00:00Please join me in welcoming your 2026 commencement speaker, Eric Church.
00:24I've been grinding on this for a little bit about how to do it.
00:28I have torn up multiple speeches, I have thrown things, and in one of my fits of frustration,
00:36I sat down with a guitar, and I thought, man, who am I kidding?
00:41I need to figure out a way to do this with a guitar.
00:44So, if you'll indulge me, I want to start with a sound.
00:52You know this sound. It's a guitar that's out of tune, something that almost gets there, that tries, but doesn't.
01:01And some ancient, honest part of your brain knows it immediately.
01:05You don't need training to hear it, you just know.
01:08That sound is the sound of something beautiful that has not been tended to.
01:17Six strings.
01:19When all six are in tune, the chords they make can stop a conversation cold.
01:24Carry a broken person through the worst night of their life,
01:27or make a room full of strangers feel for three minutes like they've known each other forever.
01:33But if even one is off, the whole chord unravels.
01:36Not gradually, not politely, the moment you strike it, you know.
01:45I believe your life runs on this principle.
01:48And I'm going to break it down for you right now and tell you about your strings, okay?
01:53String one, the low E, that is your foundation.
01:56The low E is the thickest string.
01:59It is the heaviest.
02:00Every chord a guitar can make rests on this string being in tune.
02:06Your faith is the low E of your life.
02:09The thing that sits at the very bottom of you.
02:14Your belief about what this life is for, what you owe,
02:19what holds the universe together when science reaches the edge of its own explanation,
02:24and shrugs.
02:25The people who tend to their faith in ordinary seasons
02:29do not come undone in extraordinary ones.
02:32They still hurt.
02:33They still sit in hospital waiting rooms asking unanswerable questions at three in the morning.
02:40But they have a foundation to return to.
02:43The world will try to untune this string.
02:47Through busyness, through slow accumulation of a full schedule, a full inbox, a full life.
02:55Listen to me.
02:57Tend to your faith.
02:58Not just when you're broken, but when you're whole.
03:02String two.
03:08String two is family.
03:10Okay?
03:11Look out at these bleachers.
03:13Look around.
03:14Somewhere in that crowd is someone who has loved you longer than you've been easy to love.
03:22It's true.
03:24Someone who saw you at your actual worst, not your public-facing worst, and didn't leave you.
03:31Someone who worked a job they didn't love to put a book in your hands you sometimes didn't open.
03:37Someone who sat alone in a quiet house and cried the weekend you moved into dorms and wondered,
03:45have I done enough?
03:47That is family.
03:48And the A string is where the music starts to get warm.
03:55It gives a chord its body, its richness.
04:00It's the string that makes you feel like you're not alone in a room.
04:04I want to warn you about something.
04:06You're about to get busy in ways that feel important, and many are.
04:11Professionally ambitious, creatively alive, building the life you've been pointed toward for four years,
04:17and family, because they love you with the grace you will spend most of your life trying to deserve,
04:23will rarely demand your time.
04:25They'll tell you they understand, and they'll mean it.
04:28Do not take them up on it.
04:30Call your people.
04:32Not when there's news.
04:33Not when there's nothing.
04:35Show up when it costs you something.
04:38Let them see you when things are hard.
04:40The A string is not a holiday string.
04:43It's an everyday string.
04:45Protect it.
04:54The D string, the heart of a chord.
04:57On a guitar, the D string sits right at the heart of the instrument,
05:01in the middle of the low and high strings,
05:04giving the chord its body and its soul.
05:10Strike a full chord in a D string is what you feel in the center of your chest.
05:15That is not an accident.
05:17That is exactly what the right spouse and partner will do for your life.
05:21The person you choose to share your life with is the most important decision you will ever make outside of
05:27your faith.
05:28They will either amplify every other string you're playing or slowly pull the whole instrument into an out-of-tune
05:34miss.
05:37Not that I know that.
05:38I love you, honey.
05:40Find your best friend, look for shared values over shared interest.
05:49You don't need to love the same food or music.
05:52You need the same compass.
05:54Though it would be a benefit if you both hated NC State.
06:06The right partner is the string that makes the whole chord ring fuller and warmer and truer than anything you
06:15could ever play alone.
06:17Choose them wisely and then love them fiercely.
06:23The G string.
06:28That's what it's called.
06:31Sorry.
06:33I didn't name the damn thing.
06:35That's just what it is.
06:37The G string drifts faster than the others on a guitar.
06:41I can promise you that is true.
06:43I have dealt with it my whole life.
06:45It's because ambition and resilience both live on this string.
06:50And they pull in opposite directions.
06:54I want you to want things.
06:57You should want things.
06:59The world has more than enough people standing at the edge of their own potential waiting for a permission slip
07:05that was never going to arrive.
07:07Want the thing.
07:08Say it out loud.
07:10Build toward it with everything you have.
07:12And when you fail, and you will fail.
07:16Hemingway wrote it plainly right in the sternum.
07:19The world breaks everyone.
07:21Afterward, the best of us are stronger at the broken places.
07:25Get back up.
07:27Tune the string.
07:28Keep playing.
07:36The B string is about community.
07:38Your generation faces a temptation no generation before has ever faced.
07:44The temptation to perform for everyone and belong to no one.
07:49To be globally visible and locally invisible.
07:54To have thousands of followers and no one knows actually where you live.
07:59Resist this.
08:00Plant yourself somewhere.
08:02Put down roots with the full intention of growing there.
08:06Learn the actual names, not usernames, of the people around you.
08:10Volunteer.
08:12Coach the team.
08:14Build the thing your community needs, even if the internet will never see it.
08:21Generosity is not something you do after you make it.
08:37It's how you make it.
08:39And if you get lost, and at some point, I promise you, you will.
08:44You have a place you belong now.
08:46Come back.
08:47Walk through the quad on a fall day.
08:49Or sit on Franklin Street on a game day.
08:52And remember, these are my people.
08:55Because I am a Tar Heel.
09:03My last tour took me 42,185 miles over North America.
09:10And every single night, near and far, someone had on a Carolina flag, a Carolina hat, or a Carolina jersey.
09:19You will find yourselves, speaking from experience, high-fiving strangers wearing Carolina gear
09:25in faraway airports, or staying up across time zones to catch the moments, last moments of a game,
09:32or canceling a show in Texas.
09:35To be with your people in the Final Four as you vanquish Coach K.
09:50You're welcome.
09:53And having the ultimate pride knowing, that's the night my boys learn the Carolina fight song ends with,
10:00Go to Hell, Duke.
10:07True.
10:09Carry this community with you as you plant your roots.
10:12It will reap a bountiful harvest and make your song richer and fuller.
10:17And finally, the high E string.
10:22This is the thinnest string.
10:24It's the highest note.
10:25The one that carries the melody, that single line above the chord that everyone in this room recognizes
10:31and takes with them on the way home.
10:33It's also the one bent most easily by outside pressure.
10:38Social media is going to show you a thousand versions of a life that looks better than yours.
10:44The comparison will be relentless, curated, and a lie, dressed up in really good lighting.
10:52Someone's comments, someone's criticism, someone's cold opinion
10:56is going to try to convince you to retune yourself to match what they think you should sound like.
11:01Do not let them touch your string.
11:04You were made uniquely, wonderfully, distinctly.
11:08There's a sound only you can make, a voice that has never existed before you and will never exist again.
11:15A contribution only you can bring, a way of seeing that belongs to only you.
11:21The world does not need another cover song.
11:24It needs an original.
11:35Six strings, six strings of life and willingness to keep them in tune.
11:39Six principles, six pillars.
11:41When all six are in tune with each other, the chord your life makes is full and resonant and true.
11:48All six will drift, not one or two, all six, in their own time, in their own season.
11:56Your faith will go quiet when you need it loud.
11:58Your family will get complicated in a way only the people who love you most can complicate things.
12:04You will go through hard seasons with your spouse.
12:08Your ambition will hollow out and your resilience will wear thin.
12:11Your community will start to feel like an obligation
12:14and your world will try to sand down the edges of exactly who you are.
12:19This is not failure.
12:21This is not weakness.
12:23It's the inevitable, universal experience of living in an imperfect world
12:27that doesn't stop to let us tune up.
12:30And the difference between a life that sounds like music
12:33and a life that sounds like noise
12:36is whether you stop and listen.
12:38Whether you're honest enough to hear which string has drifted out of tune
12:42and humble enough to make the adjustment
12:45instead of just turning up the volume and hoping nobody notices.
12:49Because you will notice.
12:51The part of you that knows what the chord should sound like
12:55will always notice.
12:57It will not let you go.
12:59Life won't be right until it is tuned.
13:01Trust what your heart hears
13:03and it's telling you about your song.
13:07So graduates,
13:08now I encourage you to take your six strings,
13:11make it something worth hearing,
13:13and play your song
13:15as I leave you with mine.
13:23Hang on, hang on, hang on.
13:23We've got to do this the right way.
13:24Hang on.
13:26We've got to put these things in there.
13:29Oh!
13:32Heh.
13:34We've got to do this the right way.
13:34We've got to do this the right way.
13:34We've got to do this the right way.
13:35We've got to do this the right way.
13:36We've got to do this the right way.
13:36We've got to do this the right way.
13:36We've got to do this the right way.
13:37We've got to do this the right way.
13:38We've got to do this the right way.
13:38We've got to do this the right way.
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