Damon shared a piece of advice that Bill Clinton gave him over a decade earlier, describing how it felt 'less like advice and more like a direct order.' Clinton had literally turned his body toward Damon for emphasis as he said it. Damon admitted that at the time it seemed simple, but the older he got, the more wisdom he found in those words. This became the central thesis of Damon's speech. After rattling off a litany of global problems — economic inequality, the refugee crisis, climate change, institutional racism — he urged MIT graduates not to tune out and turn away, but to walk right up to these problems, look them in the eye, and decide what to do about them. He spoke from personal experience: it was literally going to Zambia and meeting a young girl at a borewell that put him on the path to co-founding water.org.