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And it cannot be denied also that your class has traveled a stony road — a pandemic that took away so much of the college experience that you once imagined.
 
And the world that you graduate into is unsettled.  It is a world where long-established principles now rest on shaky ground. 
 
We see this in Ukraine, where Russia’s invasion threatens international rules and norms that have provided unprecedented peace and security in Europe since World War Two.
 
We believed that the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity had, for the most part, prevailed — that democracy had prevailed.  But now, the certainty of fundamental principles is being called into question, including the principles of equality and fairness.
 
Inequality has always, sadly, existed in our world.  The gaps between the rich and the poor, men and women, the global north and global south have existed throughout our history.
 
And through this pandemic, the gaps have become much larger.  Globally, extreme poverty is on the rise, as is extreme wealth.  You graduate into an unsettled world, both abroad and here at home.
 
In the United States, we are once again forced to defend fundamental principles that we hoped were long-settled: principles like the freedom to vote, the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies even what constitutes the truth, especially in an era when anyone can post anything online and claim it is a fact.
 
We must also grapple with the urgent issues that have not been settled.  Some of them have been accelerated during your lifetime, like the need to address the climate crisis.
 
Some we have been struggling with since the founding of our nation: disparities in who has access to healthcare, disparities in how people are treated by the criminal justice system, disparities in wealth and who has access to the capital required to succeed and thrive.
 
And, graduates, I look at this unsettled world and, yes, I then see the challenges, but I’m here to tell you, I also see the opportunities.  The opportunities for your leadership.  The future of our country and our world will be shaped by you.
 
And when I speak about “you,” I am talking about you as the class of 2022, as graduates of TSU.  You as individuals, each with your own lived experience.
 
Each of these pieces of who you are comes with very special attributes, its own approach — these attributes — to tackling the biggest challenges of today. 
 
As the class of 2022, you bring possibility to the table.  You are a generation that grew up online and survived a pandemic.  You are familiar with a world that, for many of us, feels a bit strange and new.  You have been engaged with this world since you were little.
 
And yet, of course, you do still have some prove to do. Students from all over the world come here because they have big dreams. We need you to shape the future of technology. We need you because your perspective — the sum total of your intellect and your lived experience — will make our country stronger. 
 
Most importantly, you have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been.  To look at the challenges facing us and find solutions that generations before could have never imagined.
 
You are, of course, more than just the class of 2022.  You are also a product of the education you received here on this campus.  And as soon-to-be graduates of Tennessee State, you are fueled by self-determination, fueled by big ambitions.
 
Now, I didn’t attend Tennessee State, but I am a fellow HBCU graduate.  And I’d like to share a little story with you.  A story about the first time I flew on the vice presidential helicopter, which is called “Marine Two.”
 
Now this day — it was not long after I was sworn in, and we were flying from Andrews Air Force Base to the official residence of the Vice President.  And one of the Marines asked me to look out the window. 
 
As it turns out, they had a surprise for me.  The helicopter was circling around Howard University, my alma mater.  I looked out the window of that helicopter, Marine Two, and I saw that we were over The Yard, which is Howard’s version of The Courtyard. 
 
As I looked down out of the window, I saw myself at 17 years old walking across campus with a big stack of books tucked under my arms at a place just like this.  That reinforced that I could be anything, do anything even if it had never been done before. Like you and full of hope, full of dreams, with a future full of possibility. 
 
I stand before you today as the Vice President of the United States of America and as a proud graduate of an HBCU to say: There is no limit to your capacity for greatness — and there is no obstacle you cannot overcome, and there is no barrier you cannot break.  
 
Your time at Tennessee State has unlocked unimaginable opportunities for your future, because you see, HBCUs like this — well, they are cathedrals of education.  And the value of this education is that it teaches you something very special: That, yes, you can be anything and do anything.
 
And this brings me to the third reason why I know that you will play an essential role in shaping our nation’s future.  Each of you has your own story, your own way of looking at the world, shaped by every moment that brought you to this point.
 
I was around your age when I decided that I wanted to take on systemic problems from the inside of the system, that I would look for solutions through the lens of my own experience and perspectives, and that I wanted and needed to be in the rooms where the decisions were being made.
 
Graduates, you stand on the brink of a new frontier where we are building the platforms for the next phase of technology, where we are conducting the research that will lead to the next great medical breakthrough — maybe even the cures for cancer or lupus or lifesaving reforms to maternal healthcare — where we are defining the fundamental principles that will underpin the 21st century.  And we need you in the room helping to make these decisions.
 
As Vice President, I spend a lot of time in these rooms.  I preside over debates in the United States Senate.  I consult with experts at the Goddard Space Flight Center as the Chair of the National Space Council.  I host bilateral meetings with heads of state at the White House.
 
These are the rooms where decisions are being made.  And these are the rooms that I was taught early on by my family, my mentors, and professors, who always believed that I should know that I could be and should be in those rooms, just as I believe you should be in these rooms.  
 
Graduates, we need you.  We need you to run companies and make decisions about who has access to capital.  We need you to serve at the highest levels of government and determine our country’s standing in the world.  We need you to work in our hospitals and in our courtrooms and in our schools.
 
And so, when you are in those rooms, my advice to you is to be true to yourself.  Hold close the values that your grandparents, your parents, your pastors, and your neighbors instilled in you.  Have the courage and conviction to follow your moral compass.

I brought one of my paintings to show you today. I hope you guys are going to be able to see it okay. It's not one of my bigger pieces. So you might want to move down front. Get a good look at it. 

Faculty, parents, friends, dignified guests, graduating class of 2014, and all the dead baseball players coming out of the corn to be with us today. After the harvest, there's no place for them to hide. Fields are empty. There's no cover there. 

I'm here to plant a seed today. A seed that will inspire you to move forward in life with enthusiastic hearts and a clear sense of wholeness. The question is will that seed have a chance to take root or will I be sued by Monsanto and forced to use their seed.

Excuse me if I seem a little bit low energy tonight, today, whatever this is, I slept with my head to the north last night. Oh man. Oh man. You know how that is, right kids?

But I didn't freak out. I used that time to eat a large meal, connect with someone special on Tinder. Because life doesn't happen to you. It happens for you. How do I know this? I don't, but I'm making sound and that's the important thing. 

Sometimes I think that's the only thing that's important really, is just letting each other know we're here. Reminding each other that we're part of a larger self. I used to think Jim Carrey is all that I was. Just a flickering light, a dancing shadow. 

The great nothing masquerading as something you can name, seeking shelter in caves and foxholes dug out hastily. An archer searching for his target in the mirror, wounded only by my own arrows. Begging to be enslaved, leading for my chains. Blinded by longing and tripping over paradise.

You are the vanguard of knowledge and consciousness, a new wave in a vast ocean of possibilities. On the other side of that door, there's a world starving for new ideas, new leadership. I've been out there for 30 years. 

Sometimes it's okay to eat your feelings. Now fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future, but all there will ever be is what's happening here, and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear.

As that shift happens in you, you won't be feeling the world, you'll be felt by it. You'll be embraced by it. Now I'm always at the beginning, I have a reset button and I ride that button constantly. Once that button is functioning in your life, there's no story that the mind could create that will be as compelling.

And you're going to look at a person like me and say, "How could we ever hope to reach those kinds of heights, Jim?" How can we make a painting that's too big for our home? How do you fly so high without a special breathing apparatus? This is the voice of the ego.

Someone tried their best to explain every concept in this insanely complex world to the child that was you, as you asked a bazillion questions like ‘how does the moon work’ and ‘why can we eat salad but not grass.’ And maybe they didn’t do it perfectly.

To all the incredible parents, family members, mentors, teachers, allies, friends and loved ones here today who have supported these students in their pursuit of educational enrichment, let me say to you now: Welcome to New York. It’s been waiting for you. 

But I really can’t complain about not having a normal college experience to you because you went to NYU during a global pandemic, being essentially locked into your dorms or having to do classes over Zoom. Everyone in college during normal times stresses about test scores, but on top of that you also had to pass like a thousand COVID tests.

So as a rule, I try not to give anyone unsolicited advice unless they ask for it. I’ll go into this more later. I guess I have been officially solicited in this situation, to impart whatever wisdom I might have and tell you the things that helped me in my life so far. 

Part of growing up and moving into new chapters of your life is about catch and release. What I mean by that is, knowing what things to keep, and what things to release. You can’t carry all things, all grudges, all updates on your ex, all enviable promotions your school bully got at the hedge fund his uncle started.

Decide what is yours to hold and let the rest go. Oftentimes the good things in your life are lighter anyway, so there’s more room for them. One toxic relationship can outweigh so many wonderful, simple joys. You get to pick what your life has time and room for. 

Learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime. Even the term ‘cringe’ might someday be deemed ‘cringe.’

My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life. And being embarrassed when you mess up is part of the human experience. Getting back up, dusting yourself off and seeing who still wants to hang out with you afterward and laugh about it? That’s a gift.

I know I sound like a consummate optimist, but I’m really not. I lose perspective all the time. Sometimes everything just feels completely pointless. I know the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism.

We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. And you will screw it up sometimes. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.

Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.

you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. 

But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. 

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it

Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”