Commencement Speech – Closing Remarks

Here is some “wisdom” from yours truly.

I am a very lucky person.

• I am lucky to have been born with no learning disabilities, and I have the capacity to learn at a pace at least as well as most.
• I was lucky to have a role model or two in my family that I learned a lot from. I’ve seen evidence of the anti-role model from which I learned what not to do. Both have been valuable in forming who and what I am.
• I have been blessed to be born in a country where schools and books are available along with the presence of teachers who tried to share whatever knowledge they had. Not everyone in this world has that.
• I will admit that elements of a person’s success in life can be relegated to an event that might be considered lucky, but I do want to share with you some parting thoughts on luck.

  You cannot count on luck.
  Luck is a fickle thing that once you depend on it, it will fail you more often than not.
  You might ask, “So if I can’t depend on luck, what can I depend on for my success?”
  All you can do as an individual is get up off your butt, or sit down on your butt (whichever is appropriate) and work.
  Work harder than anyone else at whatever your goal is. You want to be an engineer? Be the best one you can be. You want to grow flowers in a garden? Learn everything there is to know about that and work hard at being better at growing flowers than anyone else around.
  Will that guarantee success?
  Of course not.
  But luck tends to favor the ones who aren’t looking for it and usually work the hardest at their goals. You might think of it as, “Hard work breeds luck. Luck breeds success.”
  So as you go on to the next stage in life remember this, “Nobody owes you anything, but if you understand this and you work hard, you will never feel the need to be jealous of who or what others are. You will probably have lots of people jealous of who or what you have become.”