DiDonato's third truth — 'It's not about you' — was what she called 'a particularly hard and humbling lesson' that she continued to learn at every stage of her journey. She told the graduates that they hadn't signed up for glory and adulation (though she wished it for them), but for something far more enduring: service. She described their role with poetic specificity: servants to 'the ear that needs quiet solace,' to 'the mind that needs desperate repose,' to 'the heart that needs invitation to flight,' to 'the soul that needs safe landing.' She painted vivid scenes — a sick person healed through a symphony composed through bloodshot eyes, a lost person saved through words conjured from both ether and personal strife, an angry person released through witnessing dance on tired legs and bleeding toes. To drive the point home, she shared an email from an elementary school teacher whose fifth-grade student — a boy who had been teased all year — wrote that his favorite part of an opera broadcast was 'where at the end you were singing about getting revenge, and how he really liked that your revenge was going to be forgiveness.' That, DiDonato said, was exactly who they were serving.