Remarks at Southern New Hampshire University Commencement
Southern New Hampshire University | May 19, 2007
http://www.barackobama.com/2007/05/19/remarks_at_southern_new_hampsh.php
Good morning, President LeBlanc, the Board of Trustees, faculty, parents,
family, friends, and the Class of 2007. Congratulations on your graduation, and
thank you for allowing me the honor to be a part of it.
I also want to thank Southern New Hampshire University for this honorary doctor
of laws degree. I ended up paying for my first law degree for years and years,
so for all of you with visions of law school, I'd consider running for President
and then waiting for a commencement invite instead - it's much cheaper.
There is a verse from the Bible that is sometimes read or recited during rites
of passage like this. Corinthians 13:11: "When I was a child, I spoke as a
child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I
have put away childish things."
I bring this up because there's often an assumption on days like today that
growing up is purely a function of age; that becoming an adult is an inevitable
progression that can be measured by a series of milestones - college graduation
or your first job or the first time you throw a party that actually has food
too.
And yet, maturity does not come from any one occasion - it emerges as a quality
of character. Because the fact is, I know a whole lot of thirty and forty and
fifty year olds who have not yet put away childish things - who continually
struggle to rise above the selfish or the petty or the small.
We see this reflected in our country today.
We see it in a politics that's become more concerned about who's up and who's
down than who's working to solve the real challenges facing our generation; a
politics where debates over war and peace are reduced to 60-second soundbites
and 30-second attack ads.
We see it in a media culture that sensationalizes the trivial and trivializes
the profound - in a 24-hour news network bonanza that never fails to keep us
posted on how many days Paris Hilton will spend in jail but often fails to
update us on the continuing genocide in Darfur or the recovery effort in New
Orleans or the poverty that plagues too many American streets.
And as we're fed this steady diet of cynicism, it's easy to start buying into it
and put off hard decisions. We become tempted to turn inward, suspicious that
change is really possible, doubtful that one person really can make a
difference.
That's where the true test of growing up occurs. That's where you come in.
No matter where you go from here - whether it's into public service or the
business world; whether it's law school or medical school; whether you become
scientists or artists or entertainers - you will face a choice. Do you want to
be passive observers of the way world is or active citizens in shaping the way
the world ought to be? In both your own life and the life of your country, will
you strive to put away childish things?
It is a constant struggle, this quest for maturity, and as my wife will
certainly tell you, I haven't always been on the winning side in my own life.
But through my own tests and failings, I have learned a few lessons here and
there about growing up, and there's three I'd like to leave you with today.
The first lesson came during my first year in college.
Back then I had a tendency, in my mother's words, to act a bit casual about my
future. I rebelled, angry in the way that many young men in general, and young
black men in particular, are angry, thinking that responsibility and hard work
were old-fashioned conventions that didn't apply to me. I partied a little too
much and studied just enough to get by.
And once, after a particularly long night of partying, we had spilled a little
too much beer, broke a few too many bottles, and trashed a little too much of
the dorm. And the next day, the mess was so bad that when one of the cleaning
ladies saw it, she began to tear up.
And when a girlfriend of mine heard about this, she said to me, "That woman
could've been my grandmother, Barack. She spent her days cleaning up after
somebody else's mess."
Which drove home for me the first lesson of growing up:
The world doesn't just revolve around you.
There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we
should talk more about our empathy
deficit - the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see
the world through those who are different from us - the child who's hungry, the
laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.
As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of
empathy
will become harder, not easier. There's no community service requirement in the
real world; no one forcing you to care. You'll be free to live in neighborhoods
with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same
schools, and narrow your concerns to what's going in your own little circle.
Not only that - we live in a culture that discourages
empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is
to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in
power too often encourage these selfish impulses.
They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food
got there because they're all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city
children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can't learn and won't learn and
so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being
slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else's
problem to take care of.
I hope you don't listen to this. I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract,
your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less
fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to
all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that
debt.
It's because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual
salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it's only when you hitch
your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true
potential - and become full-grown.
The second lesson I learned after college, when I had this crazy idea that I
wanted to be a community organizer and work in low-income neighborhoods.
My mother and grandparents thought I should go to law school. My friends had
applied for jobs on Wall Street. But I went ahead and wrote letters to every
organization in the country that I could think of. And finally, this small group
of churches on the south side of Chicago wrote back and gave me a job organizing
neighborhoods devastated by steel-plant closings in the early 80s.
The churches didn't have much money - so they offered me a grand sum of $12,000
a year plus $1,000 to buy a car. And I got ready to move to Chicago - a place I
had never been and where I didn't know a living soul.
Even people who didn't know me were skeptical of my decision. I remember having
a conversation with an older man I had met before I arrived in Chicago. I told
him about my plans, and he looked at me and said, "Let me tell something. You
look like a nice clean-cut young man, and you've got a nice voice. So let me
give you a piece of advice - forget this community organizing business. You
can't change the world, and people won't appreciate you trying. What you should
do is go into television broadcasting. I'm telling you, you've got a future."
I could've taken my mother's advice and I could've taken my grandparents advice.
I could've taken the path my friends traveled. And objectively speaking, that
older man had a point about the TV thing.
But I knew there was something in me that wanted to try for something bigger.
So the second lesson is this: Challenge yourself. Take some risks in your life.
This isn't easy. In a few minutes, you can take your diploma, walk off this
stage, and go chasing after the big house and the large salary and the nice
suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy.
But I hope you don't. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty
of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.
So don't let people talk you into doing what's easy or comfortable. Listen to
what's inside of you and decide what it is that you care about so much that
you're willing to risk it all.
The third lesson is one that I learned once I got to Chicago.
I had spent weeks organizing our very first community meeting around the issue
of gang violence. We invited the police; we made phone calls, went to churches,
and passed out flyers.
I had been warned of the turf battles and bad politics between certain community
leaders, but I ignored them, confident that I knew what I was doing.
The night of the meeting we arranged rows and rows of chairs in anticipation of
the crowd. And we waited. And we waited. And finally, a group of older people
walk in to the hall. And they sit down. And this little old lady raises her hand
and asks, "Is this where the bingo game is?"
Thirteen people showed up that night. The police never came. And the meeting was
a complete disaster.
Later, the volunteers I worked with told me they were quitting - that they had
been doing this for two years and had nothing to show for it.
I was tired too. But at that point, I looked outside and saw some young boys
playing in a vacant lot across the street, tossing stones at boarded-up
apartment building. And I turned to the volunteers, and I asked them, "Before
you quit, I want you to answer one question. What's gonna happen to those boys?
Who will fight for them if not us? Who will give them a fair shot if we leave?"
And at that moment, we were all reminded of a third lesson in growing up:
Persevere.
Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it.
But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty
of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure,
because you won't. It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or
whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.
After my little speech that day, one by one, the volunteers decided not to quit.
We went back to those neighborhoods, and we kept at it, sustaining ourselves
with the small victories. Eventually, over time, a community changed. And so had
we.
Cultivating empathy, challenging yourself,
persevering in the face of adversity - these are qualities that dare us to put
away childish things. They are qualities that help us grow.
They are qualities that one graduate today knows especially well.
Richard Komi was born thousands of miles from here in Southern Nigeria. He'd
probably still be there today, if he hadn't been forced to flee when his tribe
came under attack. Eventually, he made it to the United States, worked his way
through factories and retail jobs, and came here to SNHU, to complete the
education he began in Africa. And now, with a wife and kids and lots of
responsibility, he's even taking the time to give back to his new country by
volunteering on this campaign.
Richard Komi may be graduating today, but it's clear that he grew up a long time
ago. We celebrate with him because his journey is a testament to the powerful
idea that in the face of impossible odds, ordinary people can do extraordinary
things.
At a time when America finds itself at a crossroads, facing challenges we
haven't seen in decades, we need to hold on to this idea more than ever.
A lot is riding on the decisions that are made and the leadership that is
provided by this generation. We are counting on you to help fix a health care
system that's leaving too many Americans sick or bankrupt or both. We are
counting on you to bring this planet back from the brink by solving this crisis
of global climate change. We are counting on you to help stop a genocide in
Darfur that's taking the lives of innocents as we speak here today. And we're
counting on you to restore the image of America around the world that has led so
many like Richard Komi to find liberty, and opportunity, and hope on our
doorstep.
There are some who are betting against you - who say that you don't pay
attention, that you don't show up to vote, that you're too concerned with your
own lives and your own problems.
Well that's not what I believe and it's not what I've seen. Instead I've seen
rallies filled with crowds that stretch far into the horizon; thousands upon
thousands signing up to organize online; scores who are coming to the very first
political event of their lifetime. And just a few hours before this
commencement, I got the opportunity to send off hundreds of people who have
chosen to take time out of their busy lives and spend an entire Saturday
knocking on doors here in New Hampshire. Because they're not content to sit back
and watch anymore. Because they believe they can help this country grow.
And whenever the doubt creeps in and I find myself wondering if change is really
possible, I end up thinking about the young Americans - teenagers and college
kids not much older than you - who watched the Civil Rights Movement unfold
before them on television sets all across the country.
I imagine that they would've seen the marchers and heard the speeches, but they
also probably saw the dogs and the fire hoses, or the footage of innocent people
being beaten within an inch of their lives; or heard the news the day those four
little girls died when someone threw a bomb into their church.
Instinctively, they knew that it was safer and smarter to stay at home; to watch
the movement from afar. But they also understood that these people in Georgia
and Alabama and Mississippi were their brothers and sisters; that what was
happening was wrong; and that they had an obligation to make it right. When the
buses pulled up for a Freedom Ride down South, they got on. They took a risk.
And they changed the world.
Now it's your turn. You will be tested by the challenges of this new century,
and at times you will fail. But know that you have it within your power to try.
That generations who have come before you faced these same fears and
uncertainties in their own time. And that if we're willing to shoulder each
other's burdens, to take great risks, and to persevere through trial, America
will continue its journey towards that distant horizon, and a better day.
Thank you, and congratulations on your graduation.
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