I am so happy to be here with you this morning, as you celebrate this special and important day in your lives. When I received the invitation from your Principal to spend the morning with you, I said “yes” right away. This is because I thoroughly enjoy spending time with young people and I delight in celebrating their achievements. In fact, it is one of the things I most enjoy about being President.
I am particularly happy to be here this morning, because it gives me the chance to speak to you on the theme of your graduation — ‘Decisions Determine Destiny’. What a wonderful theme – I congratulate your teachers for having chosen it. So, let’s chat a little about why it is that ‘Decisions Determine Destiny’.
Now, I’m sure that you must have heard the adults in your life say, in one form or another, things like “what goes around, comes around;” or “you sow what you reap”; or “as you make your bed, so you must lie on it”. All of these are an adult’s way of saying to you that future consequences are shaped by present actions. What the adults in your lives mean when they tell you these things, is that the way that you behave now, will affect your future. In other words, that your decisions determine your destiny.
Let’s go a little deeper: what is a decision? Well, ‘decision’ is defined by the Oxford Dictionary (notice I didn’t say ‘defined by Google’) as ‘a conclusion that is reached after consideration’. So, a decision is something that you think about – you give ‘consideration’ to it – and that you make up your mind about, after you think about it. And what is meant by the word ‘destiny’? ‘Destiny’ is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‘the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person in the future’. So, when your teachers chose for your graduation the theme ‘Decisions Determine Destiny’, what your teachers are trying to tell you is that the things you think through and decide to do, at this time of your life, will affect or determine your life in the future.
I believe that it is very important for you to understand that the decisions that you make now, will determine the kind of future that you will have. Imagine that you are back in Standard 3, and one day you think about it, and you realize that in the future, after Standard 4 and after Standard 5, and after you leave Princes Town Presbyterian School, you really want to go to Naparima Girls High School or to Naparima College. You know that to pass for those schools, you need to do well in the SEA. So, you have to make decisions that will enable you to do well enough in the SEA, to pass for those schools. You might have to decide to spend a little extra time every evening after school, studying, so that you can do well when you write the SEA and you can pass for those schools. You might have to decide to give up playing with your friends and your cousins on a Saturday morning, so that you can spend that time studying instead. And, because you made those decisions, in Standard 3, to start studying harder, you find that, by the time you get to Standard 5 and write the SEA, you have studied sufficiently to pass the SEA for the school that you want to go to. By making the decision to study hard, you have determined the school that you will attend in the future. Your decision to study more, determines your destiny of attending the secondary school of your choice.
Let’s take another example. Imagine that you are now attending secondary school – as all of you will be next term. In Form 1, you realize that you would like to be a doctor. You know that to become a doctor, you need to study medicine at UWI. And you know that to get into the Faculty of Medicine at UWI, you have to do well at Chemistry and Biology at CAPE. So, you decide, from as early as Form 1, that you will pay extra attention to Chemistry and Biology at secondary school. And because you pay extra attention to Chemistry and Biology, you find that you do well in those subjects at CSEC, and that you also do well at those subjects at CAPE. And what happens is that you then are able to get into the Faculty of Medicine at UWI, and study to become a doctor. Again, your decision to focus on certain subjects at secondary school, determines your destiny of becoming a doctor.
So those are examples of what your teachers are trying to tell you, when they selected as the theme of your graduation, ‘Decisions Determine Destiny’.
Now, so far, we have chatted about good destinies that are determined by good decisions. Studying a little extra from as early as Standard 3 is a good decision, that will determine a good destiny for you in terms of the secondary schools that you attend next term. Paying extra attention to certain core subjects from early on in secondary school, is a good decision that will determine a good destiny for you in terms of the career you want to have as an adult.
But what it is also important for you to understand, is that ‘Decisions Determine Destiny’ also works in the reverse. Because, like it or not, the not-so-good choices that you make now, can and often do lead to bad outcomes in your lives in the future. Let’s say that this Christmas, you get a gift that you have always wanted and that you have prayed hard for. The gift requires you to spend some time assembling it, but you are so excited to use it that you decide to take a short cut in assembling it, so that you can use it right away. You start using it and the gift works beautifully for a while. But then, just when you are beginning to enjoy it the most, it falls apart – all because you didn’t take the time to assemble it properly. Now, it cannot be fixed. You can never use it again. That’s a case of ‘Decisions Determine Destiny’, because your decision not to spend the time required to assemble the gift properly, resulted in the destiny of your precious gift being lost to you forever.
Or, let’s say that you made a really bad mistake – so bad that you feel terribly ashamed about what you have done. As a result of your mistake, something goes wrong. Your Mummy, or your Daddy, or your best friend asks you what caused things to go wrong, and because you are feeling so ashamed, you tell a lie about it. Mummy, or your Daddy, or your best friend find your answer a little strange, so they ask you more questions about your answer – and to cover up your first lie, you tell another lie. By the end of the day, you have told a series of lies to cover up each previous lie, until you can’t think of any more lies to tell, and your lies break down and Mummy, or your Daddy, or your best friend discover that you have been telling them lies all along. You end up losing the trust of those you love and admire. And that is when you truly begin to feel really, really badly – much worse than the shame you felt when you first made the mistake. Because you realize that you have hurt and disappointed and lost the trust of people who mean the world to you. That is another case of ‘Decisions Determine Destiny’ – because your decision to tell the first lie, causes you to make decisions to tell more and more lies, and results in your precious relationships with other important people in your lives, being damaged.
So, what I want to say to you, is that ‘Decisions Determine Destiny’ works both ways. Your good decisions can result in good destinies – in good secondary school choices, in good careers, and in better relationships. Your not-so-good decisions can result in sad destinies – in broken toys and in broken relationships. In really bad cases, your not-so-good decisions can result in very sad destinies, like you getting into serious trouble with the law. Say, for example, you decide to take something that doesn’t belong to you because you thought that no one saw or no one would miss it, but then you struggle to explain how you came by the thing that you stole. And because you can’t explain it, you end up in trouble with the police and you have to face charges and the courts. Or, take a case in which you know that you shouldn’t be hanging out at a particular place or with a particular group of friends, and you end up being taken to the police station when the police grab all of you up together for being where you shouldn’t be. You end up being charged with a crime and in all sorts of legal trouble, and because of that you can’t get a good job later on in life, because employers feel they can’t rely on your good judgment. Because you can’t get a good job, you end up on the roadside, homeless and unable to take care of yourself or your family. All because bad decisions have led to a bad destiny for you.
So, what is the lesson in all of this? The lesson in all of this is that your life is made up of a series of little decisions that you make, day by day. Those little decisions all add up to determine your destiny. For so many people, it is never one big thing that causes success of failure, but a history of seemingly small, inconsequential things that, over time, add up to make your life a happy, fulfilled one, or add up to make your life difficult and painful. You decide to share your lunch money with a student who is hungry and who can’t afford to buy herself something to eat. You and that student start talking, and you realize that you have a lot in common. You end up becoming best friends for life. That decision helps you to create a good destiny. You accept a gift of stolen goods from someone you barely know, and you think that, since you didn’t steal anything yourself, you are in the clear. But after you accept them, the person you accept the stolen goods from, turns out to be a member of a gang, and you are forced to be a gang member as repayment for the stolen goods. That decision to accept stolen goods, changes your whole destiny. That is why, to go back to the definition of ‘decision’, you need to always be thinking things through. You mightn’t be able to see it now, but the small decisions that you make today, determine your destiny tomorrow.
Many times, children your age come up to me and tell me they want to be President of Trinidad and Tobago, like me. They ask me what they need to do to become President. I always tell them the same thing. Don’t try to become President. Just try your best to make good decisions, one by one. Make the right decisions in everything that you do, and the world will open up all of its rich possibilities to you. When I was your age, I never dreamed of becoming President. I simply tried to make the right decisions, little by little, and day by day. And then life opened up for me the beautiful possibility of being President. That is what can and will happen in your lives, too, when you make the right decisions, little by little, and day by day. Life will open up all of its beautiful possibilities to you, too.
And so, all that the adults in your life ask of you, as you graduate and move on to the next stage of your education, is to try your very best to make the right decisions, little by little, and day by day. Try to remember that ‘Decisions Determine Destiny’. I know, with all my heart, that if you do that, you will create a really good destiny for yourselves, and for those who love you. You will create wonderful and beautiful and magnificent lives for yourselves. And you will help to make Trinidad and Tobago a wonderful and beautiful and magnificent country.
Parents, teachers, other family members and friends – thank you for helping guide these bright young students to this point. You have undoubtedly made many sacrifices and worked hard to bring this moment to fruition. Thanks so much for your support which I know will continue in the years to come.
And so, as I close, I wish you all the very best of luck in the future. I wish you all, wonderful and magical destinies. I wish you a life filled with good decisions, and I wish you a great destiny ahead!
