Six strings and the truth.
If you haven’t already, you need to take time to watch Eric Church‘s powerful commencement address that he delivered at the University of North Carolina this past weekend.
The North Carolina native – and die-hard Tar Heels fan – spoke to the graduating class at UNC on Saturday, using his guitar strings as a metaphor for the things that are important in life:
“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 roomful of strangers feel for three minutes like they’ve known each other forever.
If one is off, the whole chord unravels. Not gradually, politely. The moment you strike it, you know. I believe your life runs on this principle.”
Throughout the speech, Church compared his guitar strings to important pillars in life – faith, family, community, and maintaining your own moral compass. He spoke of the importance of finding the right partner and not comparing yourself to the best version of someone else that you see on social media. And he ended it with a performance of his own song “Carolina,” his tribute to his home state from his 2008 sophomore album.
It’s his powerful closing message to the graduates, though, that’s taken off on social media. The video has been shared hundreds of times and racked up millions of views at this point as people praise Church for his poetic wisdom.
Honestly, I’m not even going to break it up here because that would be doing a disservice to Church’s words. But here was his message:
“You are 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.
Six strings, 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.
All six will drift, not one or two, all six in their own time, in their own season. 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.
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. And 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.
Because YOU will notice. The part of you that knows what the chords should sound like will always notice. It will not let you go. Life won’t be right until it is tuned. Trust what your heart hears and is telling you about your song.
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.”
Powerful. And while Church’s wisdom was delivered to the new graduates, it’s resonating with people of all ages:
Don’t we all.
Of course anyone who’s familiar with Church’s music knows his way with words when it comes to writing a song. But he may have also just set the bar when it comes to delivering commencement addresses too.
If you haven’t watched the whole thing, it’s well worth your time.
