I want to read a poem.
We're all gathered here, and we've been through the program,
and we've been through its many iterations
all of these decades.
I'm interested in the next 50 years,
and who's going to be coming.
And I'd like to read a poem for those future U of A alumni.
This is for whoever they are, wherever
they're going to come from, but they will come
and they'll tell our story to you.
Let me find this.
This Is called "A House Called Tomorrow."
You are not 15 or 12 or 17.
You are a hundred wild centuries and 15, bringing with you,
in every breath and in every step, everyone
who has come before you, all the yous that you have been,
the mothers of your mother, the fathers of your father.
If someone in your family tree was trouble,
a hundred were not.
The bad do not win, not finally, no matter how loud they are.
We simply would not be here if that were true.
You are made fundamentally from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.
You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward through it
all, even if so many days feel otherwise.
But think, when you were a child and learned to speak,
it's not that you didn't know words.
It's that from the centuries, you knew so many
and it's hard to choose the words that will be your own.
From those centuries we human beings
bring with us the simple solutions and songs, the river
bridges and star charts and song harmonies,
all in service to a simple idea that we can
make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring finally into the new day, every day,
is ourselves.
And that's all we need to start.
That's everything we require to keep going.
Look back only for as long as you must, then go forward
into the history you will make.
Be good, then better.
Write books, cure disease, make us proud, make yourself proud.
And those who came before you, when you hear thunder,
hear it as their applause.