The only Video You Need to Find Your True Purpose in Life | Mark Zuckerberg

Today I want to talk about purpose. But I'm not here to give you the standard commencement about finding your purpose. We're millennials. We try to do that instinctively. Instead, I'm here to tell you that finding your purpose isn't enough. The challenge for our generation is to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose. One of my favorite stories is when JFK went to go visit the NASA Space Center and he saw a janitor holding a broom and he asked him what he was doing and the janitor replied, Mr. President, I'm helping put a man on the moon. Purpose is that feeling that you are a part of something bigger than yourself, that you are needed, and that you have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness. And today I want to talk about three ways that we can create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose. By taking on big, meaningful projects together. By redefining equality so everyone has the freedom to pursue their purpose. And by building community all across the world. So first, let's take on big, meaningful projects. Our generation is going to have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks. But we have the potential to do so much more than that. Every generation has its defining works. More than 300,000 people worked to put that man on the moon including that janitor. Millions of volunteers immunized children around the world against polio and millions of more people built the Hoover Dam and other great projects. And now it's our generation's turn to do great things. Now I know, maybe you're thinking, I don't know how to build a dam. I don't know how to get a million people involved in anything. Well, let me tell you a secret. No one does when they begin. Ideas don't come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started. Movies and pop culture just get this all wrong. The idea of a single eureka moment is a dangerous lie. It makes us feel inadequate because we feel like we haven't had ours yet. And it prevents people with seeds of good ideas from ever getting started in the first place. In our society, we often don't take on big things because we're so afraid of making mistakes that we ignore all the things wrong today if we do nothing. The reality is anything we do today is going to have some issues in the future. But that can't stop us from getting started. So what are we waiting for? It is time for our generation defining great works. How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet and getting millions of people involved manufacturing and installing solar panels? How about curing all diseases and getting people involved by asking volunteers to share their health data, track their health data, and share their genomes? These achievements are all within our reach. Let's do them all in a way that gives everyone in our society a role. Let's do big things not just to create progress but to create purpose. The second is redefining our idea of equality so everyone has the freedom to pursue their purpose. Now many of our parents had stable jobs throughout their careers but in our generation we're all a little entrepreneurial whether we're starting our own projects or finding our role in another one. And you know that's great because our culture of entrepreneurship is how we create so much progress. An entrepreneurial culture thrives when it is easy to try lots of new ideas. Facebook wasn't the first thing I built. I also built chat systems and games, study tools and music players, and I'm not alone. J.K. Rowling got rejected 12 times before she finally wrote and published Harry Potter. The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail. Now today we have a level of wealth inequality that hurts everyone. When you don't have the freedom to take your idea and turn it into a historic enterprise, we all lose. And right now today our society is way over indexed on rewarding people when they're successful and we don't do nearly enough to make sure that everyone can take lots of different shots. Now let's face it, there is something wrong with our system when I can leave here and make billions of dollars in 10 years while millions of students can't even afford to pay off their loans let alone start a business. I know a lot of entrepreneurs and I don't know a single person who gave off on starting a business because they were worried they might not make enough money. But I know too many people who haven't had the chance to pursue their dreams because they didn't have a cushion to fall back on if they failed. Every generation expands its definition of equality. Previous generations fought for the vote and civil rights. They had the new deal and great society and now it's time for our generation to define a new social contract. We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure that everyone has a cushion to try new ideas. And we're all going to make mistakes so we need a society that's less focused on locking us up and stigmatizing us when we do. And as our technology keeps on evolving we need a society that is more focused on providing continuous education through our lives. And yes giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn't going to be free. People like me should pay for it and a lot of you are going to do really well and you should too. But it's not just about giving money. You can also give time and I promise you if you just take an hour to a week that's all it takes to give someone a hand and help them reach their potential. Now maybe you're thinking that's a lot of time. I'm not sure if I have that much time. I used to think that. We can all make time to give someone a hand. Let's give everyone the freedom to pursue purpose not just because it's the right thing to do but because when more people can turn their dreams into something great we are all better for it. Purpose doesn't only come from work. The third way we can create a sense of purpose for everyone is by building community. And in our generation when we say purpose for everyone we mean everyone in the world. In a recent survey of millennials around the world asking what most defines our identity the most popular answer wasn't nationality, ethnicity, or religion. It was citizen of the world. That's a big deal. Every generation expands the circle of people we consider one of us. And in our generation that now includes the whole world. We understand that the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers from tribes to cities to nations to achieve things that we could not on our own. We get that our greatest opportunities are now global. We can be the generation that ends poverty, that ends disease, and we get that our greatest challenges need global responses too. No country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just as cities or nations but also as a global community. But we live in an unstable time. There are people left behind by globalization across the whole world and it's tough to care about people in other places when we don't first feel good about our lives here at home. The purpose and stability in our own lives that we can start to open up and care about everyone else too. And the best way to do that is to start building local communities right now. Change starts local. Even global change starts small with people like us. In our generation the struggle of whether we connect more, whether we achieve our greatest opportunities comes down to this. Your ability to build communities and create a world where every single person has a sense of purpose.