I was invited to deliver the keynote address at the College of Staten Island High School Commencement Ceremony on 24 June 2010.You may have wondered what I said. Here is the commencement address I delivered – warts and all.

Commencement Address

Thank you for inviting me to address the graduating class today. I am so pleased to be part of this memorable occasion. Congratulations, graduates!

Having spent many years as a college professor before joining the United Nations, I appreciate the dedication and sacrifice of your teachers and staff who have worked alongside you. To them:  Congratulations on a job well done.

And as a parent, I appreciate the support and sacrifice of your parents and family. I congratulate them as well.

When I first received the invitation to address this graduation ceremony, I was excited. Wow, my first commencement speech ever at CSI High School.

Then reality quickly set it when I sat down to draft my speech. What could I say that would be refreshing and new to a graduating class of bright young people? What grains of wisdom could I share that would inspire them?

Over the years there have been thousands upon thousands of commencement speeches all around this country that have been penned by people more eloquent than I could ever hope to be.

For example, Barbara Kingsolver opened her commencement address at Duke University with a quotation from her book Animal Dreams:

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.

Or the challenge posed by Paul Hawken in his address to the graduating class of Portland University

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.

Inspiring stuff. And, yes, these are tough acts to follow.

On a more modest scale, I decided I would talk about Time.

Kingsolver in her address offers an approach to shaping how you spend your Time after graduation.  Hawken in his address talks about how humanity is running out of Time to save our world from an environmental disaster. So Time and its utilization is a theme running through their messages, And if you bother to look, I think you will find many such references appearing in many more commencement messages to graduating classes in campuses around the country.

Use your time wisely. Don’t waste your time. How often have you heard these words directed to you?  I can see you understand what I mean.

While Time holds a unique place in science and the human consciousness, defining or describing it has been extremely elusive.  Philosophers and scientists have grappled with this problem from time immemorial.

Some define Time as an invention of the human consciousness that gives us a sense of order — a before and after so to speak.

Many physicists define Time in terms of the physical properties of a space-time dimension.

This can get really profound – and confusing.

So, let us return to this particular point in the space-time dimension – to this commencement ceremony, in this hall, on Staten Island, June 24^th 2010.

As an economist I have been fascinated by Time utilization – about decisions individuals and households make with regard to how to allocate their time between work and leisure in their immediate situations and over their lifetimes.

Part of this interest in Time allocation, I realized later in life, probably was inspired by the death of my father when I was nine which forced my mother to rejoin the labour force in order to provide for me and my three brothers.  Her life changed dramatically when my father passed and she had to reallocate her time between work, housework and caring for her children. At that point in her life she had very little control over how she would allocate her time.

Life is largely unpredictable, for the most part, and we have to go with the flow.

Shakespeare expressed this most eloquently in his play Julius Caesar, in a conversation between Brutus and Cassius

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune

Your tide has arrived and you will be making some important decisions.

For a long time your allocation and use of time has been controlled or directed by your parents or your teachers. Time for bed, time for school, time for homework… But this is going to change, or has changed.

Only you can decide how you will best utilize this precious and limited time granted to each of us – the gift of life.

One decision I hope all of you will make is to go on to college.  I trust you will attend college not simply because of the scroll you will receive after four years but for the opportunities you will have to explore, question and reflect on a wide range of issues within a supportive community.  It is Time for personal development and introspection. I guarantee that it will be Time well spent.

However, college does not represent the end of learning. It is a first step.

Arthur C. Clarke, best known for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey which inspired the Stanley Kubrick movie of the same title, reflecting on the role of technology in society said

We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 – and half the things he knows at 40 hadn’t been discovered when he was 20?

Yet, continuous learning is not confined to coping or adjusting to technology but includes learning for our personal growth and development as active, contributing members of society and the global community.

In the last 30 years the material wealth in this country has increased steadily, but the self-described happiness of citizens has steadily declined. People who consider themselves very happy are in neither the very poorest nor the very richest countries. They are found in countries like Mexico, Ireland and Puerto Rico — the kinds of places with the most community.

Therefore beyond college and further into your adulthood I would urge you to think more about the Time you should devote to community – starting with your family and extending your personal involvement to the global community.

Devote Time to your friends and family, and when you are parents devote Time to actually listening to your children.

And your generation will need to expand its vision to devote Time and effort to think and act as a global community so that we can effectively address the political, social, economic and environmental challenges facing our lonely blue planet.

Success is not measured by having boatloads of money, but if you do achieve this, make sure you emulate people like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in this country who think of community and their social obligation to help build a better world.

You can be an active participant, or a passive bystander.  I know you will make the right choice.

Let me finish with these words of inspiration, once again, from Arthur C. Clarke.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

Thank you and Bon voyage!