To the Not Graduating Class of 2016
Not students, not teachers, not family members, this is it! Our not graduation. We didn’t do it!
For the past handful of years, we haven’t worked remarkably hard, and we won’t be rewarded for it with pomp and circumstance. We won’t receive diplomas, our families won’t slip us cards with gift cards and checks, and we won’t hear an inspirational speech by a tech entrepreneur or celebrity author.
The past few years have truly been some mediocre years of our lives. We’ve had experiences. We’ve made mistakes. We’ve learned things — like don’t loan Jimmy money. He is not a trustworthy individual! Some of us got married, some of us had babies, some of us got new jobs, some of us got fired, some of us knew people who died, some of us died, and all of us got older. Except Susan! Susan, you are an ageless gem in a world of pain and suffering. Some of us got new jobs with big promotions, which inject enough excitement into us, like CPR reviving a dying person but leave them with a broken rib and possibly brain dead.
Tomorrow, we enter the real world, the same real world we were in yesterday and the day before. Days become months become seasons become years, falling through our fingers like pieces of dry sand. We try to catch them and fashion into something by throwing water on them, but then we realize the sand isn’t only in our hands, it’s on our forearms and our shoulders, and it’s consuming our feet. It’s quicksand and the faster we run, the faster we sink.
To those who are graduating, I don’t want to discount that this can be a scary time. College is like learning how to scuba dive for 4 years, and then getting thrown out of a plane. But while graduating is scary since you don’t know what will happen next, not graduating is scary for the inverse: you know in terrifying detail what will happen next: the same exact shit.
During life’s big transitions, the heavens seem to open and we can redefine who we are. What’s scary about not graduating is the fear that we aren’t being given a chance to change the world or who we are. The world is being given and re-given to the next crop of younger, smarter, more enlightened, and potential-filled individuals — you’re yesterday’s news, making the 250 million over 25 Forbes list.
So what do we do? How do we celebrate milestones when there are no stones around us, and we’re in a dessert that we’re pretty sure we’ve been in before? Just because our tomorrow looks like our today looks like our yesterday, doesn’t mean that we can’t change. We can choose a date, define a milestone, track our own progress. There won’t be a historical celebration with Latin and tassels and tears when you reach it, but you will know you did. It’s a tiny private graduation that you have to design and hold for yourself.
So if you didn’t get married, have a baby, start a new job, or have a briss this year, it doesn’t mean this year was worth less than someone else’s.
To the not graduating class of 2016, I salute you. We press on without bells and toasts, we sweat and work to try to fit structure in the sand that is mid- and later-life. And Jimmy, you still owe me money!
