President Zaki, members of the college, and esteemed guests.
All my life, I’ve been reaching for something. Since I was twelve years old, since I was old enough to remember enough of the past to learn from it, I was reaching for this moment. T oday is an answered prayer, a secret held in the hearts of generations before me. I am the first person in my family to do this, to graduate.
Today, their smile is my smile and this ceremony was outlined in chalk before I was born. And now that I’m here, I can hear it, the uncertain future howling my name, hurling it into the wind, and challenging me to change the world. How lucky am I that I get to do all of this with all of you? Class of 2025, a name is a multi-splendored thing, and when yours is called today, what you’re standing up to receive is more than a degree and a handshake, it is purpose.
As a young child I was homeless, sleeping on those cold shelter floors. My brother and I used to panhandle outside of grocery stores, begging our community members to feed us. We were too hungry to perform well in school. Our lives were totally and completely ruled by the poverty that we were born into. All the while, I harbored a second hunger, a hunger for knowledge. I stole phonics books from my elementary school and used them to teach my older brother how to read. Together we studied in the dark and prayed for better lives. So I mean it, when I say that today is an answered prayer. I had no idea then that I would become an academic, and a writer. I couldn’t see the future, but I believed in it. In my own purpose.
Purpose is what helped my single mother raise her two kids, it’s what helped me survive foster care, when she couldn’t. Purpose bound my spirit in tape when I foolishly thought that college may have been too hard for me to complete. Purpose led me to you, Bowdoin, Class of 2025. I’m talking to every awkward angel, every almost good enough, every crooked smile, every underdog there ever was. Can’t you hear it? The future calling? Y our great grandmother’s plans for you? Don’t you feel it in your bones? We were made for this.
I’m a city kid. I’m from a place full of rain and light pollution so when it got dark I was never able to see the stars or receive their encouragement. But here at Bowdoin they shine so brightly and twinkle in and out view, it’s like the stars are up there taking pictures of us, capturing everything we can’t. They’ve seen our laughter and our tears, the late nights and the early mornings, they’ve seen us strive to emulate their celestial consistency, and tonight they’ll see that we’ve achieved it.
I am living proof that the future is malleable, and that your voice is all it takes to shape it. The late great writer Toni Morrison once wrote that “the purpose of evil is to survive it.” Which to me means, that together we are more kind for having experienced intolerance. W e are more confident for having experienced self doubt, and we are more brave for having felt fear in this life. W e cannot always know where we’re going, but somehow we always get there. And maybe the grandest lesson I’ve learned in my four years at Bowdoin is that you don’t need to know what your purpose is in order to live it out. Purpose is happening all around us and we are in it the way we are in the world. Much like this commencement ceremony today, when purpose calls your name from far into the future, you don’t need to recognize its voice, all you have to do is stand and receive it.
