I gave the commencement address at my high school in Ohio a few months ago. I’ll post it below, for those who are interested. What do you say to a bunch of teenagers? For what it’s worth, this is what I came up with. My speech was about 10 minutes long and was either very well received, or everyone was too polite to tell me that it was awful. I’m not terribly interested in figuring out which is the case. Note that this was written as a speech to teenagers, so I used more colloquial English and sloppy sentence structure than is typical for me. My mother was an English teacher, and if she had been there she would have thrown an English 9 textbook at the back of my head during my speech. But read it like a speech – it sounds a little odd as an essay, I think. So those who are interested, please read on for my speech which is entitled:

Some Things Matter. Some Things Don’t.

Hello everyone. So, do you feel old? Do you feel like adults now? Do you feel different than you did before? You don’t feel any different, do you? Do you know how I knew that? Because I’m 49 years old, and I still feel like I’m 18. Oddly, I no longer look like I’m 18, but I don’t feel any different.

And I’ll let you in on a little secret. When you go to a nursing home, and you see some ancient old person parked in the hallway in their wheelchair, staring at the wall, inside that old person is an 18-year-old kid wondering, “What happened?”

Your ultimate goal is that when you get to that point, you want to have no regrets. Which is, of course, impossible, so the real goal is to have as few regrets as possible. So how do you do that? Allow me to offer you some free advice. Now, in my experience, many things in this world that are free are also over-priced. So take my free advice for what it’s worth. But allow me to share a few things that I’ve learned in the 31 years since I was sitting where you are right now.

Gosh. 31 years.

What happened?

First, let me thank Superintendent Smith for the honor of addressing you today. Also, let me acknowledge that I was probably selected to speak here based more on the accomplishments of my parents than anything that I did. I realize that I’m just a bit biased, but I think I can say, with little fear of contradiction, that my parents were the two best teachers ever to work at Morgan High School. Between them, they won the teacher of the year award SEVEN TIMES (and the award didn’t exist for the first 20 years of my Mom’s career). They gave a lot of themselves to make this school better. As many of you know, my Mom died of cancer last fall. She was only 71 years old, perfectly healthy, had never smoked, never been sick, and she was the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met. I’m thankful that my Dad could join us here today, and I’d like to take just a moment to honor the contributions of Mr. and Mrs. Bastiat to Morgan High School. * Applause *

I’m happy to have the opportunity to come back home to Morgan County for a visit, and I’m just so excited to be here with you today. You see, I have a lot of security in my life. I know where I will be next week, next year, and probably 10 years from now. I’ve got my life fairly well under control, I think. Of course, every time I say that, everything gets all screwed up and I have to start over. So I probably should stop saying things like that. But still, I have good career and I’m in a good, stable situation. That may sound pretty nice to you – everyone loves security, right? But what I miss is the excitement of what you’re feeling right now. The whole world in front of you, with no idea what’s about to happen. That’s exciting. It can also be terrifying, but it is certainly exciting. And I miss that. So I appreciate you sharing this very exciting day with me.

But exciting is not always good, is it? We fear “exciting.” Or rather, we fear the unknown.

We fear change. But everything changes. All the time. And the better you handle change, the happier and more successful you will be.

Unfortunately, our fears, not our hopes and dreams, but our fears, are what guide most of our choices in life. This stifles growth. As a society, and as individuals.

Your lives have been extremely structured up until this point. Structured by other people. Now, you walk across this stage, and your lives suddenly become extremely unstructured. You can do whatever you want. This is a disconcerting feeling. You’re thinking, yeah, this is exciting – I might accomplish great things!

But…what if I fail?

Allow me to make a prediction. All of you are going to fail. Repeatedly. (They just brought me here today to cheer you up…) Now, don’t get me wrong, you’re going to succeed a lot, too. You will have many wonderful successes. But there will be failures. That’s just the way life goes. If you really think that you are going to live your whole life and never fail at anything, you don’t need a graduation speaker, you need prescription medication. Lots of it.

I’ll make another prediction: Those of you who fail the most will be the most successful. Sounds strange, huh?

But if you think about it, the only way to succeed is to keep trying. So those who try a lot will probably succeed a lot. Now, they’ll also fail a lot. But they’ll succeed a lot. And that’s what matters. Their failures don’t matter, but their successes do.

For example, the very nice lady who introduced me listed many of my accomplishments – it was a very flattering introduction. But if she instead had listed all the stuff I’ve screwed up in my life, we’d be here all night. It’s ok to fail, even if it hurts at the time.

So don’t fear failure. It is natural to fear failure. But really try to not let fear of failure impact your decision making.

Fear of failure is absolute poison. First of all, the only way to avoid failure is to not try. If you really don’t want to ever lose a basketball game, the only way to accomplish that for certain is to never play basketball. If you want a chance to win the game, you have to play. And if you play, you might lose.

If you don’t play the game, you won’t lose, but you also won’t win. Nothing happens. And believe me, that’s worse than failure.

Fear of failure tends to paralyze us into inaction. Five years later, you’re still sitting on the same couch, watching the same TV. You don’t even realize that fear of failure has hurt you. Because nothing happened. Nothing. You can’t even tell that anything went wrong. You have no way of knowing what you missed out on. It’s just gone. It was never there.

Still, it’s tempting to just stay where you’re comfortable. If you try and fail, that hurts. If you don’t try, it doesn’t hurt. You don’t feel anything. And before you know it, you’re in a wheelchair, staring at a wall. Wondering – “What happened?”

The other reason that you should not fear failure is that you need failure to get better. You don’t learn from success. After all, you’re succeeding – why should you do anything differently? Only when you fail are you forced into the uncomfortable process of changing the things about yourself that you thought were good. Personal growth is generally a painful process. The only way to avoid that pain is to do nothing, and feel nothing.

You also should not fear failure because failure can guide you to better things. When you fail, that means that what you’re doing is not working. That leaves you with two options: You can work harder at whatever you’re doing, or you can go do something else.

The natural human response is to work harder. That seems odd if you stop and think about it. It’s not working. Why would you work harder at something that’s not working? But humans fear the unknown. So we do what we know. Even if we’re not any good at it, and it’s not working. We just keep doing it.

It’s hard to leave your comfort zone, even if your comfort zone is a lousy place to be. At least your comfort zone is known. We fear the unknown.

Humans have two ways of making decisions: we have our intellect (rational thought) and we have emotions. Aristotle thought that most things could be understood with our intellect. He studied science and math by just thinking about it, and trying to figure out what made sense. It was nearly 2,000 years later, when Galileo and Francis Bacon came along and formalized the scientific method, and only then did we really begin to fully understand the limitations of rational thought, even in something as rational as science and math.

But guess what: our everyday lives are even less rational than science and math. You think you’re making rational decisions, but you’re not. In my view, humans make decisions with their emotions and use their intellect only to rationalize whatever they just did. Now, there are some people out there who are purely rational, and they don’t use emotions at all. We even have a name for them: they’re called sociopaths. But most of us aren’t like that. Thank God. Our crazy emotions are what make us human. That’s what makes life beautiful. But our emotions can lead to bad decisions sometimes.

So logically, sure, you’re in a bad situation, so you should just leave, right? Makes perfect, rational sense. Well, yeah, but we usually don’t. We stay in crappy situations because it’s familiar. It’s not good, but it’s familiar, so we stay.

Don’t fear the unknown. Jump out of the frying pan. If you land in the fire, jump again. Don’t just sit there. Don’t fear the unknown. Don’t allow fear of failure to prevent you from improving your situation.

Let me conclude with a few brief observations about some things that I think are important:

For example: Where you’re from, who your parents are, what school you went to, and so on. Do those things matter? Sure, I suppose so. But not nearly as much as you think. When someone is really sick and they’re looking for a good doctor, do you really think they care if I grew up on a hog farm here in Morgan County or in a suburb of Tucson? Heck no. They just want someone who’s really good with heart disease. Now, for my part, I’m proud of where I’m from. It’s a big part of who I am. But other people really don’t care. They just want a good doctor. So what matters to you may not matter to other people. Don’t get hung up on things that don’t matter to others.

I also think it matters how we treat one another. I believe that modern society’s emphasis on tolerance has paradoxically made our culture more coarse, combative, and bitterly divided. You would think that tolerance would bring us closer together, but it seems to be have had the opposite effect. Jesus told us to love our neighbor. He didn’t say “tolerate your neighbor.” He said, “love your neighbor.” That’s harder.

If you simply tolerate your neighbor’s quirks, you will still see him as an “other.” He’s one of those people over there. I’m one of these people over here. But if you love him, then you find a way to overlook your differences, or even rejoice in your differences – like you might tease your sister about drinking herbal tea instead of coffee – you love each other, so your teasing sounds loving, rather than mean. Without this love, and this sense of community, I’m not sure how a country like America is supposed to work. We’re not bound by a common religion, or a common race, or a common background. Nothing obvious holds us together. So please love your neighbor, even if you don’t like him all that much. This is difficult at times, but it’s really important. We’re all in this together. We’re all God’s children. Or, we’re all random blobs of protoplasm, depending on your belief system. But whatever you believe, we’re all in this together. If the best we can do is tolerate one another, we have a very serious problem. I believe that those who preach tolerance are increasing the divisions in our society, whether that is their intention or not. So please – love your neighbor. It matters.

Now, one last thing: Let’s talk about money. Does money matter? Money doesn’t matter. Unless you don’t have any. Then money becomes the most important part of your life. So if someone tells you that money doesn’t matter, what they’re really telling you is that they have enough money. It’s ok to make decisions at least partially based on money. If you don’t consider money in your decision making, then it will become the most important thing in your life, and that’s an awful way to live your life.

So some things matter, and some things don’t, and how happy you are in this life will largely depend on your ability to figure out which is which. And the trick is – it’s not always as obvious as I’ve made it out to be.

My freshman year of college, I studied a lot. All the time. One night, a teammate of mine had rented a movie. This was way back in the day when you had to drive to Blockbuster and rent an actual videotape, just like our ancestors did on the Mayflower. It was a big event. Anyway, I should have studied, but instead, I decided to waste some time and go down the hall and watch a stupid movie. So I get to my teammate’s room, and what do I find?

The most beautiful girl on the campus of Denison University. And what did I do? I married her.

Well, not that night. It took me eight years to convince her that this was a good idea. Or actually, it took me eight years to convince her to marry me. I’m still trying to convince her that this was a good idea.

Anyway, I made the wrong decision that night. I should have been studying. But it ended up being the best thing I ever did. You never know. Likewise, sometimes you do everything right, and things still go wrong. You just never know.

So when something goes wrong, don’t let that slow you down. Just keep going! Keep trying things! Sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don’t, so don’t get hung up on what is happening right now. Sometimes things happen for reasons that you don’t fully understand. Only later do you realize how lucky you are that things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to. Don’t let a setback get in your way. Handle the setback however you want, but for God’s sake, don’t stop. You never, EVER give up. Keep going!

So let me quickly sum things up:

Try to focus on the things that matter. Your successes matter. Your failures don’t matter. How you handle those failures matters a whole lot. Making decisions based on optimism and hope, rather than fear – that matters more than you can imagine. Embracing change rather than fearing it – that matters. Love your neighbor – that matters.

There are a lot of other things in this world that just don’t matter that much. Try to keep them straight as you go along, and everything gets easier. Not easy. But easier. A lot of people make life more difficult than it has to be, and it’s often because they can’t figure out what really matters, and they end up wasting a lot of time and effort on stuff that just doesn’t really matter all that much. And before they know it, they’re sitting in a wheelchair, staring at a wall. Wondering, “What happened?”

Don’t be that person. Pursue your dreams. If they don’t work out, pursue other dreams. Don’t fear failure. Don’t get stuck in a place you really don’t want to be simply because you’re afraid to explore other options. Let optimism and hope guide you, and you never know where you might end up. You just never know.

God, that’s exciting. Isn’t it?

Thank you again for allowing me to join you on this exciting, wonderful day. My Mom, and Dad, and I, we wish you the very best.

Thank you.