~Awakened Words for All Planetary Passengers~

Below are the first few paragraphs of a commencement address given to the University of Portland class of 2009 by Paul Hawken.  Read this and release into its truth.  Feel it resonate within your cells, and pay close attention to what urge rises up within you.  Find your path in this age of good work.  We are all together in it.

~

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful."  Boy, no pressure there.

But let's begin with the startling part.  Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating.  Kind of a mind-boggling situation...but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.  Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them.  Important rules like "don't poison the water, soil, or air, and don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat" have been broken.  Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH HIS HIRING...

~

...link to full speech... 

In Family,

Eka