Posted at 08:00h
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by o9admin
Timeless Life Advice from 2016 Commencement Speakers
I arrived home to California yesterday from St. Louis, Missouri, after attending my son's graduation from Washington University in chemical engineering. (Woot Woot!)
As part of graduating from college (in addition to high school), my son and other students are bombarded with life advice.
For college graduates, the idea is that you are now moving out of the structured, sheltered world of academia and into the 'real world.'
Colleges and universities recruit notable and often famous speakers at the commencement ceremonies to share their advice and insights.
It took me a few minutes to recognize the speaker at my son's commencement, an iconic civil rights activist named John Lewis.
Usually, these types of speeches go in one ear and out for me.
But this year, Lewis' speech and several others round the country this past weekend have made me reflect on my own path, even at the ripe age of 55!
Whether you are closing in on your own high school graduation, or are fresh out of college like my son, or someone like myself who has already followed a long and winding career path, I thought you might enjoy in order to find inspiration from the speakers.
Congressman Lewis, who is one of the last surviving Civil Rights champions from the '60s and days of Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a famous speech during the historic March on Washington (D.C.) in 1963. He was also brutally beaten in 1961 when both black and white college students arrived in busses to take a stand for equality in Montgomery, Alabama.