We hope this year will inspire you to start anything you’ve always wanted! Be adventurous, try new things and experience wisdom filled with all kinds of curiosities wherever you go. The world is your oyster … so enjoy an incredible journey through your adult life…
According to academic grandparent physic teachers you are:
So have an amazing 18th birthday.
It’s impossible to calculate how much joy you’ve brought us over the past 18 years. It has been a privilege to watch you to transform from the tiniest and cutest dancer at our wedding to a caring and kind young tall tower that you are now…
Today I wasn’t going to blog about just a good speech. It had to stand out, strike me as different, authentic, not repetitive, or predictable but a speech that delivered those new wrinkles on ideas that I had never heard before.
I found that gem. It was given this year in MMXXIII AD by the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, for the graduates of Northwestern University.
You may ask Jozef … about the formulae to spot an idiot…
“If you want to be successful in this world, you have to develop your own idiot detection system. The best way to spot an idiot — look for the person who is cruel.
Let me explain.
When we see someone who doesn’t look like us or sound like us, or act like us or love like us or live like us, the first thought that crosses almost everyone’s brain is rooted in either fear or judgement or both. That’s evolution.
We survived as a species by being suspicious of things that we aren’t familiar with. In order to be kind we have to shut down that animal instinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway.
Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges. This may be a surprising assessment because somewhere along the way, in the last few years, our society has come to believe that weaponized cruelty is part of some well thought out masterplan.
Cruelty is seen by some as an adroit cudgel to gain power. Empathy and kindness are considered weak. Many important people look at the vulnerable only as rungs on a ladder to the top. I’m here to tell you that when someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society.
They never forced their animal brain to evolve past its first instinct. They never forged new mental pathways to overcome their own instinctual fears and so their thinking and problem solving will lack the imagination and creativity that the kindest people have in spades.
Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true: The kindness person in the room is often the smartest.”
As my blogging American mate Ree Drummond observed last year to universal young men and women - Amen:
"Buckle up, you have good times and rough seas ahead. It is just part of life, but enjoy the ride and laugh a lot... Life is about to unfold for you in all its forms. Love, heartache, accomplishments, disappointment, testing of faith... life is beautiful, so I repeat, buckle up and laugh along the way. It makes life fun."
‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Steve Jobs says
"You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."
‘If you don’t know it’s impossible to cross Icy Cold Rivers, it’s easier to do’: Neil Gaiman
"People who know what they are doing know the rules, and they know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can. If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that particular thing again."
“Failures of Kindness” George Saunders: at Syracuse University
"Travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop)—but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality—your soul, if you will—is as bright and shining as any that has ever been."
Nora Ephron Commencement Address to Wellesley class of 1996 | Empowerment
"What are you going to do? Everything is my guess. It will be a little messy but embrace the mess. It will be complicated but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it's going to be like, but surprises are good for you. And don't be frightened. You can always change your mind. I know. I've had four careers and three husbands. And this is something else I want to tell you, one of the hundreds of things I didn't know when I was sitting here so many years ago: you are not going to be you, fixed and immutable you, forever."
"Decisions are made by those who show up. Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world. Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day: civility, respect, kindness, character."
"What is now known is not all that you are capable of knowing. You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth. What it feels like to be human without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you, without rotating, rehearsing and reinventing the hatreds you learned in the sandbox. And although you don't have complete control over the narrative (no author does, I can tell you), you could nevertheless create it."
"David Letterman wanted to be Johnny Carson and was not, and as a result, my generation of comedians wanted to be David Letterman. And none of us are—my peers and I have all missed that mark in a thousand different ways. But the point is this: It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can be a catalyst for profound re-invention."
"Be for something. Be curious, not cool. Feed your soul, too. Every day. Remember, insecurity makes liars of us all. Don't confuse success with excellence. Educate all of your parts. You will be healthier. Seek out—and have—mentors. Listen to them. Bite off more than you can chew. Do not get stuck in one place. Visit our national parks. Their sheer majesty may remind you of your own 'atomic insignificance,' as one observer noted, but in the inscrutable ways of nature, you will feel larger, inspirited, just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self-regard. Insist on heroes. And be one."
20 Best Graduation Speeches to Read When You Need Some Solid Life Advice
We are all lucky 🍀 as we know someone special in our lives who comes to all our milestones and parties very and who knows this quote by heart …
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
Nothing was ever impossible to the great Muhammad Ali, both inside and outside the ring. He never had small dreams, he wanted to become heavyweight champion of the world and change the world along the way. He achieved both.
Not only did Ali win the world heavyweight championship on three separate occasions, the first fighter to ever do so, but he also stood up for what he believed in, which was equality.