I have been to more than my share of graduations . . . both as a graduate (four times) and as an officiant. There is a nefarious lie that is repeated at many commencements that many of us go on believing for the rest of our lives: commencement is not an ending but a beginning. This is either a vacuous statement, true of any day or event, or it is false.
Like many commencement proverbs, perhaps it is simply always true. Today my breakfast did not mark merely an “end” to morning food consumption, but the beginning of the rest of my day. The trip to my car did not mark the end of a short walk, but the beginning of a drive. My arrival at the office did not mark the end of my short drive, but the beginning of the rest of my work day. You get the point: if a statement is always true and you need to hear it, you have a serious problem.
Commencement is mostly about the end of a phase of your life. Ends are good because we can look back and learn from the past. The future is unknown to the point that as you leave graduation there is no guarantee that you will live to do anything. The “future” is hard to manage because it contains so many unknowns.
The most valuable thing to do at an end of a journey is to measure what you got out of it. If you are graduating college, did you learn enough to justify the debt? Who are the friends who are genuine? What are the lessons that should guide any future choices? Get the score. One valuable lesson might be that you did what society wanted you to do and you are not sure that the cost was worth the price. If so, learn from this fact.
We all have to decide what to do next. Counting the cost and making a plan are important features of life, but a vital part of planning is knowing what has worked and where we have been. Just as junior high did not disappear when we got to high school, or college vanish at the first job, so we carry every aspect of our past, for good and bad, with us as we go forward.
Consumer driven culture wants you to keep driving ahead, substituting spending for wise reflection. A man with enough money can cover for bad choices, at least some very bad choices. The rest of us, the poor and the middle class, would be wise to stop, think about, and decide what we have gained. How does this ending dictate what should be next?
Exposing this graduation lie snaps the American dream that we can reinvent ourselves . . . erase the past and begin again. We cannot. This is not just because of memory, but simply out of the choices we have made that have prepared and limited us. If you did not take much mathematics in high school, then you have limited the majors you can choose in college. Each commencement, right to the moment of death, limits the choices you have. At death, your life comes to a point: are you a soul fit for Paradise or damnable? Have you become fully human or are you still missing the mark? Too late to change the path you trod when standing face to face with God.
Years of watching college freshmen convince me that nothing is so ugly, broken, and misshaped as the student who comes trying to forget or remake their past. For good or bad, we must accept that we are the person we have become and learn to go forward with that truth. If we do not like the human we are, then we must change our choices. Reflecting on the past choices is an excellent way to change.
Commencement is an end: of childhood, of young adulthood, of life. You are promised nothing tomorrow. What are you carrying forward? What have you gained? Are you ready for eternity if it comes? Come it will, inevitably, and after that the judgment where there is no curve, cheating is impossible, and all of what we have done will be revealed.
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