Advice to graduates: I wish you bad luck, so that you may grow.

Editor's note: U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a much-discussed commencement speech last month at his son's ninth-grade graduation ceremony. The address at Cardigan Mountain School in New Hampshire, a private all-boys boarding school, gained notice especially for Roberts' unusual passage wishing the graduates adversity to build character and nourish compassion. Here are excerpts from the transcript:

… Before we go any further, graduates, you have an important task to perform. Because behind you are your parents and guardians. Two or three or four years ago, they drove into Cardigan, dropped you off, helped you get settled and then turned around and drove back out the gates. It was an extraordinary sacrifice for them.

They drove down the trail of tears back to an emptier and lonelier house. They did that because the decision about your education, they knew, was about you. It was not about them. That sacrifice and others they made have brought you to this point.

But this morning is not just about you. It is also about them. So I hope you will stand up and turn around and give them a great round of applause...

Now when somebody asks me how the remarks at Cardigan went, I will be able to say they were interrupted by applause. Congratulations, class of 2017. You've reached an important milestone. An important stage of your life is behind you. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you it is the easiest stage of your life, but it is in the books …

Now around the country today at colleges, high schools, middle schools, commencement speakers are standing before impatient graduates. And they are almost always saying the same things. They will say that today is a commencement exercise. 'It is a beginning, not an end. You should look forward.' And I think that is true enough.

However, I think if you're going to look forward to figure out where you're going, it's good to know where you've been, and to look back as well. And I think if you look back to your first afternoon here at Cardigan, perhaps you will recall that you were lonely. Perhaps you will recall that you were a little scared, a little anxious. And now look at you. You are surrounded by friends that you call brothers, and you are confident in facing the next step in your education.

Now, the commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I'll tell you why.

From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly — so that you will come to know the value of justice.

I hope that you will suffer betrayal — because that will teach you the importance of loyalty.

Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time — so that you don't take friends for granted.

I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time — so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life, and understand that your success is not completely deserved, and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.

I hope you'll be ignored — so you'll know the importance of listening to others.

And I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion.

Whether I wish these things or not, they're going to happen. Whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.

Now commencement speakers are also expected to give some advice. They give grand advice, and they give some useful tips. The most common grand advice they give is for you to "be yourself." It is an odd piece of advice to give people dressed identically, but you should — you should be yourself. But you should understand what that means.

Unless you are perfect, it does not mean don't make any changes. In a certain sense, you should not be yourself. You should try to become something better. People say "be yourself" because they want you to resist the impulse to conform to what others want you to be. But you can't be yourself if you don't learn who you are, and you can't learn who you are unless you think about it.

And one important clue to living a good life is to not to try to live "the" good life. The best way to lose the values that are central to who you are is frankly not to think about them at all.

So that's the deep advice. Now some tips as you get ready to go to your new school. Over the last couple of years, I have gotten to know many of you young men pretty well, and I know you are good guys. But you are also privileged young men. And if you weren't privileged when you came here, you are privileged now because you have been here. My advice is: Don't act like it.

When you get to your new school, walk up and introduce yourself to the person who is raking the leaves, shoveling the snow or emptying the trash. Learn their name and call them by their name during your time at the school.

Another piece of advice: When you pass by people you don't recognize on the walks, smile, look them in the eye and say hello.

The worst thing that will happen is that you will become known as the young man who smiles and says hello ...

Again, 10 minutes, once a week. I will ... dictate to you the first note you should write. It will say, "Dear [fill in the name of a teacher at Cardigan Mountain School]." Say: "I have started at this new school. We are reading [blank] in English. Football or soccer practice is hard, but I'm enjoying it. Thank you for teaching me."

Put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and send it. It will mean a great deal to people who — for reasons most of us cannot contemplate — have dedicated themselves to teaching middle-school boys.