Commencement Speaker Tells Class "You Are Not Special"

My high hopes were justified when I heard of a high school commencement speech that, “tells it like it is” and “really speaks the truth about life.” With the lines, “You are not special” my first thought was “You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.”
You know, the Fight Club commencement speech. While this was essentially what the speaker, David McCullough Jr., said, he did not say it with such disregard for order and government as Tyler Durden. I am okay with that. We do not always need Tyler Durden to tell us that we have to live a life worth remembering for it to mean anything. McCullough hits the nail on the head in the speech decrying the overuse of trophies and accolades to make everyone feel better instead of teaching students to feel better on their own without validation from others.

This was quite possibly one of the best speeches I have heard, period. McCullough peppered the speech with humor and sarcasm towards social media. He touched both young and old with his words. The speech was pretty short (12 minutes in all) and McCullough made his points fast and efficiently. He shows proof of why the students are not special (37,000 valedictorians, 37,000 class presidents, over 2 million pairs of Uggs) and reminds the students that even if they are one in a million, in a world population of 6.8 billion that still means there are 7,000 copies of each person.

In an interview later, McCullough even admits he’s guilty of some of the things he spoke out against. In the end McCullough reminds everyone that even though no one is special, everyone has their own spark of Zeus and if we do what we do for no other reason than we love to do it, we truly live a special life.

Kudos!

Discussion: What do you think of the speech? Do you support what he said? Why or Why not?

Reference: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/high-school-graduation-speaker-tells-students-not-special-145709954.html