“I want to talk to you about change,” the speaker said. “What exactly is change? The dictionary defines it as []. But to me, change is the ability to make your life matter; the ability to affect the world around you, the ability to not just live and die and go peacefully into that good night. The ability to affect change, is the ability to, on the day of your death, know that your life mattered to others. Because in the end, that’s the only gift worth having or giving.

“Now I know you’ve all seen a clear bright pool on a sunny day and thrown a rock into it. And when the rock breaks the plane of the water’s surface what happens? What happens? The water ripples…

When we were children we thought we could do anything. Anything! Do you remember that? As we grow older we begin to define the space around us. We begin to define the borders of our realities, the boundaries of possibility. We accept the “fact” that we cannot change the world. That a single person, can have a limited effect. And that is the illusion that I’m here to disabuse you of today.

            I want you to drop that stone again. To believe in yourself as you did as a child. I want you to know that your actions can be that ripple, simple at first, but ever widening until they cover the entire surface of your existence, until they touch a thousand lives, the lives of everyone you come into contact with. I want you to open your minds to the power of your own existence. I want you to walk out of here with a child’s eyes, believing you can do anything you want to.