Speaking at Commencement at Oklahoma State University:
“Before we go to lunch, I want to make you a thought provoking offer,” I said. “I hope you realize where you are in life today. You have the best seat in the house. I would trade you everything I have for it.”
Boy, things got serious quick.
“My Gulfstream airplane. My 68,000-acre ranch,” I ticked off a long list of my assets, before adding, “I would gladly give it all to anyone of you to be where you are sitting right now. There’s only one catch. If you make the trade, you have to be 79 and I get to be 18 again.”
Suddenly, lunch didn’t seem that important after all. They were trying to figure out how to get what I had without giving me what I wanted. Guess who had gotten their attention? After I finished my speech, two of Alexander’s classmates came up to me and said, “You really got us thinking today, Mr. Pickens.”
“You guys want to make the trade?”
-- T. Boone Pickens
Continue Reading his address....
This weekend marks the beginning of visitations of nearly a dozen young people I have gotten close to over the years; young people who are graduating from high-school this year. I think about where they are in life; what lies ahead of them.
I think about them through the lens of my 50th birthday, a couple of weeks ago.
I think about how honest I need to be that I am often more tired than I used to be, and that I wonder more often about what my value is in a world that trades in the currency of youth.
I think about them through the metaphor of this morning's sunrise, which is occurring right now behind me, and the voice that I have become accustomed to hearing from it that says 'get up, there's beauty out there...go see it, go get in it'.
I think about how I have beauty yet to know, beauty to offer, beauty to call out in others.
If I was 18 again, I probably wouldn't make the trade either (nor would I now). You?
