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Graduation Speech
Philip Davis MP
Address by the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas to the Class of 2022
of
Middle Tennessee State University
Saturday, May 7, 2022
Mr.president,
Faculty, staff, other distinguished guests, and graduates of the Class of 2022:
Good morning!
I have traveled nearly 1,000 miles to be here, and I am so happy to say with you today: “I am a Faithful Blue”!
I am deeply honored to be with you on this special day, a day that marks the end of one chapter for you and the beginning of another.
Now you might be hoping, or – let’s be honest – probably worried, that I’ll be standing here giving you lots of advice.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s tempting to do so. After all, you’re just starting your careers, and I’m – well, let’s just say I’ve been in my early 20s for a few years now.
However, as a father of six, I know full well that telling you about the mistakes I made won’t stop you from making your own mistakes. And that’s okay, because it’s the mistakes you make, especially the painful ones, that will propel you forward when you must pick yourself up from the ground, dust yourself off, look deep within, and face your truth. In those moments, you will lean on and trust your core values, not the advice of a commencement speaker.
I know you understand this—the stories of those who came before you are crucial to shaping your understanding of the world and your place in it, but the task of finding a way forward remains yours.
As a 19th-century Danish philosopher said, “Life can only be understood in retrospect, but life must be lived forward.”
In talking to some of you, I’ve realized that we now have a lot more in common than you might think:
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Many of you are about to start new jobs – I was just starting a new job too, about seven months ago when my party won the Bahamian election and I became Prime Minister.
Like you, the challenges I face seem to grow increasingly complex.
Your world will be impacted by climate change. There will be no hiding from it — every state in this great country will feel the effects in some way in the years ahead. So it is in my country, where hurricanes have become more intense due to warmer ocean temperatures, devastating our beautiful islands and leaving behind tragedy and devastation. Perhaps past graduates of your universities, or past governments in my country, could have delayed dealing with the scale of this crisis. But none of us here today have the luxury of pretending that this is someone else’s problem to solve.
You and I have seen that wars on the other side of the world affect our daily lives. Conflict in Eastern Europe means higher prices for all of us, and a shifting energy landscape with consequences that will affect geopolitics in ways we can’t imagine.
I know many of you have studied finance, media, and technology – fields that are all undergoing dizzying change. What you know now may be outdated in just a few years. This is indeed daunting, but also exciting. This means that the most valuable knowledge you will gain here is the importance of keeping an open mind and thinking critically, but none of us can become complacent, we must continue to learn.
You may know the Bahamas for its beautiful beaches, but financial services is a very important industry to us as well. Just last month, we released a new government policy on digital assets and welcomed some of the brightest minds in the cryptocurrency space to our country as we prepare to use our experience in more traditional finance to train a new generation of blockchain entrepreneurs.
I know some of you may have considered taking a more traditional path when you first started college, but now they are excited about the possibilities of FinTech, NFTs, web3, and DeFi.
Entering an exciting new era of innovation means we must be aware of both the threats and the opportunities. My nation is moving forward with caution but enthusiasm, and like so many of you, we are determined to turn these big changes into big opportunities.
The goals and aspirations of the citizens of a small country like the Bahamas have changed dramatically over the years, especially in the past 50 years as we have become an independent, sovereign nation.
Take this year’s President’s Award winner, Winton Cooper. He is a senior majoring in Environmental Science and, from what I have heard, has been a well-respected and effective student leader during his time at MTSU. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m happy to say that he is also Bahamian!
In fact, the Bahamas has sent many students to MTSU.
One of our country’s distinguished foreign ambassadors, our Ambassador to the Community of Caribbean States (CARICOM), is a proud MTSU graduate; Leslia Miller-Brice, who competed in track and field here, sends her love and warmest congratulations to all of you.
And, of course, Dr. Sidney McPhee. Regardless, your president has had a huge impact on the development of this university and has made it the great institution it is today.
I thank him for his warm invitation to attend the graduation ceremony and to salute his great achievements. As I told him yesterday, despite his world-changing contributions here, we still consider him a member of the Bahamian family.
President McPhee, Ambassador Miller-Bryce, and Mr. Cooper are the proud faces of the modern Bahamas.
But our homeland does not always provide such opportunities.
Even though I’ve been talking about what we have in common this morning, I should say that our upbringings were probably very different. I ran around Carter Island barefoot. I got in a lot of trouble. I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences.
My grandparents were subsistence farmers who were never taught to read or write. My father was a firefighter and my mother was a domestic worker.
When I was a child, people of my race, and like me, had no right or ability to vote for their government, and certainly no right to have a say in how the country was run.
It was beyond their imagination that I might grow up to be the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.
Maybe it’s beyond my imagination.
But nothing can stop you from dreaming big and in any shape. It is the gift of imagination and creativity that makes us human.
As far as we know, humans are the only creatures on Earth with the ability to imagine an alternative reality, and the capacity to work together creatively to make it happen.
We could look out upon an empty space and imagine that this house would one day be our home.
We can look many years into the future and imagine traveling to other planets.
So, you and me, let us resolve to make full use of our gifts of imagination and creativity and never allow the fears or limitations of others to overtake our sense of the possibilities for ourselves and our country.
In our fast-paced world, where digital distractions are always at our fingertips, let’s commit to finding our own space and quiet places, making sure the sounds we follow are truly our own.
You know by now that the world isn’t always fair or just. But you also know that pursuing justice and being willing to get into what John Lewis called “good trouble” will attract some of the best people into your life.
We are part of something greater than ourselves, to which we make a unique and irreplaceable contribution.
I am a Christian, so I understand the big picture of God and creation.
Whatever you believe in, sticking to a larger purpose helps solidify and secure your sense of purpose.
The job I do, running a country, is currently held by about 200 people in the world.
Many people assume that those of us who do this kind of work are driven by ambition. Unfortunately, that is true for some, but many of my leadership colleagues—many more than the cynics would like to believe—are driven by a simple belief that we can make life better for our people. To paraphrase the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, we are not driven by the love of power, but by the power of love.
As I stand here today, looking at your proud parents, and thinking about the challenges that lie ahead for you, this is my greatest wish for you – that you will experience the transcendent love that binds us all together.
Whichever path you choose, love will inspire you to do great things.
I pray that this moment of celebration and optimism will inspire you long into the future.
Because as you continue to live your lives, make your own mistakes, and chart your own paths, I am confident that you will also find new ways to solve the world’s most pressing challenges and create new possibilities that today’s children can barely imagine.
I wish you all the best! Thank you.
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