stretch as far as we dare.
And between all of us, together, if you add up
all of our lifetime contributions to society,
we're out here making some serious heat.
[LAUGHTER]
We're collectively doing this.
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
Trust me.
So the question is, what's up with you?
What are you trying to do?
How are you going to use your mass, the energy you've
been given, how are you going to use your talents?
Because on a human level, on an individual level,
we are all wandering particles.
We're all wandering elements in this periodic table
of the universe, barely noticeable in the grand scheme.
Chances are that, 200 years from now,
hardly anybody will remember our name,
and the work we did on this planet will have faded.
And maybe one or some of you will shift humanity
in some meaningful way.
And for those of you who do, shoot.
Make us proud of you.
But for the rest of us, we may make some esoteric discovery
or some small contribution to our industries,
but most likely, our most significant impact
will be in our communities and in our families.
Our impact will be felt in the way
that we treat others and the way that we treat ourselves.
The humanity that we express during our lives
will echo as a singular note in the infinite symphony
of the cosmos.
And trust me, there will be meaningful friendships
and deep laughter along the way.
We will experience drama and sorrow and tragedy in our days.
There'll be broken bones, broken contracts, and broken hearts.
There'll be moments of clarity and inspiring art.
You'll feel both pride and disappointment.
You'll feel times of discontent and times
of disconnect and times of depression.
There'll be love and joy and peak experiences shining
brighter than all of your other times
trudging through the daily mundane.
And I wish for you to live all of your multifaceted human
experiences presently and fully because, soon enough, they
will all fade, all of them.
Even this MIT experience, as vivid as it was in real life,
and as high def as it was online,
your mind, your memory, your sense of what this was
will fade.
I have a confession to make.
I don't remember most of what I learned here.
[LAUGHTER]
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
You, too?
OK, cool.
Don't tell my family.
They still believe I still got it.
But it's true.
I know that at one point, I could calculate the IHTFP out
of a differential equation.
[LAUGHTER]
That I could break down with mathematical precision
what was going on in a nuclear reactor core.
That at some point, I could have told you
the difference between Laplace and Fourier transforms.
[LAUGHTER]
MIT transformed my mind.
But let's say you gave me a pop quiz today in any of that.
Any of that.
Let me retake any one of those exams
that I took when I was here.
Start the clock for an hour.
Heck, make it open book like how it used to be.
You know what would happen?
I would look at that first sheet of paper,
with all those Greek letters and Hindu Arabic numbers on it,
and the minutes would continue to tick.
I would flip through the pages, and I
would start to daydream about the people that I knew here.
The countless hours that we spent together
would flash as a mash-up of greatest
hits of late-night talks and long walks
over and along the Charles.
I'll try to remember the specific pathways that
took to the Infinite Corridor during a typical day
to get from lobby 7 to building 26, then to building 4,
only to have to circle back through 10, 3, and 7 to end up
at building 5 without ever going outside to expose myself
to the Cambridge snow.
[LAUGHTER]
I would giggle at the fact that I walked barefoot around campus
the first couple of months that I was here
because I wasn't quite yet ready to give up
that part of my Hawaii upbringing.
I would recall some of the hacks that I witnessed,
like the time when folks dressed this dome up
as R2D2 a couple of days before Star Wars:
The Phantom Menace was released.
I'll reflect on all of my crushes
and all of my roommates and the closeness
and the growing pains of our coming of age.
I would smile over the friendships that I made,
and I would be grateful for the way that MIT changed my brain.
And I would turn that test in blank.
And it's all good because I know that if I really wanted
to relearn that stuff, I could.
[LAUGHTER]
And maybe one day, this hypothetical outcome
will apply to you, too.
But no matter what, I want you to never forget
two of the most important things that we learned here.
One, we learned how to believe in ourselves,
that at some point, we had the nerve to believe
that we belonged at this place.
That we worked our butts off till it
hurt, and we kept believing to near points of breaking,
and we pushed our limits, and we graduated.
And two, we learned how to learn here.
We learned how to science, how to hypothesize,
how to test our ideas, how to methodically identify
our conscience and change our variables.
We learned how to circle back and tweak our hypotheses,
to incorporate our findings, repeat the cycle,
and tweak how to develop our ideas,
and communicate them to our colleagues.
We mastered that here.
We've proven that we can learn almost anything.
So my challenge to you is this.
Learn how to be a better person, how to be
the best version of yourself.
Learn how to be kind, thoughtful, and respectful.
Learn how to lead, and learn how to follow.
Learn how to truly listen without constantly
thinking about what you're going to say next.
Learn how to make decisions with a healthy mix of logic
and good intentions.
Learn how to ask meaningful questions.
Learn how to build a life full of love, growth, and passion.
Learn what brings you and other people joy, and do that a lot.
Learn what it takes to make your dreams come true, and do that.
You'll do that the most, whether it's
career or relationships or family or self-growth
or contribution to society or philanthropy or social change
or designing things or scientific discoveries
or helping others or whatever else makes you tick.
I wish for you to walk through this life knowing that you gave
it all that you had to give to experience everything you ever
deemed important.
I challenge you to treat your life
as the longest, most important epic problem set you've ever
been presented with.
And if, one day, if you ever feel the heavy brunt weight
of regret, if the pressures of career or family or money start
to get to you, or when your body,
your non-redundant single point of failure system of a body
starts to breakdown like a Chevy Nova with 150,000 miles on it--
when those moments come, treat your life
like a science experiment.
Form a hypothesis for your life choices, test your ideas,
methodically identify the constants,
and change the variables in your life.
Circle back and tweak your hypotheses
to incorporate your findings.
Change your life through the decisions that you make.
Break the generational or negative cycles
in your life that don't suit you.
And make sure you communicate your findings with your loved
ones.
Let them know what you know so they
can learn from your successes and mistakes.
Never forget that we are ancestors in training
because one day, when we are done on this plane,
all that will remain are the moments that we shared
and the ideas that we spread and the legacy that we left.
So make sure you act on everything significant
that you've ever thought because, as far as I can tell,
this life is all that we've got.
And when we are done, this flesh we call our own returns home
to the earth when we dissipate.
Our water evaporating to rain down and circulate
while our carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorous recycle
back into the life cycles of bacteria, fungi, plants,
and animals--
and archaea, protozoa, and [? cromesa ?] for all
you biology nerds.
[LAUGHTER]
While this Earth, hurtling through space,
will freeze and boil as it has for eons
as it orbits the sun, which in 5 billion years
will transform into a red giant and scorch all life as we know
it, its last task before it fizzles into a whimper
remembered by nobody.
Or maybe charted by aliens as they peer through telescopes,
logging our sun as a piece of data that came and went.
And these aliens, whoever they may or may not be--
shoot, I want them to think about their lives.
I want you to think about your life
at you study me through your primitive telescopes.
And I want everybody-- the aliens, you, and me--
to realize that even when our hearts break,
or when work gets rough, for when the mortgage or rent is
due, and when someone somewhere says something
stupid about you, when things aren't going like how we wanted
them to, when your health isn't right, when you lose passion
in your life, for when your laughter isn't as deep,
and it seems as if the universe is conspiring against you.
Even in the face of global pandemics,
climate change, political corruption, and perpetual war.
In the face of racism, sexism, classism,
and-- insert really bad word here ism--
no matter how hard life may get for you or for other people,
zoom out.
Zoom out, and realize that all the evil in this world
is transient.
Heck, all the good in this world is transient.
You, me, all of us are transient.
You will not be you in the grand scheme of things, which makes
all your suffering temporary.
Which makes your ecstasy the most exciting thing
worth remembering as part of the universe expressing itself
in one giant celebration known as the Big Bang.
We are its aftermath's sigh, its alibi for not having a reason.
You are the universe learning about itself.
You are the universe asking itself why it's here.
You will soon be the universe, not learning or asking
anything.
You were everything and nothing at the same time,
and no matter how hard it is to admit,
no matter how afraid we get and how much we want to deny
the truth-- well, the truth is--
truth is, we're going to die.
Maybe not tonight tomorrow or next year,
but sooner or later, we're all going to die.
But the truth is hard to swallow.
And so we do everything we can to avoid the big picture
because the big picture is paralyzing.
So we focus our eyes on the day-to-day dramas of our lives.
But not today.
Today, I want you to think about your life right here.
Not here, your MIT commencement ceremony
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but here, this world, planet Earth,
here, this galaxy, this universe.
We are not cavemen anymore.
There are no saber-tooth tigers lurking in the shadows,
yet most of us cling to our fears
of the animals we evolved from.
What are we so afraid of?
We've been etching the same patterns
in the same predictable places for years.
Why do we live the way they tell us to?
And man, who the heck are they anyway?
It's about time we start doing what's in our hearts
because that's all we really got.
I want you to think about all the things
you wish you could do.
And tonight, I want you to do one of them,
and tomorrow, another.
Our lives are temporary art pieces.
We are works in progress.
So I say paint your butt off.
Use fluorescent yellows and reds in the places
where there aren't any color.
Dance for the moment.
Sculpt your life out of soil, and make the universe smile.
Be the expressive process that is humanity.
Today, I want you to think about your life.
And tomorrow, y'all-- y'all, go on up there and live it.
Thank y'all.
Congratulations!
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
[CHIME]