Michelle Obama spoke these words at the graduation ceremony at UC Merced this week, and produced a well-spring of emotions in me for various reasons.

• She was speaking to a community of people, mostly agricultural families who were immigrants, and whose children, many of whom were the first in their family to graduate, will go on to build lives for themselves that their parents and grandparents could never have imagined.
• She spoke to people who at that moment carried the seed of hope, even while afraid there would be no jobs waiting for them.
• She gave hope because she is the first black woman in the most important role a woman can have in the United States.
• She inspired them because in the United States the unspoken rule is ‘anyone can make it here’.

I know, because I’m an immigrant who recently received permanent resident status, and after forty years of wandering, I finally feel like I belong somewhere.

I grew up in Scotland, in a family of dockworkers and factory workers.  My father loaded boats at the docks, and my mother put labels on whiskey bottles. My parents lived a life of great fear and anxiety. My father was an alcoholic, and my mother suffered great tragedies that killed her soul.  They spent their lives afraid for themselves, and for their children because they didn’t know how to ‘think’ differently.

I was never expected to succeed.  I was supposed to stay in Scotland and follow in their footsteps. I chose differently.  I have lived a life of a global nomad since the age of 16, making my home wherever my clothes happen to be.  I was the first in my family to go to college, but when I graduated, the only thing my mother could think to say was “I suppose that means you’ll get a better job!”

You think you are safe if you deny your fear, but it’s the exact opposite.  You deny your life force.  Fear is the greatest motivation there is to change your life.  If you don’t learn to confront your fears, you give nothing to future generations, and it certainly doesn’t honor the struggle of those who came before you.

So here’s my wish list for the grads of 2009, and I include two daughters this year who are graduating high school and college.

• Don’t limit your thinking to only the possible.  Dream the impossible.  That’s where you find the magic.

• Embrace every opportunity positive and negative, as a chance to learn something that will enrich your life

• Know that you will have lots of questions, but all the answers are inside of you.  You will need other people to shine the light on them

• Fear is an option.  Choose your options carefully.

• Don’t let anyone diminish you.

• Life is waiting for you to reveal who you are.  Don’t hide your light, but shine like the star that you are.

• Remember: Being Fearless is not the absence of fear, but the choices and decisions we make when fear shows up in our lives.

• Live Fearlessly.

If we inspire our children to go forward and claim the lives they want to live, perhaps we will have the kind of planet we ALL want to live on.