The Red (Taylor’s Version) hitmaker gave a 20-minute speech that centered around a variety of topics, as she touched upon personal anecdotes from her own career while also imparting life advice for 20-somethings about to embark on the “real word” after college graduation. One main point from Swift’s riveting address was that she advises young folks to “embrace the cringe” or the moments that they felt embarrassed of, as those inevitably, as she says, help us all grow. True growth, Swift emphasized, comes from moments when you aren’t being “perfect” or trying to be, but rather, doing what others may “cringe” at, or what you might years later. (All too relatable, might we add!)
View this post on Instagram
“I know that I’m talking to a group of perfectionists because you are here today graduating from NYU,” Swift said. “And so this may be hard for you to hear: In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong people, under-react, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self sabotage, create a reality where only your experience exists, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time, rinse, repeat. And I’m not gonna lie, these mistakes will cause you to lose things.”
She then mentioned the most “painful” moments in her own life when she had to “lose” in order to “learn,” and said that they ended up helping her grow years later. She explained that seeing “critical pieces about who [strangers] perceive me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation, but it also made me look inward to learn about who I actually am,” she reflected. “Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely.”
View this post on Instagram
Swift concluded her speech by stressing that it’s not only okay, but also necessary to “screw it up” sometimes, as we learn the most about ourselves and how to help those around us through moments like these. “We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams,” she explained. “And you will screw it up sometimes. So will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about on the internet. Anyway…hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it. ”
DOCTOR TAYLOR SWIFT pic.twitter.com/KfTCBAiTH3
— Irene (@lillyswiftt13) May 18, 2022
Students in the stadium cheered, whistled and clapped for Swift after she ended her speech, and continue to share their favorite aspects and moments on the internet. “So grateful for Taylor’s words of wisdom!” one fan wrote while another added, “I’ll never forget graduating with Taylor and her heartwarming speech.” Ultimately, while there are so many great takeaways from Swift’s message that day, we especially love her last sentence— “let’s just keep dancing like we’re the class of ’22.”
