Anyone who's ever attended a graduation ceremony knows the commencement speaker faces a very special challenge: Be inspiring. Use soaring rhetoric. And say something that may echo for years after.
This commencement season is no exception, but one of the best pieces of advice delivered so far was a bit more blunt: Demand the ball.
If you haven't heard Abby Wambach's address to Barnard College graduates, do yourself a favor and look it up.
"Demand the ball" is a lesson that Wambach learned from another soccer legend, Michelle Akers. Wambach recalled how, as a teenager, she got a chance to play a scrimmage match with Akers, whom she described as "one of my heroes."
For most of the match, Akers was focused on coaching Wambach and her teammates. But then she realized her team was in danger of losing, and she immediately shifted gears.
They were three points down. "In that moment, a light switched on inside of her," Wambach said. "She ran back to her own goalkeeper, stood one yard away from her, and screamed: Give. Me. The. Ball." She got it, dribbled through Abby's entire team, and scored.
Then Akers did it again--demanded the ball, dribbled through the team, and scored.
Then she did it a third time.
Wambach's point is that there are moments in our lives when it's all-or-nothing time. When we have to stop hedging our bets. When we have to speak firmly, act clearly--and execute.
Think of your heroes. Chances are you admire them in large measure because they did the same thing.
It could be Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a segregated public bus, or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. launching his courageous campaign against the shameful racism of the Jim Crow era. It could be President Ronald Reagan standing at the Brandenburg Gate and--against the advice of many advisers--challenging Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!"
That's part of the greatness of America. Men and women, striving to do what's right, day after day, no matter who's looking.
In fact, it's precisely this grit that made America possible. Think back to the Founding Fathers and ask yourselves: What was their quest for independence but a way of demanding the ball? They could have taken the easy way out and acquiesced to King George III. But they didn't. They stepped up. They didn't ask for liberty. They took it.
So if you want to make your community, your state, your nation, and your world a better place, don't just sit there and complain. Stand up and say: Give me the ball.
And then run with it.
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Kay Coles James is president of The Heritage Foundation.
Editorial on 06/08/2018