Last week, I watched two very important people in my life walk across a stage and receive a diploma. My daughter. And the young woman who will soon become my daughter-in-law. Two extraordinary human beings, their goofy looking mortarboards slightly crooked, their eyes full of something I can only describe as magnificent uncertainty . I remember that time of my life, that rare, electric space between who you’ve been and who you’re about to become.
It’s terrifying and I’ve been thinking a lot about what to say to them ever since.
I don’t want to say the easy things. Not “the world is your oyster” or “follow your passion”. Not the kind of polished BS that comes inside a greeting card. I want to say something real. Something that will still matter five years from now, or fifteen, or fifty. Maybe something I can write them that they might find again in an old desk drawer and think, yeah, he really meant that.
If you read last week’s post Smart People Books: Before You Build Your Life, Read This then you already know I’ve been wrestling with Arthur Brooks and his challenge to find meaning in an age of emptiness. That piece was about doing the inner work:
- Who you are
- What you’re building your life toward,
- Whether the scaffolding you’re climbing actually leads somewhere worth going.
This post is about the world waiting for you on the other side. Here’s what I’ve decided to tell these two amazing women…
Let Me Preach Some Truth First
It’s hard for your generation to stay engaged when the world feels like a shitstorm of chaos. You’ve been pulled in a million directions since you were old enough to glue your face to a digital screen. Your attention has been fractured, monetized, and sold back to you as entertainment. Social media floods your brain with distraction disguised as human connection. You’re drowning in information and starving for meaning, and it has never been harder to tell fact from fiction.
You inherited a digital flood, but no one taught you how to swim through it.
The pace of change right now is simply outrageous. Headline news has a shelf life shorter then the bagged spinach we buy every Saturday and toss in the trash every Wednesday. And while the noise has kept you busy, real power structures have been quietly taking shape in the shadows. The adults have been making choices on your behalf at a record pace.
Here’s their dirtiest secret:
They find you far more useful as a passive consumer of viral content than as an active citizen.
They’d rather keep you chasing TikTok videos than see you rise up. They don’t want to catch you using the technology they armed you with to truly connect, with clarity, with purpose, and for the good of all of humanity.
But here’s what they’ve gotten wrong about you:
They’ve mistaken your silence for surrender.
They’ve underestimated you.
You’re ready.
You got this.
Who Will Write The Next Chapter?
So, you weren’t born into a perfect world, so what? Neither has any other human in history. The good news is that you were born into one that can still be changed. Not someday. Not by someone else. But right now, by you.
History isn’t a dusty old library book. It’s a living flame passed from hand to hand, from generation to generation. And now it is being handed to you. Put down your iPhone, accept the torch and start marching. The world needs you.
The world needs you and it always has. Throughout history, some of the most powerful change agents were young people just like you.
In the 1950s, a young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. stepped into the national spotlight. He was only 26 years old. His courage ignited a civil rights movement that reshaped America. He didn’t wait until he was older, wiser, more polished. He stepped forward with conviction and a vision so large it still echoes.
In the 1960s, students filled the streets, the lunch counters, the buses, the very front lines of history. They carried clipboards and loads of courage. They believed that their voices could rewrite the future. They knew that freedom couldn’t wait. They faced fire hoses, snarling dogs, nights in jail cells and swinging batons. And still, they sang. Still, they marched. Still, they believed.
They were no older than you are today.
They weren’t superheroes. They were students, sons and daughters, friends and classmates. Young people with final exams to take, jobs to secure and dreams of their own. But they risked it all because they knew justice is never handed down. It’s demanded. Their courage shook the conscience of the world.
In the 1970s, young voices fought for the air we breathe and the rivers that had grown too poisoned to carry life. They fought for women to be seen as equal. They fought to bring classmates and friends home from wars that wasted lives for causes they didn’t believe in.
These were not idle dreamers.
They were dreamers who acted.
Dreamers who dared. Dreamers who made history because they refused to accept the silence of apathy as the soundtrack of their time.
In the 1980s, youth activism leapt across borders and continents, reminding the world that the fight for justice is never confined to one nation’s soil. Students fought apartheid in South Africa. And in Berlin, it was young hands that swung the hammers and young feet that climbed the graffitied slabs of the Berlin Wall. The young adults of the ’80’s showed the world that justice is not only a national struggle but a global one, and that young people are the heartbeat of that struggle.
They didn’t wait to be invited to the table of history.
They built their own table and forced the world to sit and listen.
And let us not forget a young law student who would become a global icon. Mahatma Gandhi was only in his early 20s when he first began challenging injustice. He taught us that one young voice, firm in truth and love, can create an impact that rippled across continents.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”
These courageous change agents all had something in common:
- They paid attention.
- They cared.
- And then, they acted.
Their footsteps echo forward through history and land, right now, at your feet.
So the question I’m asking is…
What will you do with the world you inherit?
Fast Forward to Now.
I get it. The world seems broken. But think of the examples above. Is it any more broken then it was then or just in different ways? You’re living in an age of extraordinary access offset by overwhelming noise. However, underneath the scroll, the feed, the stream of distraction, is a world calling out for your attention. Climate change, civil rights, education, equality (hell, even democracy itself) hanging in the balance. These aren’t just headlines. They are the desperate cries of your era.
And they are waiting for you to answer.
You’ve got all the tools. I know many of you. You’ve got the talent. On top of that, you have creative minds, powerful technology at your finger tips, bold ideas, instincts sharpened by a generation raised on innovation and disruption.
And you have the time. Not just years stretching ahead of you, but the urgency of this very moment.
The world doesn’t need your fire someday.
It needs it right now.
Lighting a path forward through the darkness.
To Every Graduate Standing at this Threshold
Listen to me. Your One Shining Moment is finally here. It’s time for you to wake up and begin writing your next chapter. Your voice, your courage, and your commitment will forever shape The Story of Us. The pen is firmly in your hand.
Will you write a tale of complacency, or one of purpose and power?
It’s time to begin.
Here’s your call to action.
- Wake up
- Remind yourselves that you have choices.
- Get informed.
- Ask questions.
- Register to vote… and do it.
- Volunteer.
- Protest.
- Create.
- Build.
- Disrupt.
Regardless of what anyone tries to tell you:
It’s the most patriotic thing you can do.
Most of all … believe in yourself.
Believe that your actions matter. Believe that your voice can move mountains. Believe that your generation can be the one that historians look back on and say,
“That’s when everything changed.”
I watched two remarkable young women graduate college and stand at the threshold of what’s next. I thought:
the world has no idea what’s coming.
But…I do.
And I can’t wait to see what all they accomplish.
You get to write the next chapter in The Story of Us.
Pick up the pen. Make it a chapter worth bookmarking.
“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
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