Dear Honored Graduates
It's graduation season.
A time of firsts, lasts, nerves, excitement, and fear. Parents are preparing to send their children off and have empty nests, while graduates are preparing for freedom, independence, and I’m sure, they are wild with the same naivety about the world that lay ahead of them as I had when I moved my tassel from right to left. I was stuck in traffic the other day and I watched a group of seniors leave a local high school campus for the last time. They were giddy and I could almost feel their butterflies in my own stomach. Car windows were decorated with inside jokes, nicknames, school mascots, and jersey numbers. Streamers and balloons shook in the wind as TikTok’s were made, and cheers were hollered as they drove away for the last time before graduation. I recalled that feeling of being a graduate, and I almost fainted at the thought.
2007
I tend to forget about documenting big moments when I’m afraid. A fight or flight response in which, living in a selfie-taking, instant gratification world has hardly dulled; so, I only have two pictures of me the day I graduated high school and none of me were taken the day I graduated college, considering I didn’t attend my own graduation ceremony I suppose that is to be expected. Not documenting my own life while I’m afraid is something I will continue to work on, since I’m always a little afraid and documentation is important, or so I’m told.
I can’t remember much of any commencement speech, but if I were graduating now, with the class of 2023, or 2007, or 1967; because it all feels the same when you’re in it—I think this is the advice I would want to receive:
Dear Honored Graduates,
The time has come for you to move on to your next endeavor. Some of you will go to college, or enter the work force, or float aimlessly for a time as you find your footing. You and your peers have worked tirelessly to achieve your accolades, scholarships, and made memories that will last for another decade with pristine accuracy, but after that they will start to get fuzzy. I’d like to leave you with hope and honesty that maybe you don’t realize you’ll need. To quote a graduate best known for skipping school, ‘life moves pretty fast’, and it goes by even faster while you’re scrolling a phone whose number will be resold to a stranger after you die.
So here it is, kids.
The commencement address that I needed and hope you do too.
Be ready for rejection. It is best served quick and to your face. It’s nothing personal, though sometimes it is actually personal, and we just tell ourselves it’s not so we can simply survive the blow. This rejection will find you in the form of a job, relationship, friendship, dinner invite, getting fired, being forgotten—or even sometimes from yourself. Being rejected by your own self is one of the quickest ways to grow that extra layer of skin that makes it thick enough to survive your twenties. Rejection, while it is tough, is essential, and it will sting the worst when those you love extend it to you. However, do not let rejection have the last word. You take hold of it, mold it, examine it up close, and find the cracks in its form. You’ll learn to identify the worst parts of rejection and apply the balm needed for repair to your heart or ego and promptly move on.
Gain awareness. Be aware of your surroundings, but also be aware of yourself and your own motives, so you can see how to assess others in theirs. Have the awareness that you are so very small, and maybe sometimes that will make you feel insignificant, but the power of that smallness will make you want to leave the world better than you found it. The slightest flap of a butterfly wing can make the biggest waves, or something like that? Channel that energy into leaving your mark on the world, always being aware that others have it worse than you, that others have it way better than you—that you will on average, look better than at least 10 strangers in a bikini at the beach, but at least 9 others will look better than you. Remember that to be the funniest in the room, you will have had to have been the saddest at one point. Always be aware that to be the smartest in the room, you would’ve needed to have left another. Losing your stream of awareness has the tendency to romanticize your current situation, but that is not sustainable.
Do not buy into the hype of self. You will come to the end of yourself before you come to the end of the earth. Self-love, self-acceptance, self-care, self-inflation, treating yourself, self, self self, self. Only seeking yourself is sure to have you arrive at the fastest death. No fruit bears from a selfish tree. It’s exhausting. Look to others, serve others, love others, help others, support others, call others, cook for others, encourage others.
If you need to put on your own life jacket, then do so, but do not take a self-care journey because of it and forget to put on your neighbor’s jacket after you’ve put on your own. We’ve gotten this all wrong. Everything from the flow of traffic to the global economy could flow better if we took the selfish lens off. Only thinking of yourself will lead you to the loneliest headache and a deep depression. It is difficult to find yourself in a mirror, you find yourself by helping those who may not be able to help you in return.
Find a sense of humor and cling to it. Learn how to laugh at the most mundane of things, that way, not a day will go by where the corners of your mouth don’t turn up.
Do not be afraid to ask questions. Hard questions, awkward questions, and clarifying basic instructions. Ask it all, even if others laugh, especially if others Google the answer. Trust me, just ask.
The most beautiful discoveries lay just on the other side of failure. Get to know that terrain well. Never be afraid of failure, it only means you’re one step closer to figuring out what works. Be prepared for the failure that stings that most—like a marriage ending, chemo failing, or not being able to start your family with ease. We put failure into a box that it will only apply as failure if a dollar amount was lost, but that isn’t always true. The lowest point of failure is rock bottom’s basement, but as it turns out, that foundation is solid to rebuild your back up plan on.
Make one friend who is nothing like you and about thirty years older than you are. They will tell you everything your parents did, it will just sound cooler coming from someone who didn’t raise you. Listen to them.
Be okay with your plans changing, because they will. You may not marry the person you thought you would or work where you wanted to, but there is a dust that settles with contentment. Let it settle and just as it does, the season will change once more.
Don’t be afraid of starting over and don’t look down on those who need a fresh start.
The road before you has been paved and repaved again with others failure, achievements, grit, and wisdom. Do not think you’re above those who’ve gone before you and got it wrong, they weren’t always the sum total of what you see now. When a helping hand is offered, take it. When grace and forgiveness is offered, pass it along when you can.
May you always remember where you came from, who you came from, and how to get home.
To the graduating class of today, good luck.
