This past weekend I walked around my alma mater, Vanderbilt University. My route took me past three buildings at which I have spoken numerous times: the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, Alumni Hall, and Vanderbilt’s Law School. In my career I have now spoken publicly at well over a hundred schools, probably many more. Each talk in many ways builds upon the last, and the very first was born in the failure from my past.

This all took my mind to a graduation speech from actor Denzel Washington, who gave his talk a year after performing Fences on Broadway at the Cort Theatre. Thirty years prior, Washington got his first rejection (of many) after an audition at the same theatre. No one but Washington remembers that rejection now; it’s only relevance is the motivation served him to push harder. But in that sense it is highly relevant.

It took me five years to graduate Vanderbilt, including two summer school sessions, and my grades were mediocre at best. But in the back of my mind, I always knew I was going to make something of myself. Partly because I knew I had drive about things I was passionate about, and partly because failure motivated me to push harder.

This commencement speech is for everyone who has graduated, or will graduate, or for that matter will do anything in which they finish middle of the pack. Or at the bottom of it. It matters not. You are going to do something new the next day anyway. And you can do it exceedingly well. As Washington says:

To get something you never had, You have to do something you never did.

It matters not, then, for a second what you have done in the past. Every day is an opportunity to change your life. Watch this speech — it is inspiring:

