Harrison Ford at Arizona State University Commencement: “The World My Generation Left Is a Real Mess.”

Harrison Ford gave the commencement address at Arizona State University on May 11.

Here is the full speech:

“You are here because you accomplished something important. You understood the opportunity in front of you. You used everything that this world-class university offered. You made wise decisions, and you followed through with your work. I celebrate your dedication. The success of all of you, the strength of your entire generation. That is what gives me hope for the future.”

I didn’t think much about the future, about my future. When I was in college, I didn’t make good decisions. I had no vision, no maturity. I only worshiped myself. I was still wasting my life living in chaos.

By my junior year, I was in real trouble, point-wise, and looking for easy A’s. I took a catalog course called Drama: The Study of Plays. We will be responsible for doing college plays, but I didn’t think about that part. I thought I would work in the box office or building sets.

My classmates were people I had once discounted as smart and bad. But I soon realized that I was a geek and a misfit. I had found my worth. These were my people. Turns out I didn’t work in the box. Instead, I had big parts in five or six plays that we did that year. I started to find myself on stage pretending to be someone else. I always saw myself as shy, but I hid with the character and the costume and the makeup, I had a freedom, a courage that I had never felt before, and I got an A. I was there, I saw, I was there almost for the first time in my life. My love led me to the community.

The head of the theater department has become a mentor to me. He invited me to do plays in the summer theater season he directs. Of course. Then I came to California to join him again in professional theater. Wow. Which led to an interview at Columbia Pictures, which eventually led to my career in theater.

But acting still hadn’t paid the bills. I supported my growing family with carpentry jobs. Another way to put food on the table. I loved making things. And I only took up acting jobs when the parts challenged me. This went on for about 15 years, during which I did many carpentry jobs and only four or five acting jobs, but there were big ambitions, good jobs. And then it all came together and I got Star Wars.

The load is off. I had freedom, opportunity, but something was still missing. Motivation and purpose are not the same thing. Passion brings you happiness. Purpose brings you meaning. Passion gets you out of bed in the morning, but purpose lets you sleep at night. And I hadn’t found a higher purpose than my job yet.

That changed in the late 1980s. I was living in Wyoming and was fascinated by a group of people I met there who had just started a non-profit organization called Conservation International. They had inspired leadership from their founder, Peter Seligman, who became a loyal friend. Their message was simple. Nature does not need people. Humans need nature to survive.

A healthy natural world provides free resources to humanity that we cannot provide for ourselves. And they encouraged me to join them. There was. The purpose. A place where I can channel my love of storytelling. I didn’t want to be the poster boy for a reason. I wanted to be part of the work, so I was invited to join the board about 35 years ago, and that’s why I’m standing here now in front of you: to represent nature, the source of life itself.

Humanity is part of nature, not above it. We have an important responsibility to protect 30 percent of land and sea by 2030, to prevent mass extinction, to reduce the warming of our planet. However, despite new science, new policies, we are still losing nature to profiteering, corruption, conflicts, including the world that is already protected on paper. These efforts are important, but not enough.

We need a cultural change. We need to extend social justice. We need to respect and uplift indigenous peoples who are looked down upon and, in many cases, killed in cold blood. These communities have long understood that trees, mountains, water, soil are not property. They are relatives that need to be recognized so that the next generations can accept and protect them.

We can all participate by accepting that wisdom in our daily lives, by loving the planet, by respecting the authority of nature, its generosity, the generosity it gives us, the justice of its example, because the world you are entering, the world my generation left behind, is a real mess.

Saving the environment is not our only job. There are opportunities to be accepted in society and business, in the kind of life we ​​live. So find a place for yourself. Whatever talent or ambition you have, find a way to use it. Build something that wasn’t there yesterday. Let’s stand up for someone who can’t stand up for himself. Bring together people who were not talking before. That’s leadership. That’s what moves the needle.

Your generation has more power than you can imagine. And if you use that power, if you find your leadership, your stories, your voice, the world will not be able to ignore you. You will need to be provided with accommodation. Believe me, I know that to be true. Don’t wait. When an opportunity arises, recognize it. This is your time. Manage it. Enjoy every second of it because what could be worse than coming to the end of your life and realizing that you haven’t lived it to the fullest?

Congratulations. Go change the world.”