Recently, I was thrilled to give the commencement address for my daughter Eleanor’s high-school graduation.

To help the new graduates make sense of their experiences, I explored five essential paradoxes for happiness.

If you’d like to listen to the address, I’ve included it as a bonus episode in the Happier feed.

If you’d prefer to read or print the text, you can find it here. 

In writing this commencement address, I wanted to explore transcendent themes, and I did. But I also have a very practical side, and without quite meaning to do it, I wrote a second commencement address. The profound and the practical! I delivered the profound commencement address; if you’re curious to read the practical commencement address (which I didn’t deliver), it’s here.

You might think the wording of the conclusion is a little odd. That’s because I’m quoting the words of the school song: It begins “We go forth unafraid/Strong with love and strong with learning” and the song’s final line is “Here we have learned to go forth unafraid.”