While we always have a few special words for grads this time of year (and will share some on Sunday), Grammy-nominated country singer/guitarist Eric Church had some great ones last week in his commencement address at the University of North Carolina. It was excellent. Some called it the “best commencement speech” they’ve ever heard. Here’s some of what he had to say, in a message called the “Six Strings of Life”…
“Six strings: When all six are in tune, the chords they make can stop a conversation cold, carry a broken person through the worst night of their life, or make a room full of strangers feel for three minutes like they’ve known each other forever. But if even one is off, the whole chord unravels. Not gradually, not politely. The moment you strike it, you know.”
The Low E: Tuning Your Faith
“The people who tend to their faith in ordinary seasons do not come undone in extraordinary ones.They still hurt. They still sit in hospital waiting rooms asking unanswerable questions at 3 in the morning. But they have a foundation to return to. The world will try to untune this string through busyness, through the slow accumulation of a full schedule, a full inbox, a full life. Listen to me: Tend to your faith. Not just when you’re broken, but when you’re whole”…
The A String: Family as an Everyday String
“The A string is where the music starts to get warm. It gives a chord its body, its richness. It’s the string that makes you feel like you’re not alone in a room. Because they love you with a grace you will spend most of your life trying to deserve, will rarely demand your time. They’ll tell you they understand, and they’ll mean it. Do not take them up on it. Call your people. … The A string is not a holiday string. It’s an everyday string. Protect it”…
The D String: Finding a Spouse Who Amplifies Your Song
[The next string is the closest one to the heart, the D string] “in the middle of the low and high strings, giving the chord its body and its soul. Strike a full chord and the D string is what you feel in the center of your chest. That is not an accident. That is exactly what the right spouse will do for your life. [Picking a spouse] is the most important decision you will ever make outside of your faith. They will either amplify every other string you’re playing or slowly pull the whole instrument into an out-of-tune mess. Find your best friend, someone you want to talk to at the end of a long day. Look for shared values over shared interests. You don’t need to love the same food or music; you need the same compass”…
The G String: Balancing Ambition and Resilience
“The world has more than enough people standing at the edge of their own potential, waiting for a permission slip that was never going to arrive. Want the thing. Say it out loud. Build toward it with everything you have. And when you fail — and you will fail — Hemingway wrote it plainly, right in the sternum: ‘The world breaks everyone. Afterward, the best of us are stronger at the broken places.’ Get back up. Tune the string. Keep playing”…
The B String: Resist Being Invisible in a Digital World
The fifth string represents community. The digital world presents “the temptation to perform for everyone and belong to no one. To be globally visible and locally invisible. To have thousands of followers and no one knows actually where you live. Resist this. Build the thing your community needs, even if the internet will never see it”…
The High E: Recognize You’re an Original Melody
The “thinnest string.” “It’s the highest note, the one that carries the melody, that single line above the chord that everyone in this room recognizes and takes with them on the way home. It’s also the one bent most easily by outside pressure.Do not let them touch your string. You were made uniquely, wonderfully, distinctly. There’s a sound only you can make. A voice that has never existed before you and will never exist again. A contribution only you can bring. A way of seeing that belongs to only you. The world does not need another cover song. It needs an original”…
And lastly…
“Your faith will go quiet when you need it loud. Your family will get complicated in a way only the people who love you most can complicate things. You will go through hard seasons with your spouse. Your ambition will hollow out, and your resilience will wear thin. Your community will start to feel like an obligation, and your world will try to sand down the edges of exactly who you are.” This is “not failure. … It’s the inevitable, universal experience of living in an imperfect world that doesn’t stop to let us tune up.” But the “difference between a life that sounds like music and a life that sounds like noise is whether you stop and listen. Whether you’re honest enough to hear which string has drifted out of tune and humble enough to make the adjustment instead of just turning up the volume and hoping nobody notices”…
“Trust what your heart hears and is telling you about your song.”
Wonderfully…
AR