Charlie Rose's C.W. Post Commencement Address 1999
Award-winning television journalist and talk show host Charlie Rose
delivered the commencement address to 1,300 graduates and 4,200 guests
of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University on Sunday, May 9, 1999.
Provost Shenker, President Steinberg, Chairman Tilles, Trustees, faculty,
alumni, parents, friends, and students -- most of all students and parents.
You have been through high expectations, real fears, deep exhaustion, moments
of doubt, and today a moment of pride; it is your day, the applause is
yours. We reward you and honor you for an extraordinary achievement.
First things first, I want to thank the closest thing I have to a surrogate
mom, which reminds me of my first advice to you: Call your mom as long
as you live cause this is Mother's Day and your graduation day.
I remember at a time like this the great words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., who said, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty,
Free at last!"
Almost -- all that stands between that freedom that comes with your
degree is a few words from me. There are three rules for me this morning.
They are be sincere, be brief and be seated. Biologist Edward O. Wilson
once noted, "The shortest commencement speech ever may be that of
Salvador Dali who said 'I will be so brief I am already finished.' and
then he sat down."
I would rather be with the spirit of Salvador Dali than an unmentioned
speaker at Yale University -- pardon me Dr. Comer -- who used the letters
"Y-A-L-E" as his talking points. He spoke for 15 minutes on
"Y" talking about youth, 20 minutes on "A" talking
about ambition, 25 minutes on "L" talking about loyalty and 30
minutes on "E" talking about enthusiasm. And as he left the podium
he passed a young graduate who had his head bowed. He said to that young
graduate, "Son what did I say that so moved you." The young graduate
looked up, his hands still folded and he said, "Sir, I was just thanking
God that this is not the Massachusetts Institute of Technology!"
Let me begin with this thought: the most powerful story that any of
you have to tell is your very own story. You are today ready to begin
the next chapter of the story of your life. As someone noted that life
is a journey and not a destination. Someone else said that "it is
good to have an end to journey toward but it is the journey that matters
in the end." We talk this morning about your journey. Make no mistake
about it -- most of us would rather be where you are today because it is
a more interesting world and a more challenging world. You will live longer
and have opportunities that many of us cannot comprehend.
Think how fast the internet has come and how profound are its changes.
You can reach out to millions of computer users for information, conversation
and experience.
Pick up the paper any day and know there is a scientist somewhere in
a lab at this institution and others-who is discovering a disease that
killed your grandparent. Think about this week's newspapers which carried
stories of transplanting hands and other body parts. Think about discovering
the genes that cause diseases. Soon, all of the genes will be known, leading
to amazing consequences.
I spent some time this week with Warren Buffett, the world's second
richest man, and at one point I asked him, "What would you like to
change most? and without hesitation he said, "My age." We cannot
recapture our time but we can share with you our experiences, for your
consideration on your journey. What I tell you this morning is in part
what I learned in my life but also in part what I have learned from those
I have observed and questioned. I come to you as one who plays a role
in the conversation of America ... and one who has an opportunity to sit
each night with people who touch our lives by the poems they write, the
discoveries they make, the souls they save, the jobs they create, the wisdom
they impart, and the pleasure they bring us. I do this by choice because
early on in life I decided to be true to Robert Frost's view of life when
he said, "My object in living is to unite/My avocation with my vocation.
My two eyes make one in sight/Only where love and need are one/and work
is play for mortal stakes/is the deed really ever done/for heaven and future's
sakes."
So choose well where you start your journey. It may not be where you
end. But if you can match your passion, your ability and your interest
you will be like me -- the lucky who know no distinction between vocation
and avocation. Not for you that place where the mass of men and women
live lives of quiet desperation.
But note this -- at anywhere on that journey be prepared to change direction
and seize the rising tide.
I spoke to Bill Gates on Thursday of this week. We had a hamburger at
a hamburger place that he goes to. I paid -- he's got a hundred billion
and I've got much less -- but we talked about Harvard where he went to
college -- and where he dropped out. He was a student who fell in love
with computers and he saw their potential and he left Harvard -- I am sure
to his parents dismay -- in order to follow his instincts. He had a dream
that he could put computers on every desk and in every home, and now he
has -- because he took a chance -- the resources and, I believe, the ambition
to change the world for the better not by creating new software just alone,
but also by giving away money for new vaccines to fight diseases. He is
not a billboard for not getting a degree; he is a billboard for following
your instincts and taking your heart where it wants to go.
Claire Danes, an actress whom you all know, went to Yale after becoming
a young actress who was highly regarded because she wanted to gain some
independence in order to make a conscious decision to be an actress. "I
don't want to make that choice by default," she said. So, while Gates
left college, Danes went to college and it worked out for both. The point
is -- as St. Thomas Aquinas noted -- to take risks.
If your highest priority is to simply preserve the ship, you never leave
the port. To continue the sailing metaphor, in the words of the great
jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes: "I find," he said, "the great
thing in this world is not so much where we stand but in which direction
we are moving. To reach the port of heaven we must sail, sometimes with
the wind, sometimes against it, but we must sail and not drift and not
lie in anchor."
The journey you take must be YOUR journey, as Seamus Heaney, the Nobel
laureate once said to me. "All of the directions have to be personal
discoveries rather than prescribed routes. They are to be improved rather
than copied; they are to be invented rather than imitated; they are to
be risked and earned rather than bought."
Another poet, Robert Frost, in his memorable words said, Two roads diverge
in a woods and I took the one less traveled and it has made all the difference.
I took that advice myself and created a television program that was different
-- not looking for a laugh, but an experience, an insight, an idea, a comment
on the human condition. Eight years later it is the home for the American
Conversation. I am a dreamer and I speak to the dream that was in you
and to all those who honor great people who had a dream.
I saw an ad recently that went like this: "Here is to the crazy
ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the
square holes, the ones who see things differently. They are not fond of
rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them,
you can disagree with them, you can quote them, you can disbelieve them,
you can glorify them you can vilify them; about the only thing you can't
do is ignore them." They change things. They invent, they imagine,
they heal, they explore, they create, they inspire the push of the human
race to go forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas
as a painter and see a work of art, or sit in silence and hear a song that
has never been written, or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on
wheels. The people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the
world are the ones who do.
Someone once said that success is getting what you want and happiness
is wanting what you have. Whether it is success, or happiness, or both,
remember this: please be authentic, please be defining --
Isaac Stern once said to me that he can always pick out the best musicians
because they sit down and say "I want to play -- listen to my music."
You have music to play -- find people that will listen to your music and
do all that you can do.
Be accountable. Take responsibility (as I know you will). Be curious
-- ask all the right questions. Sometimes the questions are more important
than the answers. Be generous. A lot of what has happened and may happen
to you is because you were born in this country . Remember it, honor it
and give it back better than you found it.
Be of good habits because habits are about character and quality and
a search for excellence. No one has ever come up to my desk in all of
the interviews that I have ever done and said, "I made it because
I was smarter," or, "I made it because I was better looking"
or, "I made it" for any other reason except that, "I worked
harder. I believed in myself. I had a dream and I wanted to be unstoppable."
That is what I would like you to do this morning.
I want you to remember this about our world. That for all of our technology,
for all of our advancement as a civilization -- two weeks ago, in Colorado,
parents got up and prepared breakfast for their children who left for school,
never to return -- because two classmates were carrying out some personal
fantasy.
In the Balkans, people in Kosovo are awakened in the middle of the night
and separated from their families and their homes and told to leave the
place of their birth, sometimes witnessing the killing of their fathers
and their brothers. All of that because some political leader had a personal
agenda.
There were, in the last two weeks in the Midwest, tornadoes. It was
a work of nature but it left death and destruction to innocent people who
came home to find no home. One day all is well, and the next day all is
gone. So do not wait until tomorrow because you know not what tomorrow
brings. Think today. Think Now. Remember that it is your journey to seize
and to shape and to make your own.
If you are like me, you are far more likely to regret what you did not
do than what you DO do. Shoot for the moon, shoot for the sun. Even if
you miss, you will only land among the stars.
My congratulations to you. My thanks very, very much. I am deeply
touched to be here sharing this wonderful morning with you -- this Mother's
Day with you -- and this moment of pride with the parents who have given
so much, and the educators who tried so hard, and most of all for you,
the students in this graduating class.
If you have a dream, come see me and I will do whatever I can to help
you fulfill it.
God Bless. Go out and have fun.
For more information call the C.W. Post Public
Relations Office at (516) 299-2333 or e-mail pr@cwpost.liu.edu
or send mail to: Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, 720 Northern
Blvd., Brookville, New York 11548-1300.
