|
Doing
Well By Doing Good
William
R. Brody
Excerpted from a speech given by Mr. Brody
to the graduating class of Johns Hopkins University on May 26, 2005
There
is a man who I'd like to tell you about. His name is Sandy Greenberg.
In his youth, Sandy was a very good student, but he came from a poor
family. And so he went to Columbia University on a scholarship and
there he met his roommate who also was receiving financial aid.
Now
while he was a sophomore at Columbia University, Sandy contracted an
eye disease that eventually proved to be glaucoma. But the trouble was,
it wasn't detected early enough, and as a result he became legally
blind. I ask you all to imagine for a moment having been sighted all
your life, and then all of a sudden being faced, in a very competitive
school, with losing so much sight you could no longer read. This is
what happened to Sandy Greenberg.
But something else happened to
Sandy that may surprise you. Sandy said that when he lost his sight,
his roommate would read his textbooks to him, every night.
So
I'm going to put you in that position, in a competitive school like
Columbia, or Johns Hopkins. If your roommate had a serious disability,
would you take the time to read textbooks to him every night, knowing
the more you spend time reading textbooks to your roommate, perhaps the
less well you might do with your other activities? That's not as easy a
question as it first appears.
But luckily for Sandy, his
roommate did. And as a result, Sandy went on to graduate with honors.
He got a Fulbright Scholarship, and he went off to study at Oxford. He
was still quite poor, but he said he had managed to save about five
hundred dollars as he went along.
His roommate, meanwhile, also
went on to graduate school. One day, Sandy got a call from him at
Oxford. And his former roommate said, "Sandy I'm really unhappy. I
really don't like being in graduate school, and I don't want to do
this."
So Sandy asked, "Well what do you want to do?"
And
his roommate told him, "Sandy, I really love to sing. I have a high
school friend who plays the guitar. And we would really like to try our
hand in the music business. But we need to make a promo record, and in
order to do that I need $500."
So Sandy Greenberg told me he
took all his life savings and sent it to his roommate. He told me, "You
know, what else could I do? He made my life; I needed to help make his
life."
So, I hope you'll remember the power of doing well by
doing good. Each of you, in your own lives, will be faced with
challenges, with roadblocks, with problems that you didn't anticipate
or expect. How you are able to deal with adversity will be influenced,
to no small extent, by how you deal with others along the way. What you
get will depend a lot on what you give. And that's the end of the story
of doing well, by doing good.
Ah! I almost forgot. You probably
are wanting to know who Sandy's roommate was. I think you've heard of
him. Sandy's roommate was a fellow by the name of Art Garfunkel, and he
teamed up with another musician by the name of Paul Simon. That $500
helped them cut a record that eventually became "The Sounds of
Silence." Recently, we had the pleasure of going to Sandy's daughter's
wedding, and it was Art Garfunkel who sang as Sandy walked his daughter
down the aisle.
When you get to be my age (which, for some of
you, is really old, (though it doesn't seem so old to me anymore), you
will find yourself beginning to ask, did my life make a difference?
That's
the day of personal reckoning. And I think the only way to face it is
to consider, every day of your life: How can I do something for
somebody else? How can I give back to others? It may be teaching, it
may be becoming a doctor, you may be successful in business - no matter
what your career path, there will always be the opportunity to give
back. The chance will present itself to be giving of your time, giving
of your money, but mostly, to be giving of yourselves, of your own
heart and soul.
My hope today, as you commence to new
beginnings, is you will always keep your eyes open for those
opportunities to give and embrace them as your best sure way of doing
well.
Copyright
© 2006, Jace Carlton. All International Rights Reserved.
|
|
