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Date: 5/22/2015
WESTFIELD – Westfield State University’s graduating class of 2015 received their diplomas at the MassMutual Center in Springfield on May 16. Before they walked across the stage, shook some hands and entered the proverbial real world, the graduates had one final lecture in what it means to follow a passion.
Brandon Stanton, creator of Humans of New York, spoke at the commencement ceremony and was one of three people to receive of an honorary degree.
“Brandon Stanton’s work serves as a reminder to our students to find their inspirations, give back to their communities and follow their passions,” interim University President Elizabeth Preston said.
Stanton created Humans of New York in 2010 after losing his job as a bond trader in Chicago. Originally, Stanton’s blog was going to be 10,000 portraits of people in New York City, including a map to pinpoint their locations.
Once he began, things changed. The blog shifted from portraits and coordinates to what it is today.
Stanton approaches strangers on the street, takes their photograph and talks to them about their lives, which often results in deeply personal quotes.
“I wasn’t even sure if people would let me take their photograph, never mind ask them questions about their lives, so I was very nervous at first,” he said. “I’m so comfortable doing it now that it’s almost hard for me to remember how scared I was when I first started.”
Today Humans of New York has more than 13 million fans on Facebook, 282,000 followers on Twitter and has become a cultural phenomenon and a New York Times best-selling book. Though Stanton remembers a time when he was ecstatic about gaining 10 fans a day on social media, he said there was no way to know how big of a hit his idea would be.
Part of his success and that of Humans of New York, he said, came from jumping into the idea before it was perfect and letting it evolve naturally like it has. Stanton, who received an honorary degree in human letters, said this is something he wanted to stress in his speech.
“I think there’s such a comfort in siting back and planning things, and there are so many people that are planning their big idea. It’s so comfortable to plan because you can’t fail while you’re planning, and their thought is that as soon as I get my planning correct and perfect then I will take that leap and pursue my dreams,” Stanton told Reminder Publications. “The thing is that never comes because you’re never ready. The only way to do anything big is to start before you’re ready, to not wait for perfect, to begin working tomorrow and you will become the person you need to be along the way. You can’t wait until you are who you need to be before you go.”
Stanton’s advice to follow a passion before perfect presents itself is two-fold. He said there is one thing every person has full control over and that is how hard you work.
“You can’t control if you’re going to write the next great American novel,” Stanton said. “You can control getting up and writing one page every single day.”
Stanton said his decision to move to New York to pursue this idea was the most transformative choice of his life. Though his first room in New York City was just a mattress on the floor and he joked he was “eating cat food,” Stanton said he was allowed the freedom to do what he wanted. Trading a job that focused solely on money for a chance to photograph strangers created a time of unsteadiness, but that is exactly how he got to where he is today.
“If you are going to follow your passion, you are going to have to settle for a period of instability. That’s the tradeoff,” Stanton said. “That’s why it’s so hard to follow your dream or get a job where you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing because you have to normally create those jobs for yourself.
“There’s risk involved, which means working very hard and working a very long time without the guarantee of a reward. The way I would say it is if you’re going to follow your passion, it’s not about balance. It’s about going after it 100 percent because you have to treat your passion like it is your job if you’re going to succeed in doing it,” he concluded.
For more information about Humans of New York or to see Stanton’s work, visit www.humansofnewyork.com.