William H. McRaven is a retired four-star admiral in the US Navy where he served for 37 years, former chancellor of the University of Texas system, and former foreign policy advisor to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
But there is a part of the speech that I retained. It was the part about heroes and how after all these years I came to realize that the heroes we need are not the heroes I had been looking for. When I was a young boy growing up in the '50s and '60s, I always envisioned myself as the hero. I always wanted to be Superman, with his powers to fly, with his invulnerability, with his super strength. A hero who saved the world every day from some catastrophe.
If you hope to save the world you will have to standby your convictions. You will have to confront the ignorant with facts. You will have to challenge the zealots with reason. You will have to defy the naysayers and the weak-kneed who have not the constitution to stand tall. You will have to speak truth to power.
And if you believe for a moment that you are superior, you will be humbled quickly. But if you approach every mission with a decent respect for the mountains, the rivers, the oceans, and the enemy — you are more likely to succeed. A good friend of mine, who graduated from the University of Texas in 1969, pursued a career in medicine. His mother had died of Lymphoma when he was eleven and he was obsessed with finding a cure. For decades, he pursued an idea that most in the medical field dismissed as fantasy. Could the human body really use its own immune system to fight cancer? He never gave up on his pursuit and in 2018, Dr. Jim Allison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
In his time, Thomas Edison developed 1,500 patents. From the electric light, to the phonograph, to the movie camera, to the vacuum diode, and the carbon microphone. He saved the world from darkness. But in doing so it required him to work 20 hour days, his home front was often strained, his other business ventures struggled to survive, and his health always seemingly in jeopardy.
Why would MIT invite a war criminal to give a speech?
Big ears speaks
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