Job seekers: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.

Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland

"When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was 'direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.'

"Boy, no pressure there. But let's begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating.

"Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.

"Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades. This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, and don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken.

"There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.

(snip) http://can-summit.ning.com/profiles/blogs/unforgettable-commencement

I think some will whine and complain that they have been given a raw deal.

Others will realize they have been handed a raw deal and in spite of it they will survive well using their talents.

They have been given a raw deal. Because of past generations, they'll have to weigh the moral implications of even the most simplistic of things, like how much toilet paper they should be using. How one wipes their ass should not automatically become a political and moral statement.

The more time you spend whining and complaining the longer it will take to do something about it.

You got to get off your pitty pot and try ideas until something works.

Doing something is really the only thing you can do once you're in such a situation. I just still wouldn't blame them for being a bit pissed off at their elders and a bit resentful of their circumstances.

For me high graduation meant I had a choice to either go to college, get married or get drafted and sent to Vietnam. I got a scholarship to a college but didn't have any one to marry. I dropped out and was drafted. I was sent to Vietnam. I also lived through John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King's assassinations. I was arrested in a civil rights march in Yellow Springs Ohio.

I spent years after my tour of duty in a drug and alcohol addicted life. I was homeless and bankrupt and divorced and unemployed for long periods of time.

I couldn't change a god damned thing about the past and what I thought was done to me. I could only decide how I was going to react to it.
I stopped blaming people and took my life into my own hands. I only wished I had not spent 10 years whining about it.

I'm just saying I don't have time for blame I have so many years left and I want to live them as well as I can. So should the graduates.

"Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done."

From Hawken's address:

"There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true."