Writings

You probably have just 1 life, and that life goes fast, so please, make it worth it. Follow your heart, do the things you really want, but do them passionately, and try to leave this place better than you found it. You have an entire life the time for it, starting from tonight.

What now?
Some of you might already have an answer to it, you know where you want to be in 5 or 10 years: it’s all nicely planned in your head, and that’s great. Now, there’s one thing: life can’t always be planned so easily. So be prepared to face obstacles, to deal with disappointments, and to take unexpected detours, but never give up on your dreams and ideals.

When I graduated from the VUB I thought ‘oh wow, I have a university degree and I wanna go for it, come here with that dream job, I’m gonna show you what I can do’. Reality kicked in: there was no one out there, waiting to give me that great job that would fit me so perfectly. The same might happen to you. There are many other talented people in our society with ambitions and a similar set of skills like you today.

The real difference is made by persistence, acquiring new skills and building relationships. Ask yourself what you would truly love to become, even if it doesn’t seem realistic today, try to take small steps towards your goal and be consistent.

I don’t know what your favourite topic was during your studies, but I was very interested in what people think in our society. I wanted to understand how words shape thoughts and how thoughts shape actions, and I spent all my time in the library focusing on concepts like ideology and discourse.

And I loved my time at uni, but I pushed myself to explore other parts of society from within, to stand with both of my feet in the world, to see how ideas live there.

I taught in schools, gained some experience in journalism, worked for a multinational, and then I thought okay, Hans, you’ve seen now how daily life goes in different industries, how ideas are embodied by people there, and maintained or challenged, but what do You want to advocate for actively, how are you going to do your part, I asked myself.

When I studied philosophy at the VUB, I also wrote a paper about animal wellbeing and a few years later that topic still felt like the right one for me, to raise my voice about. Now, if you want to do something for the insane amount of animals that suffer a terribly sad life in the industry, there are a couple of organizations you can join.

That’s how I started working for GAIA. A position was available, I sent them the paper I had written at the VUB and I could start. So, there’s a direct link between what I did at the VUB and a meaningful job I started doing, but it took some detours.

From day one at GAIA, I felt privileged that I could suddenly craft messages for mass audiences and speak, via social media, directly to thousands of people, to provide them with clear arguments to influence the minds in their own circles.

From there I broadened my scope to animals in the wild and nature in general. That’s when I joined WWF, and there too, I feel super grateful to work on mass media messages, to provide journalists, citizens and politicians with science-based information about the current state of our planet, with a focus on solutions, to shape and shift the thinking in our society.

Something I specifically enjoy in my work at WWF, is going to the field with my camera to take pictures – and that’s a passion I developed after my time at the VUB – , to show with images how we try to build a world in which human activity no longer leads to degradation of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, and the extinction of species.

But enough about me. Back to you now, and the rest of your life. The message I’d like to underline here tonight is this: you graduated, you’re ready for a professional career, but remember: not only the labour market needs you. To a certain extent the labour market doesn’t really need you, as long as there is someone else doing the job. What counts for the labour market is that the work gets done, and there is very important work to be done. So yes, the labour market needs you, but society needs you more.

In society you count as a unique citizen with its unique voice, in your case a citizen with a master’s degree of the VUB and, importantly, the ability to think critically. Please use it, play your role. Ask yourself who you want to be and in what kind of world you want to live. You got this. Make a difference. We need you.

Hans Moyson obtained a Master’s degree in Philosophy, Political Sciences, and Communication Sciences at the VUB, and participated in exchange programs in Germany (Freie Universität Berlin) and China (Shanghai Jiao Tong University).