Saying Yes.
Again and again.
My son Will graduated this week.
This guy. A few years later.
He got two minutes at the microphone. Two minutes is roughly 250 words if you talk really fast, which he does. Instead, he went low and slow… deliberate. Every word mattered, more than the seconds.
He could have done anything with that time. Quoted someone famous. Talked about himself. Talked about lessons in the world view of Office Space.
He didn’t do any of that.
He spent every second shouting out the friends who helped him land when our family moved to a new state four years ago. The kid who said “sit here, I’ll introduce you to everyone” on his first day. The ones who dragged him to school and outside activities he’d never heard of and events that sounded weird on paper.
His whole message was one word: yes.
Say yes to the invite. Say yes to the group you don’t know yet. Say yes to the thing that sounds a little strange, because strange is just unfamiliar wearing a costume.
I’ve been thinking about that word a lot since Saturday. And its opposite.
Professional evolution calcifies around the word no. No to the meeting that doesn’t fit. No to the project that sits outside our comfort. No to feedback… real feedback. We get efficient at saying no. We build whole systems around it. And then we wonder why our roles get stale and our ideas feel borrowed. Our jobs become to limit instead of to achieve.
Will didn’t know what would happen when he said yes to robotics or green team or sand volleyball. He just showed up. And showing up gave him people. People gave him roots. Roots gave him a microphone.
I don’t know exactly where he’s headed. But I watched a kid stand in front of a few thousand people and use his moment to credit everyone else. And I thought: yeah, he’s going to be fine.