Kevin R. Moore [j5poedr02(at)sneakemail(dot)com]
May 20, 2007
Members of the Okoboji High School class of 2007, this is not a dream. In a few short moments you will receive your high school diploma. Can you believe it? You did it.
Congratulations!
Can you imagine that 14/15-year-old walking into that first day of freshman English? Does it seem like yesterday or a hundred years ago? Do you remember the horrible outfit you were wearing that you thought was so cool?
Parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, family, teachers, friends, community members, you did it! You’ve helped bright-eyed, awkward high school freshmen arrive at one of the biggest mile markers in their lives.
Do you remember telling them how horrible that outfit was?
Congratulations to you, too, and thank you.
When I was invited to give this address, I was given two instructions.
The first: ten minutes. That’s it. No matter how profound and entertaining my remarks, it is a well established fact that some fathers and most grandfathers will start to nod off somewhere around minute 9, unless it sounds like things are wrapping up. Understood. I will do my best.
The second instruction I received: go slow. I guess I have a reputation of speaking quickly. This actually goes back to my debate days in high school. The most common feedback I’d get from judges was that I went too fast. I used to put the word “slowly” on the top of my cases in big, bold letters. Just three weeks ago, I was in Las Vegas to give a presentation at a conference. Still today, the most common feedback I get: “great talk, slow down”. Again, I will do my best. As an alternative, I will post the content of this speech on my web page, so you can pick up anything you miss.
No, I’m not kidding.
I must admit, across high school, college, and work, this address is one of the most difficult assignments I’ve ever been given.
Get a good grade, get a good score, impress the judge, sell the customer, fix the bug, convince the manager: these are tractable goals.
All I’ve been told here: speak slowly for no more than ten minutes.
I remember sitting through at least five graduations in my life: the four ceremonies while I was in high school and my graduation from Iowa State.
The Iowa State graduation really doesn’t count, since I was reading Wired magazine the whole time. So seniors, if you want to pull out a magazine or do some texting with friends, I won’t get mad. All I ask is that you put your phone on vibrate.
Of the four graduations I attended at OHS, I remember only three things from the commencement addresses. Out of 40 minutes of speeches, just three things.
This means, nine years from now, if three-quarters of you remember one thing from my talk, I’ll be shooting par.
For my graduation in 1998, a good friend of mine pulled some of his “infamous strings” to get columnist Chuck Offenburger, “The Iowa Boy” to give our address.
During his speech, Mr. Offenburger offered a list of ten suggestions as we left the halls of OHS.
The one that stuck in my mind: consider staying in Iowa.
I agree with Mr. Offenburger. You should absolutely consider staying in Iowa.
But let me offer a corollary: make sure you leave Iowa. Don’t just consider leaving. Actually leave. Soon. While you’re young and unattached.
Now before your mothers kill me, let me clarify. I’m not saying that you should leave and never come back.
I’m saying that this is a big country, and you’re a citizen of it. This is a big world, and you’re an inhabitant of it.
Take a look around.
The band trip to New York doesn’t count. Spring break in Mexico doesn’t count either.
Instead, take a summer job in Orlando, or Boston, or San Fransisco. Do a study abroad in Spain, or Ireland, or Australia.
Find a place where they’ve never heard of Okoboji. Find a place where they don’t call pop “pop”. Find a place where they confuse Iowa with Idaho and Ohio. Find a place where they confuse you with a Canadian. Then stay there for three months.
My mother didn’t like the idea of me spending the first summer of college in Washington State. My dad didn’t think going to Australia for a semester my senior year was necessary.
I went anyway. It was one of the most important things I have ever done.
Living somewhere else forces you to face stereotypes.
I couldn't believe that most Australians have only seen kangaroos in zoos. I was shocked to learn that Australians found the Crocodile Hunter amazingly obnoxious. Who would have guessed?
Australians were amazed that I neither owned a gun nor ate at McDonald's every day.
I have to admit, it took a long time to get over the fact that I was the one with the accent.
I had a similar educational experience when I was traveling in Germany a couple years ago. Twice in one evening, I was asked if I had ever gone cow tipping. For some reason, Germans think this is what Iowans do for fun. My mother, who grew up on a farm with cows hadn’t heard of the practice until I told her about it.
It's an interesting experience to be the target of a stereotype. It forces one to reflect: how many opinions do I hold that are the product of stereotype and innuendo instead of hard evidence or first-hand experience?
Living somewhere drastically different also forces you to face yourself. It makes you step out of your comfort zone. It makes you reflect upon what defines you.
I can't tell you how valuable this is.
Finally, traveling changes your perspective on life. When I lived in Iowa, my frame of reference was Iowa. Traveling has made me realize that I live in the world. State and national borders are the constructs of governments. They may denote the boundaries of currencies, cultures, and accents, but they are fundamentally artificial. At the end of the day, people are pretty much the same. We may care about different sports and put different toppings on our French fries, but we have strikingly similar hopes and fears.
The world is changing quickly. You need to be aware of it. You need to be comfortable with it. You need to be ready for it.
When I was sitting where you are sitting, I couldn’t imagine being worried about “mad cows” from Canada or sick chickens in China. I couldn’t imagine that I would be coordinating engineers in Beijing to do work at half the price of their American counterparts. I couldn’t imagine that I would have friends--educated, born-and-raised Americans--moving to India to pursue job opportunities.
You have a choice: you can ignore, deny, or even curse the changes around you. Many have and many will. Or you can decide to understand, embrace, and leverage the greater connectedness and inter-reliance that is shaping the world.
Either way, it’ll happen.
During the address given to the class of 1996, the speaker ensured the graduates that “they lived in the United States of America, the best country in the world”. I remember agreeing with him, but I also remember asking myself a question. You see, the class of ‘96 had exchange students--people from different countries, raised in different cultures. I remember asking myself, “do these people agree?”
There is no doubt that the United States is the dominant world power--economically, militarily, and culturally.
I’m not certain, however, that any of these makes us the best.
If you were to ask an Australian, or an Italian, or a Britain, you may find they have a different idea about whose country really is number one.
In the end, the discussion is as silly as trying to judge who has the best mother. It’s pretty subjective.
I think our founding fathers understood this. In the preamble to the constitution, they don’t claim to be forming a “perfect union”. Rather they stated the goal of creating a “more perfect union”. This admits that while they didn’t outline a utopia, they left the door open for constant improvement. We need only look at the courage and conviction of the great patriots in our history to see how far we have come.
So today, you sit here with a unique opportunity--and I would claim a unique responsibility--as tax payers, as voters, as consumers, and ultimately as citizens of this great country. I challenge you to love your country--deeply and fully--but not with the naivety that a child loves her parent, blindly following along without consideration.
Instead, love your country with the wisdom and responsibility with which a parent loves her child. Quick to give praise when praise is due, but equally quick to question any misstep and to correct any wrong action. Always with the goal of that “more perfect union”.
This is not the country of our fore fathers. This country belongs to us.
The speaker for the OHS class of '95 gave a quiz to the graduates. The quiz tried to evaluate what they learned in four years of high school. One of the questions: what is the speed of a four speed CD-ROM? Everyone laughed, of course, because no one from the class of ’95 knew the answer. However, there was a 15-year-old sitting, fists clenched on the bleachers reciting to himself “600 kilobits-per-second, 600 kilobits-per-second”.
You probably don’t need to guess who that 15-year-old was.
I remember this moment, because after the fact I was so mad that I hadn’t yelled out the answer. It would have been the perfect intersection of being funny, being the center of attention, and being smarter than everyone else. And I blew it!
This is just one silly example of a whole list of regrets I had from high school.
If only I had practiced my trombone more. If only I had worked for a better GPA. If only I had put more energy into debate. If only I had pushed myself more in track.
These are the kinds of thoughts that kept me awake at night. Then one evening, lying in bed well past 3AM, I had a simple, but profound thought: “I’m wasting my time.”
I realized you can make two mistakes about the past: the first is to not learn from it. The idea that “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Believe me, this is essential. Make every miss-step a learning experience.
There’s a second mistake you can make about the past: to dwell on it.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well…"
I find it interesting that there are two parallel mistakes you can make about the future.
The first is not to consider the future. Too many people, especially at your age, live just for today, without regard for tomorrow. Believe me, in college I stayed up all night cramming, way too many nights to make up for critically important games of Quake 3 that just couldn’t wait.
The second mistake, though, is to live in fear of the future. This is all too easy. If my life serves as a reference, your biggest worries, your biggest disappointments, your biggest heart-breaks, and your biggest challenges lie in your future.
This is not a reason to lose sleep!
Fear of the future, fear of the unknown, fear of the uncontrollable: these will constrict you. They will keep you from deliberately and rationally moving your life forward. More importantly, they will keep you from actually enjoying life to its fullest.
A metaphor for this past/future idea came to me last weekend. A friend invited me to go with him to the driving range. I hadn’t touched my clubs in over a year, but I went anyway.
Did I stretch? No. Did I warm up? No. Did I start with my wedge? Are you kidding?
I pulled out my driver and aimed for the fence, with some morphed combination of Tiger Woods and Happy Gilmore in my head.
I am still amazed that swinging in that direction [point forward] can cause the ball to go in that direction [point right].
After a frustrating set of slices, topped balls, and complete misses I remembered an idea that I had during my first day at the driving range almost 5 years ago.
The only thing that matters is where the club meets the ball.
You can have grand notions of hitting it over the fence. You can be terrified of your friend’s jokes. You can fill your brain with past mistakes and expert advice.
In the end, all that matters is where the club meets the ball.
Concentrating on that spot has a profound power to clear and focus the mind. (It also does a great job of keeping your head down, which is very important in golf.)
My advice to you today: concentrate on where the club meets the ball. In life, it’s here and now.
Literally, here and now.
Here and now is where you move forward. Here and now is where you change direction.
Here and now is where you make a difference.
I literally mean here, in this gymnasium and now, this afternoon, and every moment in your life.
You will be tempted to day dream about past successes. You will be sucked into regret about past failings. You will become blurry eyed with delusions of grandeur. And you will be frozen by fears of disappointment.
In the end, you must realize that you make your mark right here and right now. They rest is just history and theory.
I hope I have given you a few interesting things to ponder this afternoon. Failing that, I hope I have not spoken too quickly nor gone too far over my allocated ten minutes.
I do have a final request, though. When you’re standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, or the Sydney Opera House, or the Pyramids of Egypt, or the Space Needle in Seattle, have someone take a picture of you. Don’t forget a toothy smile, a big thumbs-up and your Okoboji t-shirt. Send a copy to your parents and tell them how much you love them. Send a copy to your favorite teacher at OHS and tell them how much you appreciate them. Send a copy to the Three Sons, so they can tack you up on their cork board to inspire the rest of life’s adventurers.
And if you can, send a copy to me, so that I can know at least once I shot close to par.
I wish you all success and happiness. Thank you for having me and again, congratulations.
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