The Last Word

By Will Cone | Posted: Monday March 9, 2026

Morning boys, I’m Will and I’m a Service Prefect for 2026. I’d like to use my Last Word today to talk to you about sonder.

Sonder is the realisation that everyone's lives are as intricately complicated as your own. Look around you boys, and try to grasp the fact that every single person in this auditorium today has their own unique experiences, memories, friends, and futures. It can be a daunting thought, and it is not one I expect everyone to grasp, but when greeted with the opportunity to give a Last Word, I settled pretty quickly on this topic.

Some of you may be wondering why you should care, and to that I don’t know. Whether or not you want to reflect on your own humanity is entirely up to you, but I ask that you give it a good, honest shot one of these days so I haven’t wasted five minutes of your time.

I think the greatest thing this school has taught me is that we are all unique and interesting people. There is not a single person in this auditorium who is a carbon copy of another, and there is not a single person in this auditorium who will ever be able to replace your impact and place in the world.

We are all human. We have our own fears, inside jokes, memories, and dreams. In today’s society, many people see this as a reason to divide or to be afraid of one another, retreating to their devices and doom scrolling until their fingers are numb.

However, these cycles place us in a trap, eternally sentencing us to a lifetime of not really living, just being alive. To this, many of you might just say that it doesn’t matter to you, or that there will be another day or opportunity to meet new people. But is that really any way to spend your time?

We’ve been born into a world where everything is placed directly into our hands. All the information we could possibly need is right there if we reach out and grab it. Yet we scroll past it, ignoring that we have the easiest access to people in the history of mankind, and we scroll that fact away.

The single greatest thing we can do with our time is to be human. Go over to your friend’s house and just have a chat. Say hi to your parents and learn about their childhoods, or go even further back in time and learn about your grandparents’ childhoods.

I’ve realised these opportunities life gives us will not be here forever, and I’ve begun making the conscious decision to experience them for myself. There will always be another video to watch, but soon we’ll run out of time to have conversations with the people closest to us. We’ll get so caught up in growing up and getting through school that soon you’ll be in Year 13, like many of us here, and you’ll have forgotten that everyone else has a life as complicated and interesting as yours.

Humans are social creatures. It is in our nature to explore the world, to meet new people, bond with them over shared interests, and ultimately to realise that everyone around you is unique and capable of beautiful things. You just need to get to know them a little more.

There are eight billion people in the world boys. Around 800 people go to this school each day, and I don’t know the majority of the names in this room, and I wager you don’t either, let alone their stories and how they came to be at Otago Boys’. I’m not asking you to learn everyone’s names or everyone’s stories. I’m just asking you to reflect on the idea of sonder. Even if that word means nothing to you, I implore you to be kind to everyone you meet.

Treat everyone with respect and dignity, as this is the way we can feel most in touch with our own humanity and with each other.

This school has given us all a binding thread in the massive spiderweb that is human existence. Use that as a branching point to forge new connections with those whom you haven’t met before.

For many of you, there will come a time when you’ll realise that the greatest opportunity this school gives us isn’t academic, athletic, or cultural, it is human. It is the opportunity to grow as people and to learn about other people. Cherish this opportunity, because once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

In a world where we become increasingly connected to technology and simultaneously disconnected from each other, it is important to realise that at the end of the day we are all human, and that is our greatest strength.

Even if my speech has gone over your heads today, I hope one day you reflect on what I’ve said. Whether that be watching cars drive past on your way to school, watching apartment lights turn on and off at the end of the day, or something as simple as talking to someone new.

In true OB’s fashion, I’ll end with a quote:

“I'll never know all there is to know about you, just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism, and a great deal of candour.” Tom Hanks