But the best way to measure how much you've grown isn't by inches or the number of laps you can now run around the track, or even your grade point average - though those things are important, to be sure. It's what you've done with your time, how you've chosen to spend your days, and whom you have touched this year. That, to me, is the greatest measure of success.

In the future you make for yourselves, anything is possible. If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than necessary - the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God.

Now that I look back, I don't know why I was so stressed about it all this time. Funny how sometimes you worry a lot about something and it turns out to be nothing.

sometimes i think my head is so big because its full of dreams

olivia reminds me of a bird sometimes, how her feathers get all ruffled when she's mad. and when she's fragile like this, she's a little lost bird looking for its nest.

It's not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed. Why I love that line, that concept, is that it reminds me that we carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness. And what does that mean? How is that measured? You can't use a yardstick. It's like I was saying just before: it's not like measuring how much you've grown in a year. It's not exactly quantifiable, is it?

Always try to be a little kinder than necessary.

Such a simple thing, kindness. Such a simple thing. A nice word of encouragement, given when needed. An act of friendship. A passing smile.

So doesn't that make the universe a giant lottery, then? You purchase a ticket when you're born. And it's all just random whether you get a good ticket or a bad ticket. It's all just luck.

No, no, it's not all random, if it was really random, the universe would abandon us completely, and the universe doesn't. It takes care of its most fragile creations in ways we can't see.