This commencement address was presented by Lionel Traubman, DDS, MSD for the School of Dentistry graduation ceremony of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) on Saturday, June 17, 2006 at the Nob Hill Masonic Center.

       Congratulations! You were first invited to UCSF because you are very gifted women and men. You responded to the university with excellence. You have been through the fire and succeeded. Your presence in this room is earned and hard won. You deserve applause.
       I remember the feeling like yesterday – 1959 – being a freshman dental student, wondering how I’d ever become senior, a dentist. We can make dreams come true.

       Yet, in my life, it’s always helped me to stop, to remember I never did anything important alone. Not one of you got here alone. You've all had lots of help.
       Take a moment now to remember and feel gratitude for those who helped you. Close your eyes and see them - parents, mentors, neighbors, teachers, ancestors. See them in your mind's eye, name them. Thank them. Take a moment.

       So what is my story, and what have I learned in 66 years that would matter for your life?
       The first guiding principle my life has validated is this – the world is flat.
       It’s another way of saying that there is only one side to Earth, and we all live on the same side.
       We used to think there was individual survival – I win, you lose.
       Life doesn’t work that way. Not really.
       On this Earth, we’re one – neighbors forever. Somos uno. One. Odin. Wahad, in Arabic. Echad, in Hebrew.
       Judaism’s first prayer says it: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Echad. One.
       We’re just beginning to understand the meaning of One.
       I’ll come back to that. I always do.

       When I came to Berkeley in ‘57, I loved the campus and singing all the Cal songs.
       I knew all the words. I had to, or I’d get paddled in the fraternity.
       “Big C” meant to “fight and strive and win (for Blue and Gold.).”
       I was a son of California. Big C provided a foundation for my life.
       Today, 49 years later, I am recommending for your lives five other very Big Cs – Courage, Communication, Compassion, Creativty, and Change – dearly needed change so we can all become fully human, get along with each other, and save this amazing living planet for many, many, many future generations.
       Change always begins with the first Big C – Courage.

       I always recognized courage, as a boy growing up in Duluth, Minnesota then Los Angeles.
       My heroes inspired me. Tarzan, Superman, The Cisco Kid. I liked the way Cisco and his sidekick, Pancho – like The Lone Ranger and Tonto – risked it all to help people and each other out of danger. They were unselfish. They risked their lives so good could triumph.
       My uncles were my heroes. Four of my mother’s brothers – Jerome, David, Sidney and Leo – all went to Europe to win World War II.
       My Grandma Oxman had a flag with four stars in her window. She prayed they’d come home alive. They did.
       They were my heroes. Soldiers were, for all of us. When war seemed necessary. We had enemies.

       Within days after 9/11, a major U.S. newspaper invited Libby and me to communicate – write a guest editorial about the meaning of 9/11. We titled it, “Listen to Terrorists, Listen to Everyone.”
       It took some courage to publish that in the midst of a nation overcome by a fear that is enslaving us to this day.
       We reminded America about the neglected, disrespected, unheard students at Columbine, Colorado high school who had recently run amuck murdering their classmates.
       We understood from decades of work with warring adversaries that “an enemy is one whose story we have not heard.”
       Neglected people become desperate. Communication heals, in your practice and in the world.

       From the clinic and your lives, you already know that good communication and understanding is what we all long for. We do. Our patients do. Our enemies do.
       These times call for unprecedented empathy – seeing and feeling life as others do.
       But people want to take sides. It’s easier. It’s our default setting.
       What would it mean to listen to both peoples, equally – Sunnis and Shiites, management and employees, women and men?
       To be for all people, equally, in our personal and global relationships?
       What keeps us from being pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli, for two equally excellent peoples?

       You can see what’s happening. When we’re motivated by fear, like this whole nation sadly is today, we can’t be creative.
       Every perception gets hijacked to our reptile brain, the amygdala, and like animals we are captive to either freeze, flee or fight. The brain doesn’t work right and can’t invent something new.
       And Einstein was very clear: “We can’t solve today’s problems with the same kind of thinking that created them.”
       Heart-brain science is now confirming for us that when we can make that heart connection with another person – just listening to another’s story, without “yes, but” – the heart tells the brain it’s safe, and the brain finally can work right and get innovative.

       We’re just a handful, 30 Palestinians and Jews – Muslims, Christians and Jews – Holocaust refugees and 20th generation Palestinians, who have helped one another and many others to heal and to prove change is possible.
       To quote the title of a recent, sophisticated Ph.D. thesis from George Mason University on Dialogue and social change, “Shift Happens.”

       I have told you a few stories because Story matters. Story is the new power.
       Elie Wiesel says: “People become the stories they hear and the stories they tell.”
       Pass on these stories that matter, including your own. Your own story matters. Everyone’s story matters, especially the enemy’s.

       Our friend Dr. Harold Saunders was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs.
       Hal facilitated five successful Israeli-Arab treaties, including Camp David.
       He says clearly, while governments have their place, “this is The Citizens’ Century.”

       This citizen-life I’m offering you takes some Courage to Communicate and to Cooperate beyond old borders and taboos.
       It will lead you to unprecedented Creativity and Change – really beautiful Big Cs that the whole world is waiting for, and that can create so much joy.