Speech by George Yeo, Minister for Foreign Affairs, at the Raffles Institution on 16 August 2007 at 9.30 am

Making A Difference

1. Life is a journey. In the first part of the journey, you have parents and teachers helping you along. Later, you will be on your own. One day, it will be for you to help others. Along the way, you will discover yourselves, especially your strengths and weaknesses.

2. The journey is also a test of your character. At various points, you will be challenged, and how you respond to these challenges is often a moral choice between right and wrong. Confronted with a difficult situation, our response can either be 'fight or flight'. Fighting means standing up for what is right, and being on the bright side. Flight means running away or giving in, compromising principles, what in Star Wars is described as drifting to the 'dark side'.

3. All of you have grown older with Harry Potter. With each episode, as Harry grows up, the story becomes darker. The emotions become more complicated. There is a certain sadness. Once passed seventeen, Harry will lose the protection of his parents and will be on his own. He must then make very hard choices. Of course, he will have friends and relatives to help him. Not all will help him. Some may even betray him, those who have given in to temptation and moved to the dark side.

4. As a teenager, there are times when you can't wait to grow up. But there are other times when you rather stay a kid forever, what some people call the 'Peter Pan complex. An important difference between being a kid and being an adult is in the amplitude - the height and depth - of our emotional cycles. Kids can cry one moment and laugh the next. Adults carry their emotions much longer, sometimes for life. So, while it is true that the later episodes of Harry Porter are darker and sadder, they are also brighter and happier. Understanding your own emotional up's and down's is part of growing up.

5. The key point is making moral choices. Whether we are talking about Harry Porter or Darth Vader or Rama in the Ramayana or Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey or the Tang Dynasty monk in the Journey to the West, the hero is the one who, at the most critical moments, makes the right moral choice. Choosing the bright side. Doing good.

6. Most of us will become neither heroes nor villains. But, on a smaller scale, we can either be good or bad. Everyday, at home, in school and elsewhere, among families and friends, even with strangers, we can either make the world around us a little better or a little worse. Are we helpful or are we a pain to others? Do we cheer up those around us or do we depress them? These are the daily choices we make, and the accumulation of these choices define us. They make us what we are. If, in little things, we do what is right, it is more likely that we will also do what is right when we confront big things.

7. Few people relish big challenges. Most people avoid high-risk situations if they can, which is rational. But sometimes we have no choice. Harry did not wish for Voldemort. When times are easy, there are no heroes. It is only when times are out of joint, during wars and revolutions, when natural disasters strike, that heroes emerge. We do not know what life holds for us in our journey to the future. But, sooner or later, we will have to face challenges we rather not. Then we have no alternative but to respond. There may not be enough time then to weigh the pro's and con's carefully. It may have to be my instinct that we decide on what to do. During your teenage years, you will gradually understand your own nature. That nature is partly in the genes you inherited from your parents. But it is also in your free will which you exercise every day. Darth Vader was born a jedi but one who fell from grace although he did come around at the end to save his son.

8 As Rafflesians, you are like jedis, but please don't let this get into your head. Because you have certain gifts, you are being specially nurtured so that one day you can do good for your people. You are not to live your life only for yourself. When confronted with tough choices in the future, we hope you will choose the bright side and help make the world a better place, not a worse place. Prepare yourselves for that future. Listen to your teachers, learn from them, not out of blind obedience but in a spirit of humility and inquiry. Everyday, do a little good. It can be a simple smile, a helping hand, a small gesture. Let this become a part of your own DNA. Wherever you are, make a difference and make your school motto, auspicium melioris aevi, a beacon lighting up the path ahead. From those to whom much is given, much is expected.

9. In kindergarten and primary school, the fairy tales end with the main characters living 'happily ever after'. In real life, there is no such thing. For as long as we live, life is series of challenges and responses. It is the journey itself which is the drama for each and every one. May you live your lives well and may the Force be with you.

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MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
SINGAPORE
16 AUGUST 2007