[ Applause ]
>> Alan Alda: All around the country today, distinguished men
and women are looking at graduates like you
from the heights of our achievements
and spraying advice at you.
It's an indignity you have to suffer before they lift the lash
and release you into the wild.
In settings like this today, you're going to hear all
over the country many of the same themes:
be true to yourself, follow your passion, you are the future,
don't make a mess of the world the way we did.
I know these words because I've said many of them myself often
and they're good ideas.
The only thing is today they're a little vague, I think,
and every time I'm tempted to make a speech like that.
I wish instead I could just give you a few good tips
on how just to get through life.
Like the admiral last year who gave one of these speeches,
his advice was so concrete, so simple.
He said, "If you want to change to world,
make your bed every day."
Isn't that wonderful?
I love that.
It's so-- I mean, it's utter simplicity.
I mean, if you could start off a day with a little discipline
like that, there's no telling what you can accomplish
when the hard stuff comes your way.
The problem is I can't really give you that advice myself
because I don't make my bed every day.
I do, I unscramble the covers and I pull them up to the pillow
so it looks sort of neat, but I don't make it, you know,
all so tight that you can bounce a quarter
on it the way the admiral does.
I'm looking at your faces.
You're thinking why are they having this guy
up here talk about making his bed.
There's actually a reason for why I'm saying this.
I think it's important as you leave here today,
if you haven't already done it, to start paying attention
to how your own particular brain works.
You know, the admiral likes a hard-discipline approach,
the experience of being tough.
He likes that and I'm sure a lot of you benefit from that, too.
But I'm a little more flexible.
I pull the covers up just enough so the next time I look
at them it'll be a little gift myself
and I'll get a little jolt of some happiness hormones
when I look at it and that's good for me.
That's the way I like it.
The point is that there's no good or bad way
to start the day, I don't think.
But I think you can learn to get the most out of your particular,
your own brain, if you pay attention to how it works.
I used to push my brain, you know,
sort of like the way a jockey would whip a horse trying
to make it run faster than it can run,
but now I'm more tolerant of the way my brain works.
I'm easier on it.
I get it pointed in a certain direction and it works
in the background in its own time and when it's ready to come
up with the goods, it lets me know.
But the thing is, it takes time.
You know, I bring this up because if I'm going
to pass anything on to you today it has to be real to me.
For instance, my grandson Scott is graduating today
and that's very real.
[ Applause ]
That's real to me and so is the fact
that he'll be entering my field.
He's going to be facing a lot of uncertainty.
But, you know, uncertainty is not always a bad thing.
In fact, I kind of welcome uncertainty.
I think instead of resisting it, you can surf uncertainty.
You'll keep your balance, stay agile,
expect the unexpected bumps.
That's harder to do when uncertainty comes at you
like a tsunami, but it's a good principle to live by.
The thing is, it's not just Scott who's going to be going
out facing uncertainty in his chosen field,
every one of you here today is going to face uncertainty.
It's going to hit you.
You'll face it no matter what you do
and sometimes it'll make you rethink what you're doing.
And here's an interesting thing, uncertainty usually comes
from the outside, but sometimes it can come from your own heart.
If you suddenly are up against a situation
where you remember what your own principles are,
what your values are, sometimes the choice can be difficult.
I'll give you an example.
My wife just wrote a book about people who were brought
up in the Bronx and I'm-- At the Bronx.
All right.
Good. Very good.
Excellent.
Read the book.
You'll love it.
So I met one of the people in the book that she interviewed
and he told me such an interesting powerful story
about this thing I was just talking about,
about knowing your values and coming up against them,
coming up against something in your own heart.
He came from a working class family and his father had lived
through the depression and his father told him constantly,
be a plumber, people will always need plumbing.
But this was a very smart kid and he went to medical school
and he was so smart that as a young man he invented a device
that would save lives and a medical company offered hundreds
of millions of dollars for the patent to the device.
The only thing was they were going--
For some reason they were going to hold it back from putting it
on the market for a whole year before they started selling it.
Now that meant that he could either release it
to the public right away and start saving lives
or he could take the hundreds of millions and wait a year.
And his father, who had lived through the depression
and kept telling him be a plumber,
his father said don't do it, don't take the money.
He said think of all the people, the mothers and children
who will die during that year while this company is waiting
to put it on the market, put it out there now.
And then every night when he went to bed,
the father would say to him, when you wake up tomorrow
and you look in the mirror to shave, don't look at yourself,
don't think about your own image, think about those mothers
and children who are going to die if you wait for a year.
So what do think?
Did he take the money or did he put it out on the market?
He had to make a decision.
It was a very tough decision.
And sometimes you have to make really tough ones and they come
at you unexpectedly like that,
but you can certainly surf uncertainty better,
you can find your balance better if you know how to respond
to your own principles.
So I'll tell you, I'll tell you what he did.
He didn't take the money and decades later
when he told me the story, he was really happy about it
because he did what he thought was right
and it makes him feel good to know that.
But here's the thing, that was many years ago.
In those days we had time to think things through.
We had time to consider these things.
You don't have that luxury so much anymore.
All of the sudden now, things are going really fast.
Let me give you an example of how fast things are going.
I love this example.
A few years ago the Internet was flooded with copies
of a graduation speech that Kurt Vonnegut had given at MIT.
It spread across the country.
It spread all over the Internet, all over the world,
and it did that in just a few hours.
That's how fast it was.
It was quoted everywhere.
And I'd like to read some of it to you.
I love it because it gives very simple advice, clear-cut,
everyday, how to live your life advice.
He said, "Here's a few words for the graduating class.
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future,
sunscreen would be it.
The long-term of benefits, the long-term benefits
of sunscreen have been proven by scientist, whereas the rest
of my advice has no basis more reliable
than my own meandering thoughts.
I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.
Oh, never mind.
You will not understand the power and beauty
of your youth until they've faded.
But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos
of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much
possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.
You are not as fat as you imagine.
Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts.
Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss. Remember compliments you receive.
Forget the insults.
If you succeed in doing this, show me how.
Stretch. Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees.
You'll miss them when they're gone.
Get to know your parents.
You never know when they'll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings.
They're your best link to your past and the people most likely
to stick with you in the future.
Don't expect anyone else to support you.
Maybe you have a trust fund,
maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse, but you never know
when either one might run out.
Be careful whose advice you buy.
Advice is a form of nostalgia.
Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past
from the disposal, wiping it off,
painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it
for more than it's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen."
Now the thing about this charming piece
by Kurt Vonnegut is that it wasn't written by Kurt Vonnegut.
It was written by a newspaper columnist
in Chicago called Mary Schmich.
Some unknown person had posted it
on the Internet saying it was written by Kurt Vonnegut
and it spread all around the world in hours
with his name attached to it.
Schmich said it went to Italy and France, to Israel
and Brazil, to places I didn't know had electricity.
And she said even Mr. Vonnegut's wife,
the photographer Jill Krementz, received and emailed it
to several friends and then asked her husband why didn't you
tell me you spoke at MIT.
And he said, "Because I didn't."
Somebody said it was the most widely distributed piece
of email in the history of the Internet.
But after only a few hours of bouncing around the world,
it was identified as a hoax and, in a flash,
the Internet was flooded with retractions.
At the end of one extraordinary day, vast numbers
of people had accepted and then rejected a worldwide hoax.
And that's what makes this Internet event a great image
for the age we live in now.
There were probably just as many lies going around now
as there ever were, but these days they're traveling
at the speed of light and with the help of an engine
for repetition that works
on a scale unheard of in human history.
The lies stick.
People are still sending
around that talk saying it was written by Kurt Vonnegut.
All right.
So big deal, you may be thinking.
You may be thinking it's just a few jokes about youth and beauty
and trivial things, but think about it.
It could be selling you anything.
It could be a cult religion that could separate you from friends
and family or a quack medicine that could leave you paralyzed
or bogus political information that could decide an election.
Being able to know what's true and what's a lie is a lot harder
to do now, harder than ever before.
And so now, more than ever, you need the wisdom
of a trusted partner or a friend or a mentor,
somebody who can remind you of what counts.
Now, more than ever, I think, you need to know who you are
and what you believe in.
And who you are is a tough one because most
of us have many people inside us, but in your finer moments,
you aspire to things that make sense.
Even while you're enjoying a momentary distraction,
you know that down the road something's going
to come along that's going to require skill, ability
and you're going to know you can't wing it.
So you're going to be prepared for it.
You're going to know that one of the deepest pleasures comes
from knowing how to do something that's hard well
and you'll be prepared.
You'll take the time that it takes to learn it.
We have a challenge about time now.
So let yourself be all the you's that you are,
but don't let them crowd out the smart one.
And as for what you believe in, values are really not
so much what you say as what you do.
The more you bring those two things into line,
the easier it'll be to get where you're going.
You know, you may say you want to go to Chicago, but it's going
to be hard to get there
if you keep buying tickets to Las Vegas.
I think we don't realize how important time is.
When we couldn't communicate at the speed of light,
we didn't think about it that much, but things do take time,
like the time it takes for your brain to work on a problem
and chemical reactions take time.
Mourning a loss takes time.
In fact, all the transitions of our life take time.
Getting your brain or your body in shape takes more
than a weekend, no matter what they tell you in the brochure.
It takes time for a species to adapt to changes
in the environment that we cause, which makes us one
of the most dangerous species that's ever lived.
We can make changes in the environment so rapid
that nature doesn't have time to replenish species that can live
in that changed environment.
And I don't want to kid you
into thinking I've got this all worked out,
that I know how to do it.
I'm still working on it myself, but this is what I aspire to.
So this is real to me and I'm passing it on to you.
So as you make the transition from this page in your life
to the next chapter, I wish all of you what I wish for Scott.
I wish you health, happiness, resilience, love, laughter,
patience, cash, strength, plenty of time,
and a friendly relationship with your own brain.
And if all else fails, floss and wear your sunscreen.
Thank you and good luck.