If you can spare just under ten minutes to listen to this then I would urge you to do so. This young man’s commencement speech is both timely and timeless. It speaks to the particular problems we have in the world at present, but also is showing how it is nothing new and there are lessons to be learned from the past (as always).
He tells the story of his own family – how there could have been plenty of conflict within that – but how ‘sensible’ behaviour meant that all that conflict was avoided. The upload to YouTube was given the title “Listen like you might be wrong”. An excellent suggestion, but I would take a slightly different part of his speech as the behaviour that should be seen as important and that is where he argues that the thing to focus on is not any attempt at agreement – that may simply be impossible – instead seek for understanding.
Noah Eckstein : Listen Like You Might Be Wrong
Whilst this is a speech which has a quite specific target, it contains a message that needs to be heard in more places than Washington – perhaps in every corner of the world. You only have you view the events this week in Southampton to see an inability to understand spread divisiveness – and those that seek to take advantage of that ☹️. There are too many people around the world who do not have even a tiny part of them ready to admit that they might be wrong and, unfortunately, many of those people have a platform that enables them to bend those who don’t know any better to accept a worldview that promotes disagreement and divisiveness and intolerance.