Here’s an interesting and astute graduation speech I listened to recently:

“A lesson learned should be a lesson shared.”

Kyle Martin

In the speech, Kyle declares that “a lesson learned should be a lesson shared.” As a dad, I think about this a lot. I want my children to be more successful than me: professionally, personally…across the board. I’m always trying to share lessons I’ve learned with them–most often, mistakes I’ve made that I hope they can avoid.

Of course, a critical component of a learned lesson is the learned part. The fact that you’ve lived enough under certain conditions to have learned a valuable tenet–good or bad–from those conditions and your responses to those conditions. I wonder if a better name for these lessons is lessons lived. As I share my lessons lived with my children, part of me thinks, “will these lessons even resonate with my children if they’ve never lived them in the first place?” Nevertheless, I keep sharing.

Another thought that occurred to me while watching this video was, what must the Salutatorian be thinking? “Heck, if he regrets earning the Valedictorian spot, give it to me!”