A Commencement Speech on Life for Graduates, and All of Us – June 5, 2026

Dear Valued Clients and Friends,

In this week’s Dividend Cafe, I am doing something very different, and I both want you to understand what and why, and continue reading.  I gave the commencement speech on Tuesday night at Pacifica Christian High School of Orange County’s graduation ceremony.  I am a co-founder of the school, a very involved trustee, and a proud parent of [now] two graduates.  The message for the 90+ graduates and over 1,000 people in attendance was written and delivered for them, but when I completed my preparation for the speech (which I have been really focused on for several months), I decided it had an underlying message I wanted to share with the Dividend Cafe subscribers.

I did a Dividend Cafe offering practical financial advice to new high school and college graduates three years ago, and then an updated one last year.  (I also love my friend, Ryan Krueger’s job-advice piece, here). Today’s Dividend Cafe is not any of that.  The focus is much less on practical financial decision-making and more on how to approach the adversities of life.  Truth be told, I am not so sure that the latter does not significantly inform the former (resilience through difficult times; refusal to be owned by past mistakes; etc.), but I recognize this is a bit different than what we normally do in the Dividend Cafe.  But I think sometimes it is good to switch up the bio-rhythms, so that is what I opted to do today.  I also really, really care about this message, and I really care about the clients and friends who read the Dividend Cafe.  So I hope you will find some value in what we have done here.  I also recognize that this message is marinated in my own faith commitments.  I am quite sure not all Dividend Cafe readers/listeners share those commitments, but I hope you can read or listen with that in mind – that it reflects my belief system, and I generally appreciate the freedom to just be my authentic self.  That freedom is on display today.

There was a very special (and I assure you, very surprising) introduction to my speech, which you will see in the video.

Let’s jump into the Dividend Cafe …

Download Podcast Transcript

Commencement Speech – Pacifica Christian High School June 2, 2026

Parents, Friends, Loved Ones, Faculty, Board Colleagues, and most of all, graduates of the 2026 graduating class of Pacifica Christian High School of Orange County, it is a true privilege to deliver tonight’s commencement speech to you.  Joleen and I are parents of one of tonight’s graduates, which makes this all the more special, but as a co-founder of the school, it is a climactic moment for me, because I love this school and her mission with my whole heart.

Mr. O’Neil asked me to serve as tonight’s commencement speaker several months ago.  I immediately began brainstorming ideas for what I wanted to do with this opportunity, and instinctively went to some ideas around why we started the school – some reaffirmation of the vision behind this grand endeavor we call Pacifica.  But tonight I really want the message to be one specific to this moment in time – to the reality of 2026 – for these graduates, for these young people about to launch, but also to all of you in the room who play such an important part in their lives.  And if I do my job right, the graduates will hear a message that is encouraging, while a lot of you in the audience will hear a message that is convicting and challenging – maybe even upsetting.  But I have to do what I have to do.

I am a deeply nostalgic person.  A lot of people do not know that about me.  In 2013, when I began getting very serious about an Orange County school launch and partnered my efforts with Keith Carlson, there were a whole host of beliefs, passions, and convictions driving the effort.  One of the things that has always driven this endeavor and continues to serve as a driving catalyst to this day, is my belief in the specialness of high school – the extraordinary opportunity for social, intellectual, spiritual, and personal growth and development – the uniquely amazing moment in life it represents.  But I am keenly aware that a lot of my passion for the high school experience comes from the fact that I had a very special one.  When I was in high school we enjoyed the golden age of hip hop, the beginning of the strongest decade for music, period, in human history, it launched the greatest run of any NBA team that ever would be behind the greatest basketball player who ever will live, we reached a level of comic genius on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990’s that has never been seen again.  Even aside from the cultural artifacts I associate with that treasured era of my life, I enjoyed the process of becoming a young adult.  I enjoyed forming friendships that would last the rest of my life.  I cannot shake the memory of forming goals about my future – things I wanted to be true about my life – that took place in these pivotal high school years.  I passionately want those who come to Pacifica to have the most special, memorable, formative, and joyful high school experience imaginable.

So, yes, nostalgia was a driving force in my motivation for Pacifica, and I am going to explain why I bring all this up in a moment.  But there was a real philosophical vision for this school, too, that transcended the merely personal.  We wanted to teach kids to think well.  We believe in preserving Western civilization – and by that I do not mean synthesizing Jerusalem and Athens but rather picking Jerusalem over Athens.  We believe the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  So much of starting Pacifica was about a worldview – to see the world through the lens of Scripture and apply this to all walks of life.

I have a special passion for this in the field of Economics, which I got to teach to 24 kids from tonight’s graduating class in the first semester and 21 kids who took the class with Professor Balmer in the second semester.  For the rest of you, just IGNORE EVERY SINGLE THING YOUR COLLEGE PROFESSORS TEACH YOU ABOUT ECONOMICS, and you will be fine.

Speaking of that economics class, when you hear some criticism of a free market system, the three most important words in all of economics are … [“compared to what?”]

So yes – a huge part of Pacifica is how we THINK.  But my comments today are more about the second part of our school motto – that of LIVING well.  Because just as much as I believe Plato, Rousseau, Darwin, and Marx represent an assault on how Christians should THINK, there is an assault taking place today on how these graduates are being asked to LIVE that I am deeply troubled by.  When I say, “troubled,” what I really mean is horrified.

Ideas have consequences.  I think there is a dominant idea today that is utterly soul-crushing if you let it be.  I want to offer you graduates tonight a message of hope about your future, a challenge for how you live your lives when you leave this place that starts with rejecting a false way of thinking that suffocates your ability to live a good life.  I hope I have your attention.

The idea I want to tear to shreds tonight is this idea of perpetual negativity, of fatalism, of victimhood, of hopelessness, of the idea that we are owned by our traumas.  The idea I want to leave in the ash heap of 2026 is the concept that our best days are behind us.  That the economy is so stacked against you that you cannot get ahead.  That AI is such a disruptive force that you will not have opportunity for flourishing in your own professional endeavors.

We are living through a perpetual victimhood contest where focus has been taken off of the true, the beautiful, and the good, and onto the alleged disadvantages we face.

Of all the corrosive ideas that we seek to expose at Pacifica, the idea that you are supposed to live with some embedded negativity, victimhood, and expectation of hardship is perhaps the most dangerous.  Darkness and decline are not your destiny, and I pray you will ignore anyone who tells you otherwise.

I spoke a moment ago about nostalgia.  I loved my high school years, and I earnestly hope all of you enjoyed yours, but the last thing I wanted was to peak in high school.  There is a tension here that we can hold loosely.  You can believe that age sixteen just held such better days ^[1] on one hand, while also believing the future is filled with hope, promise, and opportunity.  I think every era is romanticized a bit by the people who lived in it, but I also think this is healthy.  What is not healthy is having a view of the past that leads to an unhealthy view of the present or the future.  This is a danger for excessively nostalgic people.

You want to know what the greatest time to be alive is?  Today.  THAT IS.  Today is the greatest day I’ve ever known ^[2].  And when you think and live that way, your present will be a future past that will give you a life well-lived.  It will eliminate a life of regrets.  And it will allow for a perpetual hope about the future, because all tomorrow is, is a series of future todays.  And I have never seen a person once in my life have a good yesterday or a good tomorrow who did not have a good today.  And I do not care how cliché it is, or how idealistic it is, or how out of favor it is with the nihilism and postmodernism of our day.  I don’t care how out of favor it is with the psychobabble, pill-popping, idolatrous drivel of our day – you can absolutely experience a life worth living when you understand this fundamentally immutable reality of adult life:

You are not a slave to the bad things that have happened to you or will happen to you.  You have been freed in Christ to a life of peace and joy.

I am not here to talk about myself tonight, but I want to explain something about my nostalgia.  I mentioned that I loved my high school years, and I am sure you can understand how special Ice Ice Baby ^[3], the 1991 Duke win over UNLV, the movie A Few Good Men, and even outside of the music, movie, and sports culture, how wonderful the classroom and social experiences we enjoyed were.  But I also experienced the three hardest moments of my life from age 15 to age 20, and if you fully understood the depth of those traumas, you might not think it makes any sense for me to hold that period in such elevated nostalgia.

But God has told us to “forget what is behind and look forward to what lies ahead, to press on towards the goal of winning the prize for which God has called us.” (Phil. 3:13-14)

This is where nostalgia informs our future.  For any of you who have ever been hurt, who have suffered loss, who have endured tragedy, who have gone through those realities of a fallen world that hurt us, disappoint us, frustrate us, and at times feel paralyzing – you have every right to mourn, to take the time you need to work through these traumas, and to heal.  But you are not defined by those moments, and you are not held captive by them.  That is what healing means – it means getting better.  The disappointing parts of life will only own your future if you give them that power.  But you don’t want to waste your life ^[4].  The great liberation in transcending the things that have hurt or disappointed you is that you will find a satisfying life of joy and contentment and peace – what we call the good life.  You will find it because you chose it, because you have agency, because it is a lie that you are owned by your traumas.

Bad things truly do happen in life.  Now, candidly, they’re never quite as it seems ^[5].  But they can be real and potent.  Some may not have suffered severe personal tragedy.  For some in the room, the anxiety and fear that grips you is economic, social, technological, professional, academic, existential.  I am prescribing the antidote of optimism for all of these things because that is the testimony of history – that is the reality of being made in the image of God – that you have the agency to embrace a life of positivity and reject a life of doom and gloom.

I don’t know exactly how this subject was addressed in the classrooms of Pacifica or in the day-to-day campus life and student activities of our school culture.  But if you want to know what the secret is to having a happy life, the answer is to choose to have one.  You do not have to listen to the people who tell you otherwise.  You do not have to doom scroll your way to despair on those God-forsaken phones of ours.  You can put that device down and go outside and touch some grass, see the sky, and know that He is God and you are not.  You can wake up every single day, get some exercise, invite people into your life that encourage you and fill your cup, and leave no space for the forces that suck the joy out of you.  This does not mean that life will not present challenges.  All the roads that lead you there are winding ^[6].  But I am telling you, graduates, that the twists and turns of life will become BLESSINGS, not sources of angst, if you will choose to adopt this perspective – one of agency, responsibility, and hope.

To the parents, loved ones, and more “senior people” in the room …  If life has thrown you some curve balls, which I have to think it has for all of us, I plead with you to not convey dissatisfaction or discontent to these graduates in how you process those things in your own life.  What I really pray is that you will find the peace and joy that you need, that you deserve, but if, for whatever reason, you are determined to stay in a perpetual place of angst and turmoil, please, please, please don’t bind that millstone around the necks of these graduates.  If you can’t be healed of your own cynicism or perpetual negativity, at least do not be a super-spreader or a carrier.  Allow our graduates immunity to the poison of any point of view that denies hope for the future.

Graduates, for my entire life, time and time and time again, I have encountered two types of people: those who build, and those who destroy.  God made you to be a builder.  When we fall outside of God’s will for our lives – outside of our created design – we inevitably become a destroyer.  You will not believe the misery found in destroying things.  But you will not believe the joy that exists in building things, either.  Choose wisely.

So, graduating class of 2026, you no longer have to ask, “Can I graduate? ^[7]” – You have done it.  You are here.   And I do not know what is going through all of your minds as you prepare to leave the halls of Pacifica for whatever it is God has next for you.  You are one, but you are not the same ^[8], and you will each face different challenges, needs, wants, and situations in the next year of your life, and well beyond.  I want this message to speak to whatever those things may be – for you to know that you are not alone, that when you fail, you will recover, that when you get knocked down, you will get up again ^[9].  Don’t ever let anyone tell you anything different.  As hard as it may be sometimes, choose joy.  Choose hope.  Choose to believe that a better day is coming.  And when you do, more often than not, you will find that belief in a better tomorrow truly does lead to a better today.

I hope you have had the time of your life ^[10] at Pacifica.  But what I hope for beyond that is for it to never end.  For you to wake up every single day ready to entertain the angels ^[11] in your work, your productivity, your creativity, your relationships, and the experiences you enjoy.  I pray you will seize every single day for what it is – a gift from God where the most outrageous opportunities for living exist.  Choose to live.

I know some of you better than others.  One of you is my own flesh and blood – she got off scot-free tonight.  Some, of course, I do not know at all.  But I love you all.  I don’t just say that.  I mean it from the bottom of my heart.  I love you all.  I love you because God first loved me enough to give me a high school experience, filled with low lows and high highs, and that era of my life preceded what has so far been an adult life of all sorts of lows and highs.  In this great, fantastic, thrilling journey that I am living, I am overwhelmed with a love that makes me want for you a life I know you can have – one filled with extraordinary peace and joy.  And I know this, because I know that …

“In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

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Thank you for bearing with me on something a little different this week.  It means a lot to me.  And congratulations to all graduates, at all schools, this beautiful summer week.

With regards,

David L. Bahnsen
Chief Investment Officer, Managing Partner

The Bahnsen Group
thebahnsengroup.com

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1. Adam’s Song – Blink 182 – Enema of the State (1999)
2. Today – Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream (1993)
3. Ice Ice Baby – Vanilla Ice – To The Extreme (1990)
4. A Murder of One – Counting Crows – August and Everything After (1993)
5. Dreams – The Cranberries – Everybody Else is Doing It (1993)
6. Wonderwall – Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory (1995)
7. Graduate – Third Eye Blind (1997)
8. One – U2 – Achtung Baby (1991)
9. Tubthumping – Chumbawamba – Tubthumper (1997)
10. Good Riddance – Green Day – Nimrod (1997)
11. Entertaining Angels – The Newsboys – Step Up to the Microphone (1998)