To the High School Graduate of 2025

Dear Graduate,

I’m not your conventional commencement speaker. I’m neither famous, wealthy, nor currently excelling at any professional sports. I’m just a dad with a job that puts a roof over my family’s head and food on the table. And the vast majority of human experience says my life will be more relatable to yours in 20 years than any of the famous, wealthy people with a full head of hair you wish were talking to you right now.

So take this for what it is: advice for the future from someone who stood right where you’re standing 20 years ago.

Look through a kaleidoscope at your future. This is what high school graduates are encouraged to do. It’s dazzling. And those phones in your pockets and those streams on your phone parade in front of you as your frozen eye looks on. The technicolor kaleidoscope tells you everything you want to hear and begs you to keep looking.  

Don’t do it. Look away from the kaleidoscope. It may look enticing but it’s superficial, artificial, and distracting. The kaleidoscope of advertisements, propaganda, facts, and fake news is everywhere and will constantly be thrust in front of your eye. Look here! This is important — now this, THIS is important!

Real life isn’t as attractive and dazzling as a kaleidoscope. But it’s much more meaningful. Look away from the kaleidoscope. Learn to think deeply. Read a book. Live in the real world. I don’t think you have been.

Do you think the real world is a highlight reel of successes? The real world is unedited which means you take the good with the bad. It’s not the Tik Tok videos and social media feeds of wins you’ve grown up with.

The world of digital technology wants you to believe everything can be curated and edited down to only the good stuff and all that other stuff doesn’t count. That’s the tradeoff few will warn you about. For all the positives the new tech (whatever it is) promises, you’re always going to lose something. Often the thing you lose is a connection to reality.

Each new tech will be sold on what it CAN do for you but the tradeoff is it will also limit WHAT you can do and often in a way that’s unanticipated or hard to perceive.

Think about this. Will a phone help you stay connected? That’s the claim that countless phone companies and advertisements make. But will a phone help you stay connected? Not if connection means something physical and real. It can’t offer you that.

But if we redefine connection, or let technology redefine it based on what it can do, this subtle redefinition of terms can change the way a whole generation thinks. Twenty years ago we knew what a friend was. Now? I’d say Facebook and its “friends” changed all that.   

Connections in real life matter, graduate. And your influence will be within arm’s reach. A lot of graduation speakers are going to christen graduates citizens of the world. That’s true – and about as meaningless as identifying you as an earthling. You can’t talk to “the world”. You can’t hug “the world.” But you can talk to your family, friends, and neighbors. You can also help them in a meaningful, in-real-life way. Little things can make big differences but they have to start at scale. Canon ball into a pool and you can make waves. Cannonball into the ocean and you won’t even make a splash.

This is the part of a traditional commencement speech where you’re praised as the hope for the future and recognized for all you’ve done to get to this point. However, this is not your traditional commencement speech.

What if you were wearing kaleidoscope glasses and didn’t realize it? I think you have been. Take them off. As you head out of high school to go to work, school, or raise a family make sure you’re seeing the world through clear eyes and not through an imposed filter.

And I’m talking to you, singular. Because individual people matter. Individuals make a difference -- not graduating classes, voting blocs, or generational cohorts but y-o-u.  

Look away from the kaleidoscope and you will see the real world. Live in it. Remember that your influence is within arm’s reach (and your greatest influence may one day be in your arms).

You will make a difference. It may be quite small. So make it great.