Time Magazine’s cover story about the “Millennials - The Me Me Me Generation” couldn’t have come at a better time than for graduates of Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.

As Melinda Gates, a Duke graduate who just happens to be the wife of Bill Gates – and AOL founder Steve Case delivered stirring graduate addresses on a beautiful May Sunday, hopefully these grads paid attention before heading off to the celebrations and preparing for the job market.

“Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents,” Time proclaims.

Then comes an interesting additional subhead: “Why they’ll save us all.”

“Here’s the cold, hard data: The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale,” Time notes.

Yet in youth is hope for the future, as much as those seasoned citizens among us still believe we count, too.

The Gates, through their growing international foundation, and Case, through a foundation as well, are seeking to turn riches they have earned into opportunities for a better world.

They sought to convince the Triangle graduates to look beyond personal wealth and seek to help others while also taking care NOT to disparage capitalism which help them accumulate wealth beyond their wildest dreams as startup entrepreneurs.

“Light Up a Network”

Here’s how Mrs. Gates closed her speech:

“Some people assume that Bill and I are too rich to make a connection with someone who’s poor, even if our intentions are good. But adjectives like rich and poor don’t define who any of us truly are as human beings. And they don’t make any one individual less human than the next. The universe is like computer code in that way. Binary. There is life, and there is everything else. Zeroes and ones. I’m a one. You’re a one. My friend in the Himalayas is a one.

“Martin Luther King was not a computer programmer, so he called this concept a brotherhood. His hope was that college students could bring a brotherhood into being. Dr. King thought the world had shrunk as much as it was going to shrink — in his words, we’d “dwarfed distance and placed time in chains.” So the fact that people still didn’t treat each other like brothers and sisters was, to him, an ethical failure.

“I take a slightly different view. I believe we are finally creating the scientific and technological tools to turn the world into a neighborhood. And that gives you an amazing ethical opportunity no one has ever had before.

“You can light up a network of 7 billion people with long-lasting and highly motivating human connections.

“You have spent four years at one of the world’s finest universities acquiring the knowledge and skills to succeed at everything you do.

“So what will you do?

“I hope you will use to the tool of technology to do what you already had it in your heart to do … To connect … To make of this world a brotherhood … and a sisterhood …

“I can’t wait to see what it looks like when you do.”

Passion and Perseverance 

Rather than attack the young, Case like Gates embraced them.

He sees in the you the capability to light a new spark in the U.S., creating a “a startup nation.”

He wants aggressive action.

“The attackers are the people with bold, innovative ideas, who are trying to disrupt the status quo, and usher in a better way. We need to think out of the box, and be curious, and be willing to take risks.”

He also called for them to be filled with passion – and perseverance.

“I’d urge you to focus on the things that you are passionate about – that you get excited thinking about and talking about – as those are the opportunities you should organize your life around,” he said.

Through his own career, success was hardly guranteed. He had to have the courgae to stay the course. So, too, will the millennials “when our hopes were dimmed by external events – when the naysayers around us – including often our friends and families – were urging us to give it up, and pursue a safer career path.”

 Case warned against complacency – becoming the millennials Time castigated as lazy and staying with Mom and Dad.

“Here’s my key message to you, the Class of 2013: as a nation, we can’t rest on our laurels. Other countries now realize that entrepreneurship is the secret sauce that has powered our economy, and they are working hard to replicate it. We need to double down on entrepreneurship if we are going to maintain our lead.”

Good speeches. Wise words.

But not just for the millennials.

We seasoned citizens need to keep pushing as well. A better world will come if we share in the effort, too.