Wilson closed his UNC Chapel Hill address with these five words — perhaps the most concise commencement charge ever delivered. He had joked at the start that he wouldn't be as brief as Salvador Dali, who once gave a six-second speech: 'I will be so brief I have already finished.' But Wilson's brevity at the close was intentional and powerful. After describing a world of exponential change at the zettabyte level, accelerating species extinction, and an 'overwhelmingly techno-scientific civilization,' he distilled his message to its essence. The trajectory of history, he warned, will consist of shocks and surprises, and what the world needs is university-trained young people prepared to respond to unexpected crises. His final words — delivered by a son of Alabama who had become an honorary Tar Heel — carried the weight of a lifetime spent studying the natural world.