My unsolicited commencement adddress

To the Classes of 2020:

Well, yes. This sucks.

In other years, you’d have all the pomp and circumstance, family celebrations, caps, gowns – the whole kit and caboodle. This year, you have educators and families straining to create some form of recognition and festivity that may assuage at least part of the disappointment.

Ya know, there will be other disappointments in life where no one works to make the best of it. There will be lost jobs, broken relationships, family deaths, scary medical news – you get the picture.

The graduate chosen by his peers to speak at the (cancelled) commencement where I work, had a wonderful perspective. We created a website where faculty, staff, alumni recorded short videos, people could write congratulatory messages, the graduates were profiled and we featured a video of (I didn’t ask his permission, so I won’t use his name) the student speaking to his classmates.

He didn’t bemoan the lack of ceremony; he didn’t – in short – play the victim card for himself or his class. Instead, he spent time thanking everyone he could. His classmates, his mentors, the people scrambling to create the website, his family.  Near the end of his speech, he quoted author Melody Beattie:

Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

I know this is hard – but be mindful of the cars honking horns, the signs in the yards, the electronic good wishes, the painted campus rocks, and the Zoom gatherings. Be thankful, take good care of yourselves and your families, and stay well.

Wash your hands.