Unpopular but true: The wisdom young Americans need to hear right now

Dear class of 2025: You’ve already won. You’re the largest high school graduating class in America’s history. It’s all downhill from here — for America’s population. The number of graduates will decline every year going forward.

But now that you’re emancipated, you’re not going to move downhill. You’re going to move uphill into a life of purpose and significance.

Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to discover the core truths that made it possible and nurture them.

Young adults often ask me, “If you could go back in time, what would you tell your 18-year-old self?” If I could, I would tell myself four words: service, calling, wisdom, and truth.

1. I need to serve

When asked this question — “What is more important for you: achieving at a high level, happiness, or caring for others?” — 80% of young adults said that achievement and happiness are most important.

But what they don't know (or forget) is that achievement and happiness come through service. The people most likely to succeed in life are those who serve others best. Similarly, the happiest people are those who serve others rather than demand to be served.

This is good news for an anxious generation. The eminent psychiatrist Karl Menninger said that if you’re overcome by anxiety and depression, the best thing you can do is leave your house and go serve others.

We become fully human by loving and serving others, giving of ourselves for the genuine benefit of others.

2. I need a calling

If I could do it over again, I would focus more on finding my unique calling — my vocation — and not just getting a good job. There are a lot of talented job seekers, and talent is distressingly common. What is rare is people who discover what they “cannot not” do and work hard at it.

Now is a good time to take an inventory, not of your trophies, but of the things you’ve done that return energy to you and make you feel more alive. Think back on the things you did that fascinated you and made a difference for others. Those are the seeds of your calling.

3. I need old people

What my 18-year-old self needed to know is this: “Stop thinking you can figure out everything for yourself. Find people who know what you don’t know and keep buying them coffee until all their good advice spills out of them.”

Wisdom isn’t the same as knowledge. AI offers information. But what you’re looking for is formation from people who have the kind of knowledge that only years of experience can give. I want to invest my life in the company of curious people who can’t help but learn and grow, no matter their age.

4. I need to seek the truth

I know, I know. We are “supposed” to believe that we are each the center of our “own reality.” But your generation knows better than mine that if you are the center of reality, then everything wrong in the world is essentially your fault.

No one can bear that burden.

My generation was told, “The world is going to end during your lifetime because of nuclear war.” Your generation is told, “The world is going to end during your lifetime because of climate change.” That kind of thinking locks you in a prison of fear, and fearful people don’t innovate. They don’t follow their inspiration. They just try to manage their fall.

Fear lies to us, and the only way to conquer it is to seek the truth.

Societies typically move toward success by climbing a wall of worry. You’re coming into a world that boasts unprecedented levels of economic, political, and religious freedom. Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to discover the core truths that made it possible and nurture them.

But don’t do it alone. The best truth-seekers aren’t solitary. They process things aloud with others.

People who think they alone know the truth become arrogant. People who don’t care about the truth, on the other hand, become apathetic. But people who seek truth in a relational way are the most powerful people who exist.

If I could go back in time, I would tell myself those four words: service, calling, wisdom, and truth.

So I say this to every young American now: Your life will be better if you emblazon those words on your heart and mind — for your own sake and the world’s.