Good morning graduates, and congratulations.

You are sitting here this morning because you were driven to follow your vision for tomorrow. Thats good. You were thinking about the future. Of course, none of us knows everything our tomorrows will bring. They will certainly provide you with days of joy and triumph like today, but they will also hand you some defeats, because all our lives experience highs and lows. Im not here to offer wisdom about the inevitable vagaries of life. But I will offer you one very simple piece of general advice. Live life the way youd like people to remember you. Make your life your legacy. Most of you have your story in front of you. Your personal storyline will be influenced by the choices you make. Your career, your choice of a marriage partner and your many aspirations are yours to control. What you expectantly await today are the tomorrows you plan. When you reach my age, you start to ponder your legacy. Theres a point in life when you stop thinking about what lies ahead and start thinking about past accomplishments. None of us wants to wake up one day and think, What have I accomplished, and what do those accomplishments contribute to the greater good? And believe me, you dont want to be disappointed in your legacy, because at some point, its too late to change it. So the question becomes: what is it you want to accomplish? Most of us want to start with our basic needs, so making a lot of money seems to top many lists. Just remember, after youre gone your children will only remember the time you spent with them and the love you showed them. Make sure their memories evoke the pleasure in that time. What a tragedy it would be if you were too busy chasing money and position to enjoy childrens ballgames and plays, their proms and graduations, all the milestones of growing up. Afternoons spent fishing or hiking or shopping or even working side by side contribute to their store of wisdom about respect, work, family. Those are the acts that live on. Those are how you let your life speak for you and about you. The more you learn in life, the more skill you will bring to your various relationships and the business and personal challenges you face. The more you will be able to understand other peoples perspectives, the more your imagination will make the leaps of empathy required for compassion. All your experiences contribute to your store of knowledge. So does your formal education. They give you the tools to analyze, imagine and cope. The way you treat EVERYONE with whom you interact every day forms you and informs you. So be fair. Be quietly humble. Be reasoned. Listen. Simply put, try to live by the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would like them to treat you. But reverting to the best part of your childhood will also help you. Try to retain the open mind and heart you eagerly gave to others as a child. That sweetness and joy you found in play. As we grow up, we all lose that simplicity, that innocence, and tend to approach the world more warily, perhaps calculating the angles, sizing up the odds of success. We can become cynicism dressed as practicality. If that sounds like you, take a few moments and reassess. Its time to take back that piece of childhood that allowed you to embrace each new adventure with gusto. Assume people have the best intentions, not the worst. Approach ideas, situations and people with openness and genuine interest.

Im not asking you to be nave. Certainly there are people who will jockey for position at your place of work or lie about their own accomplishments or even engage in some nefarious deed. Does that mean you become like them fighting fire with fire or do you aspire to something better? Id like to suggest that when you take the high road, when you treat every person with decency and kindness and honor, most often thats what you get in return. My own granddaughter seems to know that intuitively. She is a soccer player. In school and church she learned that in some other countries around the globe children live in abject poverty and suffer from hunger, illness and deprivation. Childs play is the only refuge from those ills. In her 11-year-old mind, not having the wonderful toys to play with that shes used to is a sad fate. So for her birthday, she asked all party guests to bring her a soccer ball for those children who were suffering in other parts of the world. There were a lot of guests because she had two separate parties one in Houston where she lives, and one in Georgia with the rest of her family. She also plays on a premier soccer team. When people learned her plans, they sent literally hundreds of soccer balls to the two events. Not just from party guests, but from people who heard about the project from friends and family, and of course, from Facebook. She was able to send all the soccer balls she received to children in Africa through missionary relief workers, who deflated the balls and stuffed them into duffle bags on their way to their African destination. It wasnt hard. In her mind, it was a simple solution. And sometimes the simple gesture is indeed the solution. Think of the times a nurse has laid a calming hand on your shoulder. Reaching out in such a small way can provide enormous strength and comfort. Its a tactile interaction that binds us all together in one family of living beings. That bond proves our place in the universe. It shows us that we are one fragile element in an intricate fabric of existence. And that we are all interdependent on this complex living system to survive and thrive. Remember that if you are tempted toward arrogance. Arrogance is merely short-lived selfassurance for the insecure and afraid. The most accomplished and brilliant people Ive ever known have been the most humble and self-effacing. They see complexity in everything. They recognize subtlety and nuance. They see the flaws in themselves, so theyre loath to criticize and condemn others. So concentrate on your own words and actions, your own future legacy. Let other people worry about theirs. Being the best person you can be should take up all your time and in time, thats what you will be remembered for. Its the best advice I can give you today and in the years to come. Congratulations, graduates.