None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
Author's message to the audience regarding the education that they have struggled towards helps how and what we think in different situations. Also in situations, whether we always just focus on the negatives or if we are able to see it in a different perspective.
so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration an
repetition the words "so-called real world" is repeated twice by the speaker because he wants to emphasize that we should be able to live our lives thinking about others and this world we live in is all up to us and the "education" we received.
Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being fou
repetition "Worship" These are the default settings that we live by. We love worshipping the physical things as well as things that seem to be great in this world. However, worshipping those only makes them worse and worse for ourselves.
The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship
repetition and parallelism Repeats the word "you" because we have the choice and freedom in every situation. We are the ones who can decide whether we want to think of a situation negatively or as an opportunity.
Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department,
repetition and parallelism Repeats the word "maybe" for the audience to consider how other's may be feeling or what they may be going through. To not judge others just because of one part we have seen from them.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
The speaker speaks about how everything in life has to be our own way and when someone else makes that hard, we do not even consider their side of the story. We are not aware of our own surroundings and live our daily lives.
And I can think about how our children’s children will despise us for wasting all the future’s fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
The author's tone is very comfortable and casual. It seems as if he is talking to his close friends and not really as if he is speaking at a college commencement ceremony.
I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest
This statement is given by the speaker to the audience as to how they should not think. The speaker focuses on the compassion and empathy that we should have towards one another and to see situations from two different sides.
About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way.
repetition and parallelism repeats the word "my" to emphasize that everything is about ourselves in our lives and we do everything for ourselves as well.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
provides an emotional appeal and maybe even a logical one. His short story was explaining the day in the lief of an adult which provides a logical and real perspective how it feels to live as an adult and how that day will come soon. It is also emotional and personal because there are adults in the audience who are living that life and may be able to relate with it.
let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-gr
anecdote provides another short story of a day in an average adults life.
The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor.
repetition and parallelism The repetition of the word "you" is used by the speaker to further explain the point of view we always live in. This is the default system that he is talking about. The default system of how everything going on in my life is about me and even situations around me revolves around me. There seems to not be others involved in this life.
t is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth.
The speaker finds our self-centeredness to be something that maybe we are not even aware of because it's been there ever since we were born.
To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Credibility The author is credible because he states of how he has experienced the teachings in life the hard way and does not want the graduating class to take that hard road like him.
There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”
anecdote provides a story about two people (with different beliefs) and one's experience in the wilderness.
The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
This story points out the speakers first point in his speech. Like how the old fish asked the two young fish "How's the water?", the younger generation right now do not know how to look at their surroundings and only focus on the goal of money and success.
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
anecdote provides a short fish story to bring up the topic of his speech.