By Carolyn Click, McClatchy Newspapers –
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Former President Bill Clinton urged Columbia College graduates Saturday to find work they love and develop “creative cooperation” to resolve pressing problems and create a more equitable world.
“You have to decide what you want the world to look like when your children are in your seats,” he told the 235 graduates of the United Methodist-affiliated women’s college during morning commencement exercises at the Township Auditorium in South Carolina.
Clinton was invited to deliver the commencement address by retiring Columbia College president Caroline Whitson, an old Clinton friend from Arkansas. He received a standing ovation when he entered at the rear of a long robed procession of faculty and administrators.
Clinton, who has used his post-presidential years to develop global initiatives to end poverty and assist countries reeling from natural disasters, reminded graduates that the world is far more interdependent now than during the 1990s when he was president. But he suggested the Founding Fathers also could provide guidance in pondering their future lives.
“Thomas Jefferson, when he was helping to pen our founding documents, said that we were all endowed by our creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — not the right to happiness, the right to pursue it.
“Turns out the joy is in the pursuit,” he said. “And the real personal value of a university diploma is that it gives you more choices and more power to follow your heart as well as your mind. It has been my experience in life that most people are happiest doing what they are best at.”
