To the graduating class...
Well, you’re here – graduation. Today you move forward to a new stage, a new level of freedom, responsibility and identity. It is important to mark occasions like this with ceremony – with pomp and circumstance to underscore that this truly is major event in life. The true meaning of what’s happening here will not be clear to you for some time. Some of you days, some months, most will need years until you understand what’s happened here today. But it matters.
So what is happening here today? You’re going to be hearing a lot of words to the effect of this: “We have worked hard to be here and now our hard work pays off. We are the future. Among us lies the cure for AIDS, the end to famine and a renewable energy source. Someday we will be running the country, and its up to us to make the world a better place.”
Inspiring words.
Also, alas, complete bullshit.
Let’s dissemble this eye-rolling nonsense that inevitably spews at every graduation from Anchorage to Pensacola, from College to Middle school ceremonies and find the truth in it. Because there is profound truth in graduation, and profundity is scary. Life is big and scary and graduation marks a sea change, so we hide from it. We hide behind alcohol and platitudes under the guise of celebration and wise counsel. Instead, today of all days, let’s look the moment in the eyes.
“We have worked hard to be here” – No, you haven’t. Some of you have, but, oh, 70, 80 percent of you have not. You have done the minimum asked of you. You have showed up and been herded through an over-crowded system that relies on large numbers of warm bodies for its funding. You have missed the point, you have downloaded papers off the Internet, parroted your friends’ and parents’ opinions and stared into space until you were told it was time to leave. You have whined and lied to get out of work and, in some cases, worn revealing clothing to try and get extensions on due dates and found nothing demeaning in it. This is fine, I only mention it because in all the hoopla you may start to actually believe that you have, in fact, worked hard. That you have earned this diploma. You have not. And if you start to regard this as your template for what qualifies as “hard work” you are going to have a life of sloth and banality, all the while whining and growing resentful and bitter that no one has rewarded you with the fame and fortune to which you believe you are entitled.
Another chunk of you? You did work hard. It’s true. For grades. I regret to inform you that in about one hour no one is ever again going to give a fuck about the grades to which you devoted yourself these last few years. Sorry. Try to see the humor in it, if you can. They may have helped you get into whatever you’re doing next, but they have no intrinsic value. No one at college will care what your grades were in high-school, and no one in life cares what your grades were in college. You might get a “wow”, but that’s about it. Grades are meaningless, and when you apply meaning to the meaningless this only results in bad things – degrees of delusion ranging from superstition to full on hallucination. But it is not too late. There is a good Buddhist like lesson you can learn right now – like the monks who create large, beautiful paintings out of sand, then wipe them away. Let go of grades. You worked hard, not for knowledge, but for letters. Not even real letters, but concepts of letters. They don’t exist. Let them vanish.
The last five percent. Today is for you. You discovered the joy in pursuing knowledge. You worked hard at things you had interest in and discovered that it ceased to be hard work. You realized that school is not an obligation but a gift. For all its flaws, there is much to be found in our schools, but you must look for it. You have found it. You have developed your mind and your soul. Congratulations.
“We are the future” - Okay, what the fuck does this idiotic phrase even mean? This is one of the worst, most vapid phrases ever concocted. Every time I have to sit through a graduation ceremony it’s uttered in the first five or six minutes and then repeated, ad nauseum until you are in your car, trying to get out of the parking lot, this phrase echoing through your cranium, and with each uttering and echo I feel part of my brain die, shrieking. You’re not the future.
Well, you are, as much as everyone else is. You are Right Now, as am I. In the future you will also be Right Now, it’s just that that right now hasn’t happened yet. Someday you will die, at which point you will cease to be Right Now. I think this phrase is supposed to connect in to the “running the country idea” and that you will all cure AIDS and be rock stars and president and so forth. That you will succeed where the rest have failed at ending war and cleaning the environment. Good, great, I’ll look forward to that. But the thing is, you’re not destined for greatness. What lies ahead of you is opportunity and responsibility. What is true is this: you are going to be adults. You are going to get more responsibilities, which you can either embrace or evade. The question is: what are you going to do with this? Most everyone spends a good portion of their lives hiding from this inevitability. We hide from adulthood and responsibility because we are not ready yet. You have not, then, graduated. Not really. That will be your own personal ceremony. Strive for greatness – please, please do. But also know that if you really want to be the future, be the future you want to see as an individual. Be kind, take care of those you love. Be honest and when you make a mistake, admit it. Have the courage and wisdom to discover the difference between pleasure and happiness. Be the person you know you can be. In your small corner of the world, be a great person. Everyone in this room can do this. Everyone. Everyone here can, every day, in every Right Now until the moment you die, continue to learn and be the kind of person we so badly need in this world. You are probably never going to be famous. You are probably never going to be rich. There are great joys, and unimaginable pains that lie ahead for you. You will regret things, you will be proud of things. There are dreams you have that will not come true – you must choose which to pursue. Saving the world is great. But it begins with great individuals. Discover what hard work is – what it is to earn something for its own sake. This is the path to happiness. It isn’t glamorous, but it’s truth. Most of you have pursued pleasure, now it is time to seek happiness.
So what is happening here today? You’re going to be hearing a lot of words to the effect of this: “We have worked hard to be here and now our hard work pays off. We are the future. Among us lies the cure for AIDS, the end to famine and a renewable energy source. Someday we will be running the country, and its up to us to make the world a better place.”
Inspiring words.
Also, alas, complete bullshit.
Let’s dissemble this eye-rolling nonsense that inevitably spews at every graduation from Anchorage to Pensacola, from College to Middle school ceremonies and find the truth in it. Because there is profound truth in graduation, and profundity is scary. Life is big and scary and graduation marks a sea change, so we hide from it. We hide behind alcohol and platitudes under the guise of celebration and wise counsel. Instead, today of all days, let’s look the moment in the eyes.
“We have worked hard to be here” – No, you haven’t. Some of you have, but, oh, 70, 80 percent of you have not. You have done the minimum asked of you. You have showed up and been herded through an over-crowded system that relies on large numbers of warm bodies for its funding. You have missed the point, you have downloaded papers off the Internet, parroted your friends’ and parents’ opinions and stared into space until you were told it was time to leave. You have whined and lied to get out of work and, in some cases, worn revealing clothing to try and get extensions on due dates and found nothing demeaning in it. This is fine, I only mention it because in all the hoopla you may start to actually believe that you have, in fact, worked hard. That you have earned this diploma. You have not. And if you start to regard this as your template for what qualifies as “hard work” you are going to have a life of sloth and banality, all the while whining and growing resentful and bitter that no one has rewarded you with the fame and fortune to which you believe you are entitled.
Another chunk of you? You did work hard. It’s true. For grades. I regret to inform you that in about one hour no one is ever again going to give a fuck about the grades to which you devoted yourself these last few years. Sorry. Try to see the humor in it, if you can. They may have helped you get into whatever you’re doing next, but they have no intrinsic value. No one at college will care what your grades were in high-school, and no one in life cares what your grades were in college. You might get a “wow”, but that’s about it. Grades are meaningless, and when you apply meaning to the meaningless this only results in bad things – degrees of delusion ranging from superstition to full on hallucination. But it is not too late. There is a good Buddhist like lesson you can learn right now – like the monks who create large, beautiful paintings out of sand, then wipe them away. Let go of grades. You worked hard, not for knowledge, but for letters. Not even real letters, but concepts of letters. They don’t exist. Let them vanish.
The last five percent. Today is for you. You discovered the joy in pursuing knowledge. You worked hard at things you had interest in and discovered that it ceased to be hard work. You realized that school is not an obligation but a gift. For all its flaws, there is much to be found in our schools, but you must look for it. You have found it. You have developed your mind and your soul. Congratulations.
“We are the future” - Okay, what the fuck does this idiotic phrase even mean? This is one of the worst, most vapid phrases ever concocted. Every time I have to sit through a graduation ceremony it’s uttered in the first five or six minutes and then repeated, ad nauseum until you are in your car, trying to get out of the parking lot, this phrase echoing through your cranium, and with each uttering and echo I feel part of my brain die, shrieking. You’re not the future.
Well, you are, as much as everyone else is. You are Right Now, as am I. In the future you will also be Right Now, it’s just that that right now hasn’t happened yet. Someday you will die, at which point you will cease to be Right Now. I think this phrase is supposed to connect in to the “running the country idea” and that you will all cure AIDS and be rock stars and president and so forth. That you will succeed where the rest have failed at ending war and cleaning the environment. Good, great, I’ll look forward to that. But the thing is, you’re not destined for greatness. What lies ahead of you is opportunity and responsibility. What is true is this: you are going to be adults. You are going to get more responsibilities, which you can either embrace or evade. The question is: what are you going to do with this? Most everyone spends a good portion of their lives hiding from this inevitability. We hide from adulthood and responsibility because we are not ready yet. You have not, then, graduated. Not really. That will be your own personal ceremony. Strive for greatness – please, please do. But also know that if you really want to be the future, be the future you want to see as an individual. Be kind, take care of those you love. Be honest and when you make a mistake, admit it. Have the courage and wisdom to discover the difference between pleasure and happiness. Be the person you know you can be. In your small corner of the world, be a great person. Everyone in this room can do this. Everyone. Everyone here can, every day, in every Right Now until the moment you die, continue to learn and be the kind of person we so badly need in this world. You are probably never going to be famous. You are probably never going to be rich. There are great joys, and unimaginable pains that lie ahead for you. You will regret things, you will be proud of things. There are dreams you have that will not come true – you must choose which to pursue. Saving the world is great. But it begins with great individuals. Discover what hard work is – what it is to earn something for its own sake. This is the path to happiness. It isn’t glamorous, but it’s truth. Most of you have pursued pleasure, now it is time to seek happiness.
posted by MacLymont at 9:05 AM
5 Comments:
I think you can have happiness from pleasure. But, I guess I kind of have a biased opinion... afterall, many consider me a Hedonist.
It's sad for me to see people who you described, but alas, 'tis life, and high school. It seems weird to me, that you chose this profession, at least for high school.
That was deep. But I think that you speak the truth. Especially how only a few of us work hard and actually learn things... and enjoy learning. Yet at graduation they make it seem like a big deal that you graduated even though all you really have to do is get a D in all your classes and turn in a few additonal papers. School has always been pretty easy for me and I get almost all A's...how easy was it for those who got all D's? And it's scary to think that those kids are the so called "future"...No wonder people's dreams never come true; we build them up until they are these fabulous achievments and then they don't happen just because they are too perfect...and I suppose that that all starts at graduation...sad.
Hm...On the first hand, this entry reads as if from a teacher who should probably not be teaching. Though true, it is filled with an aggressive disdain that seems to despise our culture, and thus, the humanity that makes it up.
On the other hand, you seem to give away your own secret: that you can't help but cling to the Romantic idealism of our own possibility. When you begin the paragraph about what lessons graduates need to know, your sentiments bear a striking resemblance to the ones that permeate the "pomp and circumstance" itself.
Perhaps you should just accept that you are drawn - almost despite yourself - to the playhouse of humanity and culture that is the American high school. You write as someone not only displeased that you did not know these things at eighteen, and as someone now in a state of envy for those that still believe such "truths" (we worked hard, we will be special, we will not suffer).
Yes, they are now going to have to face the depth with which the system has used them, and lied to them. What truths do you need to accept before you can find peace?
Are you going to keep posting into the summer?
interesting responses.
your entire post seems to say--know this, please, know this, and then perhaps the lessons you will inevitably learn will come easier than they did for me. yes. but, i believe that you are the ultimate optimist.
it's like that quote: "most people still hope deep down that they have it in them to be a good writer."
you see the fatal flaws, the fall from grace, and yet still seem to hope... perhaps for one person, those lies, expectations, promises, can be realized.
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