Tim Cook

Due to COVID-19 making large gatherings impossible, Ohio State University decided to hold a virtual commencement for thousands of graduates this year. Who better to relay a virtual commencement speech than the current CEO of one of the world's largest tech companies? Tim Cook delivered his speech on May 3rd and urged students to “build a better future than the one you thought was certain.”

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Commencement Speeches for the class of twenty is a production
of I Heart Radio. Class of Parents, Faculty, rising graduates,
Welcome to commencement. You made it. This year is a

(00:22):
little different, a difficult time to graduate because the traditional
graduation day has been put on hold. So we're bringing
it to you wherever you are, because this is still
your day, your moment. And now put your hands together.
It's time to be inspired. This year's commencement speaker the
one and only Tim Cook. Thank you President, Right, good afternoon,

(00:55):
no issue before we get to the important work of
your feud. Sure I wouldn't take a moment to consider
our past. As nineteen eighteen, Dawn, a young assistant Secretary
of the Navy, just thirty six at the time, was
headed overseas, tasked with making sure America's green and untested

(01:16):
troops were ready for action in Europe's grade War. An
iconoclastic poet and academic barely thirty, balance odd jobs as
a high school teacher and banker. After the outbreak of
war had dashed his hopes of defending his dissertation, and
a young nurse only twenty, began caring for wounded soldiers

(01:38):
at a military hospital in Toronto, she worked ever longer
hours as a strange sickness began to appear beside the
wounds of war. By the time the Spanish flu swept
through their countries, their communities, and their bodies, these three
would be forever changed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was carried off

(02:00):
a military ship on a stretcher. Once he had recovered.
Back home in New York, he was the nominee for
Vice President, beginning a career in national politics that would
change the course of history. While lying in his sick bed,
T s. Eliott began writing what would become The Waste Land,
his poetic masterpiece. It begins April is the Cruelest Moth,

(02:25):
and it began a movement of literary modernism that would
win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. And when Amelia
Earhart finally caught the flu from one of her patients,
her recovery was more complicated and painful than most. To
pass the long and boring hours of quarantine and social distance,
she would watch the airplanes coming and going, and she

(02:48):
started to wonder whether she might like a change of career. Graduates,
I'm sorry that we're not celebrating together today. Your class
is a special one, marked by history like few others
in O Issues hundred and fifty years. And while we
aren't shoulder to shoulder and the horseshoe filling it to

(03:08):
the rafters, I know your parents, your loved ones, your
friends and teachers are no less overwhelmed with the pride
in you and in what you have achieved. It can
be difficult to see the whole picture when you're still
inside the frame, but I hope you wear these uncommon
circumstances as a badge of honor. Those who meet times

(03:30):
of historical challenge with their eyes and hearts open, forever restless,
and forever striving, are also those who lead the greatest
impact on the lives of others. In every age. Life
has a frustrating way of reminding us that we are
not the sole authors of our story. We must share credit,

(03:51):
whether we'd like to or not, with a difficult and
selfish collaborator called our circumstances. And when our glittering plan
ends are scrambled, as they often will be, and our
dearest hopes are dashed, as will sometimes happen, we're left
with a choice. We can curse the loss of something
that was never going to be, or we can see

(04:14):
reasons to be grateful for the yank on the scruff
of the neck in having our eyes lifted up from
the story we were writing for ourselves and turned instead
too a remade world. When I joined Apple in, I
couldn't believe my luck. I was going to spend the
rest of my life working for Steve jobs. But faith

(04:37):
comes like a thief in the night. The loneliness I
felt when we lost Steve was prooved. There is nothing
more eternal or more powerful than the impact we have
on others. Those of us who can look back on
this time and remember inconveniences and even boredom, can count
themselves lucky. Many more will no real heart show and fear.

(05:01):
Others still will be cut to the bone. And while
we turn to our loved ones and friends for comfort,
think hard about those whose impact in your life is
more distant but no less meaningful. Think about an undocumented father,
ignored or scorned by his community, who is putting himself

(05:21):
at risk in the fields today to feed his family
and yours. Think about a single mother who stocked shells
at night and drives a city bus in the morning,
without whom so much would fall apart. Think about the
hospital orderly scrubbing down the ward on hands and knees,
whose work today is as solitary and sacred as a

(05:43):
high priest purifying a temple. Most of all, think about
how you, blessed with a world class education, might act
and work and be differently when all this is said
and on, memorialize in your heart the way in which
these times reveal what really matters, the health and well

(06:04):
being of our loved ones, the resilience of our communities,
and the sacrifices made by those, from doctors to garbage
collectors who give their whole selves to serving others. Not
being able to leave the house leaves you with a
lot of odd gaps of time to fill. I've been

(06:25):
trying to use them to read, and I keep coming
back to Abraham Lincoln. I'd recommend it to anyone who
wants to put these times into perspective. You'll be shocked
at how clever and funny and alive is thinking still
is how this reserved and humble man managed in noisy
times to call others to hope. And as we celebrate

(06:48):
O Issues hundred and fiftieth anniversary. It's worth remembering that
the school wouldn't exist without the land grant university system
that Lincoln signed at the law. It's also hard to
imagine someone more defined by their circumstances. Lincoln found his
country on fire and chose to run into the flames,

(07:11):
and he gave everything he had to bring his people,
chaotic and squabbling, fundamentally flawed yet fundamentally good, along with him.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the
stormy present, he said. The occasion is piled high with difficulty,
and we must rise with the occasion. As our case

(07:34):
is new, so we must think a new and act
a new. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall
save our country. Graduates, your case is new for you.
The old dogmas had never been an option. You don't
have the luxury of being enthralled. You enter a world

(07:55):
of difficulty with open eyes, tasks with writing a story
that is not necessary early of your choosing, but it's
still entirely yours. You're the pride of your parents and grandparents,
of aunt's uncles and teachers, of the communities that shaped you,
and weighs seen and unseen. You weren't promised this day.

(08:16):
Many of you had to fight hard to earn it.
Now it's yours. Think a new act, a new build,
a better future than the one you thought was certain,
and in a fearful time, call us once again to hope.
Congratulations to you all, Be great, be well, Thank you

(08:39):
very much. You can find reflection of incredible commitment addresses
from all your favorite speakers at the Commitment Podcast on
I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to podcast sk