May 20, 2006

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Speech on the Six Secrets to Living a Happy, Successful, and Fulfilling Life
The University of Georgia Law School Graduation

***Click here to listen to the speech***

Last fall, when Dean White called me and asked if I would make this address today I have to confess to you I got to feeling like I was pretty important. I mean to be asked to come back to your alma mater and give a graduating address to the distinguished law school; I really got the big head. I said I’ve really finally made it. So I decided what I would do was think back to the great commencement speeches I heard. Think back to the lessons they gave me. Try and impart to all of you those great speakers and what they said. I thought back to my graduation I thought back to the weather. I thought back to who I sat next to, the music that was played, I thought back to the joy on the face of my parents seeing me graduate. I remembered everything about my graduation, but for the life of me I could not remember who spoke at my graduation or what they said.

It occurred to me that it is really true this is your day it is not mine, and so I’m going to give the speech I gave to the graduating class of Walton High School in 1988 when I was the commencement address speaker when my oldest son graduated. Because on that speech I took a few minutes to repeat to him and all of his classmates the six secrets to living a happy, successful, and fulfilling life.

Now I call them silent secrets and they're silent for a very good reason. Teachers don’t talk about them enough with their students, parents don’t talk about them enough with their kids, and students don’t talk about them enough with one another. They shouldn’t be secrets – every great work of literature contains all six. Most of the most famous motion pictures and the great speeches of our time all contain components of these secrets, but they remain secrets. You’ll learn every one of them some time in your life my only hope is early rather than too late.

The first is learning. Today you graduate from an institution bordered by walls, time clocks, and schedules into a greater institution known as the world around you. Some of you are going to take your diploma, you’re going to frame it, and you’re going to hang it on the wall. I challenge you to treat it like a passport; to take it through life and have it validated over, and over, and over again by learning and improving yourself. Everything they taught me at the University of Georgia in 1966 is but a historical footnote in the body of knowledge of the world today, but because they taught me to learn I’ve been able to compete in the sixty-one years of my life. Robert Browning was absolutely correct when he said, ‘A man’s goals must far exceed his reach,’ for that’s what heaven and earth is about – to reach and reach and reach, and that’s what learning’s about, stretching your horizons enjoying the fulfillment of a productive life.

Secondly, if you want to live a happy, successful, and fulfilling life, it’s the second secret, and it’s called respect. When I talk to high school graduations, I always find the 235 lb. middle linebacker and I put my finger in his face and say, ‘Don’t you ever kick sand in the face of a 135 lb. acne faced math and science whiz because one of these days, he’s going to pull out the scalpel and operate on your knee.’ And that is absolutely true; the man that underestimates his fellow is the man that loses. We’re all different sizes, shapes, races, ethnicities and creeds, but everyone has something to offer our fellow man. Greatness in this world is the power of each individual collectively, not the superiority of anyone. Martin Luther King, Jr. was absolutely correct when he said that, ‘You should judge a man by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin.’

Now third, is ethics and you might find it unusual for an American politician to stand on a stage and talk about ethics. We spend half our time in Washington and Atlanta creating commissions and select bodies all to determine what’s right and what’s wrong. When in fact, it’s very simple and there’s a historical rule that lays it out. It’s called the Golden Rule. You do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Listen; in my 33 years in business, I’ve known a lot of people that made a lot of money. And I’ve known a lot of them who lost it. And the difference is the ones who made it and kept it and the ones who made it and lost it, is that the ones who made it and kept it understand that life is a win-win game not a win-lose game. When you go into a real estate closing and you leave something on the table for everybody to participate in, they will sit at your table again. But if you’ve got to get the last dollar, you will never be successful and eventually, your last dollar will be gone. Dollars will come to play in your backyard just to see what kind of fellow you are if you treat people right. Mark Twain’s most famous quote – I love it to death – he said, ‘When confronted with a difficult decision, just do what’s right. You may surprise a few, but you’ll amaze the rest.’ And he was absolutely correct. Doing right is sometimes the most difficult thing a human being can do, but it is always the best thing a human being can do.

Now the fourth silent secret is love. And it is not that which you and I daydream about once or twice a day. It’s that passion that you have for the people and the institutions that have made you what you are and will carry you to the next level. They didn’t ask me to say this, but if you leave this university and don’t send money back, then you’re turning your back on the foundation that has taken you wherever you’re going to go. You ought to invest. And those parents and brothers and sisters and grandparents that are here today – love them and tell them how much you appreciate what they did to get you where you are. And most importantly of all, remember this, that love is the common denominator of a successful, happy, and fulfilling life. Will Rogers, in the last speech he ever made before he and Wiley Pace took off and crashed in Alaska, was asked this question at the Wall Street Banker’s club: ‘Mr. Rogers, you know all the great people of your time – writers, artists, statesmen– there is no one in America today is that is successful that you can’t call by his first name. Mr. Rogers, if you could say it in one sentence, what would you say is the secret to living a happy, successful, and fulfilling life?’ He said very simply, two things: ‘Always remember to love people, and use things – don’t ever use people, and love things.’ And he was absolutely correct.

The fifth silent secret is faith; and I would never tread on a subject of religion at a public institution, but I would never make an address like this without telling you that faith is a series of disappointments held together by singular moments of joy and success. You will lose cases in your life, and you will lose loved ones in your life, and you will have tragedies that you can put in the bank. And how you will endure them, to put them together to learn from them and grow is going to depend on what kind of faith you have. Now you can’t check faith out of the library – it is not in a book – and you cannot buy it from a televangelist on cable TV. But if you don’t search for it and find it, you will never live a happy, successful, and fulfilling life. The toughest days of my life have been made better because of the faith that I have, and the successes that I have had have kept me humble and made me recognize what is really important in life.

Now the last silent secret is to dream. And to make this point I’d like to tell you a story about my high school graduation, about the night I sat on the steps on Robinson’s Tropical Gardens in 1962 next to one of my high school friends Kenny Ascher. He was 135 lb. acne faced math and science whiz, and who happened to have a scholarship to Columbia University. About 11 o’clock that night we sat on the steps and looked at the Chattahoochee River flowing by and we talked about what we were going to be, now that we had grown up. And I talked about my dream and he talked about his. He said, ‘You know Johnny, I know I’ve got a scholarship to Columbia in math and science, but you know what I want to do, I want to go to New York, Hollywood, I want to write great music and play before millions of people.’ Now, Kenny’s great successes in life up to high school graduation had been a brilliant pianist as well as a brilliant student. Back in my day, we didn’t have boom-boxes, we didn’t have jukeboxes, we didn’t have TiVos – we didn’t have anything. We had to find somebody to play the piano. Unless we could find someone who could play the piano we didn’t have any music, so Kenny got asked to every party. And I said, ‘Well Kenny that’s great, I hope you do.’ But I thought to myself, ‘How is this scrawny old math and science whiz with acne ever going to perform on stage or write great music.’ But I didn’t say it out loud because I didn’t want to blow out his candle and didn’t want to blow out mine. I didn’t see Kenny Ascher for eleven years until one night in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when I took a cab from the airport to the Sheraton Hotel. I went by the performing arts center at the time in Minneapolis, and there on the marquee was a huge sign that said “Performing tonight – Woody Herman and his Orchestra accompanied by Kenny Ascher.” I said, ‘Dadgumit; the little booger has made it.’ So I got to the Sheraton and called the theater and said, ‘My name is Johnny Isakson and I went to school with a guy named Kenny Ascher. Just in case this is the same guy, please give him this number and ask him to call me.’ Sure enough at two o’clock in the morning – you know musicians – he called me up, I got out of bed, and he said, ‘Johnny this Kenny.’ I said, ‘Kenny you made it! You remember that night when you told me you were going to write great music and play before millions! I am so proud of you!” He said, ‘No I haven’t made it, I’ve just been lucky.’ (And I want to interject and say here that luck as defined by me and anyone else in here that has ever had a success is when opportunity meets preparation). And I said, ‘What do you mean you’ve been lucky?’ He said, ‘You know I got that scholarship to Columbia University. When I showed up the first day, and they assigned me my roommate, his name was Paul Simon. And he introduced me to his best friend Arthur Garfunkel. They used to get me to play with them in Greenwich Village. And so when Woody Herman’s piano player had a heart attack, he recommended me to play with Woody Harman.’ And I said, ‘Well you’ve made it!’ He said, ‘Naw, I haven’t. I’m going to play before millions of people; I’m going to write great music.’ A number of years later, my wife and I accompanied our eight-year-old daughter, Julie, to a matinee movie in Roswell, Georgia, with seven of her little friends, all of whom were eight-years-old. She wanted to go see the Muppet Movie on her Eighth birthday. Now one day you’ll learn this, when you’re a parent and take eight little girls to a movie, when it’s over you do not get out of your seat. Your wife sits on the aisle, you sit on the other aisle and you keep them penned in until everyone else is out, ‘cause otherwise you’ll loose one of those boogers. So I don’t usually stay until the end of movies, but that day I did, and had nothing else to do while everyone else was leaving but watch all those Roman numerals and credits roll by on the screen. And I was looking at them and all of a sudden, at the very end it said “The Rainbow Connection” – you remember Kiki and Herb’s great song that they sang on the lily pad – lyrics by Paul Williams; written, produced, and composed by Kenny Ascher. I said, ‘Dadgumit he has made it now.’ A few years later, Barbara Streisand performed her last public performance for I think 12 or 13 years. On stage in Central Park on a Sunday night in New York City, 60 minutes on television, uninterrupted. A quarter of a million people, all watching Barbara Streisand on stage in a flowing chiffon dress with the spot light on her, alone, except for the grand piano and a piano player named Kenny Ascher.

There are as many successes in life as there are stories like that, as there are graduates here today, if you are willing to dream. You can be anything you want to be and you can do it. As long as you learn everything you can in your life, respect those with whom you meet and come across, have ethics so you treat everybody they way you would like to be treated, love the institutions and the people that brought you were you are, have a deep and abiding faith and dream. And if you don’t believe me think about this: today is a special day for not only for you, but for your parents and loved ones, because you are their dream.