Author Sharon McMahon was scheduled to give the commencement speech recently at Utah Valley University, where Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk was killed last fall. But just days before graduation, the school cancelled her speech, citing safety concerns, so she never got the chance to deliver it.
McMahon’s speech, titled “Durable Hope,” reminds graduates – and the rest of us – that even in a divided and imperfect world, it is essential to keep going and work together to move forward.
Shown in bold below (and edited for brevity), her powerful message of unity and perseverance through life’s ups and downs gives us hope. We hope it does the same for you.
The speech begins in the dark days of the American Revolution, recognizing that the outcome of that conflict was far from certain to the people living through it. Only after the fact did we know that our new country survived, as Thomas Paine called them, “the times that tr[ied] men’s souls.”
History only looks inevitable after someone survives it. Before it becomes a chapter in a textbook, history is usually just tired people living inside uncertainty, trying to decide whether the future is still worth the trouble.
This year’s graduates are not entering a world free of problems. No one ever has. Today’s graduates face a world of loud voices, disconnection and challenges that seem unsolvable. And yet:
A hard time is not the same thing as a hopeless time. A broken world is not the same thing as a finished one. And a world you cannot fix alone is not the same thing as a world that does not need you.
The world needs every one of us, doing what we can in our own way, to help tackle the issues we face.
Graduation day, McMahon acknowledges, is a time for joy and celebration – for the graduates as well as the family, friends and others who helped them along the way. But it’s also a time of looking ahead with wonder and excitement for what comes next.
And what comes next is really the crux of McMahon’s message:
Commencement is a ceremony of being sent – sent out into the world to do what only you can. And I want to send you with something stronger than an easy optimism that will not last.
What you need is something better: durable hope.
Durable hope is not the belief that everything will work out. Durable hope is the decision to keep working when you don’t yet know how things will turn out, when the outcome is not yet assured.
Durable hope doesn’t ask you not to pretend the wounds of the world are not real. Durable hope looks directly at what is broken and says: I will not let this be the whole story.
Life rarely goes as planned. What happens when life throws you a curve ball? When we don’t know how everything will work out – or even if it will – what’s the next move?
Fortunately, persevering in the face of adversity and daring to hope for something better is part of who we are. It’s what American revolutionaries – and abolitionists fighting slavery and suffragists demanding the right to vote – dug deep to find, notes McMahon.
A durable hope that what they would do would matter, someday…
Every generation is faced with a future it cannot predict. And every generation must answer the same question: what shall we contribute to the future?
No one who came before you got a neat beginning or a world in perfect condition. No one gets to say, “Please come back when the problems are smaller, the stakes are lower, the facts are clearer, the institutions are healthier, and I have had a little more time to do some personal development and some extra leg days to become the kind of person this moment requires.”
You do not get to choose the world you inherit, but you do get to choose what the world inherits from you. So what will the world inherit from you?
That question feels like a lot of pressure, until you hear her next point.
It’s not your job to fix everything. You can’t do everything, but you shouldn’t let that stop you from doing all you can, where you are, with the resources available to you.
It’s not the big gestures, but the small daily opportunities you don’t let slip away, that can make the most meaningful impact on the world around you.
What the world will inherit from you lies in a million small moments: it’s in the ballots you cast, in the questions you ask, in the people you apologize to, in the power you refuse to abuse. It’s in the people you decline to treat as disposable, and who you choose to lift up instead of putting down.
It happens out of the spotlight in real time.
What will matter most are not the moments where everyone is watching. Instead, it’s the moments you choose to do the next needed thing with no promise of a payoff, with no assurance of success. This is the daily cost of believing something better is possible.
So what can you offer?
The world does not only need your talents and achievements. It needs your character.
The world will inherit what you practice. So practice love and joy and kindness. Practice goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.
Practice the kind of durable hope that does not look away from what is broken, but also refuses to let brokenness have the final word.
Because someday, someone will live inside the world your choices helped make, even if they never know who you are.
Yes, the world is nuts, and life can feel crazy at times, but McMahon doesn’t let us off the hook.
The fact that you cannot do everything does not release you from the sacred work of doing something. So go build lives that are worthy of the people who helped you get here.
Go make art. Build companies. Teach children. Heal bodies. Write books. Plant gardens. Run for office. Start families. Start over. Feed people. Make things. Fix things. Ask better questions. Tell fewer lies. Keep your heart open. Keep your mind awake. Keep your hands ready for the work that is yours to do.
Then she really drives it home:
You were given a life in a moment in history that needs witnesses, builders, repairers, truth-tellers, and courageous, upstanding people who know they may never get the assurance of their success. Be one of them.
A broken world is not the same thing as a finished one. And a world you cannot fix alone is not the same thing as a world that does not need you.
Do not reach for easy optimism. Take the hand of a more durable hope.
And go help write what comes next.
No matter when you graduate, know that YOU MATTER! And you get to help write what happens next.
Even when the work is hard, let’s do all we can from wherever we are – one word, one action, one person at a time – to make this world a better place. The future is definitely worth the trouble.
Congratulations to all the graduates! As you continue your journey, may you strive each day to make a positive impact on the people and the world around you!
Read the full text of McMahon’s inspiring speech here.
