“Your love of liberty — your respect for the laws — your habits of industry — and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness.”
—George Washington (1789)

The 2026 commencement speech season has just closed. For larger colleges and universities, it is difficult to find speeches that inspire, as most tend to cater to the prevailing winds in academia.

Remember Joe Biden’s pandering 2024 commencement address?

He did the same thing at his 2023 commencement address at Howard University, another historically black institution. Of course, “President Unity™” and his Democrat Party had no platform other than fear, hate, and division.

It is traditional for the commander-in-chief to deliver a commencement address at one of the service academies each year, and Biden delivered a bumbling speech at West Point just a month before his disastrous debate against Donald Trump, when Demos were still propping up the Biden/Harris ticket. And then they turned the keys over to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz…

Contrast Biden’s West Point speech with the rousing reception Trump received for his 2025 commencement address to West Point graduates — amid record-breaking recruitment numbers. Or his address to the Coast Guard Academy this year. Of course, the Leftmedia talkingheads and scribes were apoplectic after Trump’s remarks.

But I digress…

I think the best speech this year at any college or university was the one to the graduates of the University of North Carolina. It was delivered by Eric Church, a singer-songwriter who has deeply faithful roots. Eric is an Appalachian State University graduate, an in-state football rival of UNC, but he set aside that tension for a truly inspiring message.

And it became the most widely viewed speech this year, though a runner-up would be the remarks delivered by one of my favorite Harvard professors, Arthur Brooks, at Vanderbilt University — a speech thematically similar to the one delivered by Church.

Eric took the stage with his guitar as a prop and invoked family and faith in his “Six Strings” analogy of life lessons. He set up “Six Strings” by telling graduates: “When all six are in tune, the chords they make can stop a conversation cold, carry a broken person through the worst night of their life, or make a room full of strangers feel for three minutes like they’ve known each other forever. And if even one is off, the whole chord unravels. Not gradually, not politely, the moment you strike it, you know. I believe your life runs on this principle. And I’m going to break it down for you right now and tell you about your strings…”

These are the excerpts:

String One — The Low E — Your Foundation: “String one, the low E, that is your foundation. The low E is the thickest string. It is the heaviest. Every chord a guitar can make rests on this string being in tune. Your faith is the low E of your life. … The people who tend to their faith in ordinary seasons do not come undone in extraordinary ones. They still hurt. They still sit in hospital waiting rooms asking unanswerable questions at three in the morning. But they have a foundation to return to. The world will try to untune this string. Through busyness, through slow accumulation of a full schedule, a full inbox, a full life. Listen to me. Tend to your faith. Not just when you’re broken, but when you’re whole.”

String Two — The A String — Family: “String two is family. … Look around. Somewhere in that crowd is someone who has loved you longer than you’ve been easy to love. It’s true. Someone who saw you at your actual worst, not your public-facing worst, and didn’t leave you. … And the A string is where the music starts to get warm. It gives a chord its body, its richness. It’s the string that makes you feel like you’re not alone in a room.”

String Three — The D String — The Heart of a Chord: “The D string, the heart of a chord. On a guitar, the D string sits right at the heart of the instrument, in the middle of the low and high strings, giving the chord its body and its soul. To rock a full chord in a D string is what you feel in the center of your chest. That is not an accident. That is exactly what the right spouse and partner will do for your life. The person you choose to share your life with is the most important decision you will ever make outside of your faith.”

String Four — The G String — Ambition, Resilience, and Getting Back Up: “The G string drifts faster than the others on a guitar. I can promise you that is true. I have dealt with it my whole life. It’s because ambition and resilience both live on this string, and they pull in opposite directions. … The world has more than enough people standing at the edge of their own potential waiting for a permissions lift that was never going to arrive. Want the thing. Say it out loud. Build toward it with everything you have. And when you fail, and you will fail … get back up. Tune the string. Keep playing.”

String Five — The B String — Community Over Performance: “Your generation faces the temptation no generation before has ever faced. The temptation to perform for everyone and belong to no one. To be globally visible and locally invisible. To have thousands of followers and no one actually knows where you live. Resist this. Plant yourself somewhere. Put down roots with the full intention of growing there. Learn the actual names, not usernames, of the people around you. Volunteer. Coach the team. Build the thing your community needs, even if the internet will never see it.”

String Six — The High E String — Carrying the Melody Against the Pressure: “And finally, the high E string. This is the thinnest string. It’s the highest note. The one that carries the melody, that single line above the chord that everyone in this room recognizes and takes with them on the way home. It’s also the one bent most easily by outside pressure. Social media is going to show you a thousand versions of a life that looks better than yours. The comparison will be relentless, curated, and a lie dressed up in really good lighting. Don’t let anyone retune your string. … You were made uniquely, wonderfully, distinctly. There’s a sound only you can make, a voice that has never existed before you and will never exist again. A contribution only you can bring, a way of seeing that belongs to only you. The world does not need another cover song. It needs an original.”

These are words of hard-earned wisdom.

Putting it all together, Eric advised: “Six strings — the chord your life makes. … Six strings of life and willingness to keep them in tune. Six principles, six pillars. When all six are in tune with each other, the chord your life makes is full and resonant and true.”

He also cautioned: “Your faith will go quiet when you need it loud. Your family will get complicated in a way only the people who love you most can complicate things. You will go through hard seasons with your spouse. Your ambition will hollow out, and your resilience will wear thin. Your community will start to feel like an obligation, and your world will try to sand down the edges of exactly who you are.”

Then he explained: “This is not failure. This is not weakness. It’s the inevitable, universal experience of living in an imperfect world that doesn’t stop to let us tune up. The difference between a life that sounds like music and a life that sounds like noise is whether you stop and listen. Whether you’re honest enough to hear which string has drifted out of tune and humble enough to make the adjustment instead of just turning up the volume and hoping nobody notices. … Trust what your heart hears and is telling you about your song.”

Finally, he closed with these words: “So graduates, now I encourage you to take your six strings, make it something worth hearing, and play your song as I leave you with mine [‘Carolina Callin’ Me Home’].”

If you haven’t already, you can watch Eric’s full remarks here. You won’t regret it.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.

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