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Your Future in the Right Hands: Yours

Remarks by Ambassador Michael Klosson

American International School National Honor Society Members
Nicosia, December 2, 2004

Good evening.  It is a pleasure to be here and to applaud the accomplishments of some special young people.  My congratulations to the new members of the National Honor Society.

“If you want to be somebody,” a wise person once said, “ if you want to go somewhere, you have to sit up and pay attention.” 

Who knows who said that?  Right, Sister Mary Clarence aka Delores van Cartier aka Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act II.  It’s good advice.  All of you being honored this evening clearly sat up and paid attention. 

Sitting up and paying attention, however, is the easy part.  It’s the hard part that I want to talk to you about tonight.

What will you do in our globalized world with the potential you’ve demonstrated?  Most of you probably don’t yet know -- and that’s fine, you’ve got time -- so let me give you some thoughts to mull over.

It’s a cliché, but true, to say that you live in a world that has become both more complex and more interdependent. When it was freedom vs. communism not long ago, things were simpler.  The world today is more fragmented, more challenging, and at times more virulent. But it’s also more hopeful and full of potential. 

On the one hand, Iraq and regional conflicts dominate the headlines, but, on the other hand, there are more free countries today than at any time in history.

On the one hand, HIV/AIDS – the greatest weapon of mass destruction – kills 8,000 people every day and has infected 40 million around the world, but, on the other hand, scientific and technological advance have swept many old diseases from the face of the world and shattered the limits of time and space. 

For anyone who thinks they can escape global interdependence, think again.  It’s everywhere.  When you call these days from anywhere in America, Europe or even Cyprus, for example, to order from a catalog or to seek technical assistance for a computer problem, chances are you’ll be talking to a person in a call center in India!  Look at the environment: greenhouse gases generated by a single country's industries contribute to climatic warming around the globe that knows no boundaries.  Finally, recall September 11:  planning by terrorist leaders in the mountains of Afghanistan combined with terrorist recruitment in Europe and elsewhere wreaked havoc in New York City. 

The pace of change creating these interdependencies is also dizzying.   Many things you now take for granted were not around when your parents were born -- credit cards and videotape recorders, for example, both invented in the 1950’s.  Some things were not even around when your older brothers and sisters were born, such as cell phones (1979) and the Internet (1983).  And some were not even around when you were born, such as the worldwide web (1989) and DVDs (1995). 

I’m not talking simply about new ideas in the mind of a single inventor, but about invention and innovation encircling the globe and rapidly transforming, in less than a generation, the way billions of people live their everyday lives.  In 1990, there were only 800 computers connected to the Internet.  Today, global Internet users now total over 800 million.

So here’s my first point:  change and interdependence are your world. Your journey is just beginning, and before you navigate the next curve in your road, something will be different.  Learn to make that change work for you. How? As high school students, the most important thing you will learn now is how to learn, that is, how to think critically; how to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t and how to go about filling the gap; and how to communicate all this effectively. 

Critical thinking is part of your school’s mission.  It’s something that complements the goals of the National Honor Society.  Wasn’t it Bono who said “we thought we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong”?  Sometimes this happens.  But when we think critically, we learn how to think differently.  And when we learn to think differently, we learn to turn change to our advantage, to embrace it rather than fear it, and to see connections between disparate things in novel ways that can improve our lives.

For all the talk you’ll hear about life’s journey, I would argue that it’s not where you’re going that’s important.  What matters most is who you are and where youwant to be. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous American poet, once said:  "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." 

This is my second point: understanding our changing world is important, but what matters more is to nurture your own passion and develop your own commitment so you can navigate it by your own, unique compass.  That takes values, vision and action.  Values define who you are, what you represent, and why people might want to follow you.  Values are the source of your conviction and others’ motivation.  Values are all about character.  You aren’t what you eat, but what you value.  Values are revealed by decisions you make when you think people aren’t watching.

You must also have vision that incorporates these values – that demonstrates your understanding of the circumstances you face and where you want to be.  Vision provides clarity.  It can take many forms.  Vision doesn’t mean you have to have a plan for all humanity.  It doesn’t mean you have to have a plan for your classmates or even for yourself.  What it does mean, however, is that you have to have a sense of your potential and of something positive in your lives you want to reach for.

And then, of course, you must actually take actions that communicate your values and perhaps inspire others to work with you to make your vision a reality. 

The National Honor Society believes that your development should be about much more than just good grades.  It is also about what you can contribute to your community.  Many people are smart, but it’s the exceptional person who has the character, the drive, the leadership to share his or her talents for the benefit of a greater good. 

Let me recount a story about a person who was able to do exactly that.   William Larimer (Larry) Mellon Jr. was born in 1910 and was the youngest son of William Mellon, the wealthy American financier from Pennsylvania.  You may have heard of the Mellon family, or the Carnegie-Mellon Foundation in the United States.  As some of you may do, Larry graduated from Princeton, worked as a banker on the east coast, and learned four to five languages in his spare time -- just for fun.  By age 36, he decided he wanted to do something completely different.  And he did.  He moved to Arizona

and started a successful cattle ranch. 

You might not expect what came next.  Just a four years later, Larry decided to go to medical school.  He did this because he was inspired by Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the famous humanitarian philosopher and missionary who started a hospital in Africa.  When he finished medical school, he moved his family to Haiti and spent most of his personal fortune on starting a country hospital in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.  The hospital still exists today and is one of the only sources of basic medical care in Haiti.

What is most incredible about this story is not Mellon’s generosity.  What I find inspirational about him was his passion and ability to try new things because of a great love of learning, a curiosity for meeting new people, and a commitment to sharing his talents.  His internal compass was clearly unique and took him a number of places where he wished to be. 

So what do you get if you put all this together – a complicated world, sweeping change, critical thinking, character, leadership, an internal compass?  That’s for you to figure out.  Let me give you a hint from Walt Disney: “Our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them."   Your future is in your hands. It’s up to you.