Melinda Gates’ Duke University Commencement Speech | Words Of Humanity

Melinda Gates – the name reminds you one of the big foundation and charity organization which works for human causes. She is the wife of equally generous fellow and tech expert who were once considered as the richest man of the world – Bill Gates. But as Melinda says, the words Rich and Poor doesn’t define who you are. You need to hear her to know her inner self, which is so generous.

She was invited to deliver the commencement speech to the class of 2013 at Duke University on May 12, 2013. The commencement ceremony was held at Wallace Wade Stadium. Duke university made available the video recording of the commencement speech given her public and it is available on YouTube, and we are thankful to them for the same.

During her speech, she motivated the students to do the little things whenever a chance is available in their lives, to make the world a better place. Her main motto is all the humans are equal and should be treated like that, don’t consider the others different, just because they have a different way of living than yours.

We found the speech not only inspirational but moral too.
Here is the summary of the speech as per our personal understanding.

• Connectivity is a very important thing.
• People claiming that the new generation is disconnected due to the technology (i.e. when taking lunch, people instead of enjoying the meal,  loves to take photo of the same and update it online, or prefer to have friend request rather than enjoying with their real friends who are with them together) are wrong. And so do the people claiming that you are automatically connected due to technological advancements.
• Deep human connection is really important and very different. And technology can be a tool to connect nothing more.
• Love, generosity and humanity, these good qualities do exist because of deep human connection.
• The world became a neighborhood due to the scientific and technological inventions and innovations but it is not yet became a brotherhood, which it should be (citing, M. L. King Jr.).
• You can change the way you think about other people. You can choose to see their humanity first. It makes a lot of difference
• If you make a moral choice to establish a deep human connection, the technology comes as a very helpful tool to do the same.
• In your life you will get a lot of opportunities to use the technology to make the world a better place, do not let them go.
• The words rich and poor do not define who we are.
• The world is like a computer code, it is binary, the 1 and the 0. The life is 1 and the rest is 0.
• Humanity in abstract may not appeal you, so meet the actual people to understand them better, and you will be attracted to the real humanitarian work

Do you think something different here? Of course you may. Do share your vision about the same and together we may get the more from the same.