Generally, commencement speeches are wrought with sentiments like “go forth and conquer” or “the world is your oyster,” meant to leave graduates inspired to succeed. But Mark Zuckerberg recently gave a very distinct commencement speech to some Harvard grads. It was one aimed at providing a completely different kind of inspiration.
You might remember Zuckerberg as the infamous twenty-something who dropped out of Harvard and started a small company called Facebook. Recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the school he once abandoned, Zuckerberg also gave the graduate commencement speech this year. Backed by founding a company that’s now valued at $446 billion, he could have chosen just about any topic for his speech. He could have challenged grads to go out and form their own billion dollar companies or launch successful corporations. Instead, as he is so apt to do, he chose a different path. He talked about purpose.
“Finding your purpose isn’t enough. The challenge for our generation is to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose,” he stated in his speech.
Wow. That’s quite a statement. A big one. It’s a sign of the changing face of the definition of success.
The rest of his speech was full of other insightful words of wisdom, like “[C]hange starts local. Even global changes start small — with people like us. In our generation, the struggle of whether we connect more, whether we achieve our biggest opportunities, comes down to this — your ability to build communities and create a world where every single person has a sense of purpose.”
Dr. Zuckerberg (btw-congrats on that Harvard degree), we couldn’t agree more. He’s referring to exactly the type of belief system that formed our mission at Purposity, the desire to find purpose and create communities of change at the local level. It’s exciting to watch the very embodiment of success, someone as powerful as Zuckerberg, acknowledge purpose as our most important cause.
“We can all make time to give someone a hand. Let’s give everyone the freedom to pursue their purpose — not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because when more people can turn their dreams into something great, we’re all better for it.”
With each delivery, each time someone in a local community lends a hand, that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s allowing a little room for a child to dream. It’s giving a single mom some breathing space to help her children with homework. It’s building communities of caring individuals who give others the opportunity to dream and pursue greatness. It’s giving us all a better place to call home.
