Hello Everyone!
It is not often that I am invited to attend a High School graduation. With the increase in the number of graduates at nearly all of the schools and everyone wanting more tickets for extended family, I don’t even ask anymore.
This year has been different, because the end of May, I was invited to Johnny Estudillo’s graduation from California State University at Fullerton. I think I mentioned this about a month ago, so please pardon my repetition, but this is a significant milestone and an important event in his life, as it is for any graduate.
This year will also be different, because I attended the Ayala High School graduation in Chino Hills. Michael Moon had an extra ticket because the one it was for could not go. I was delighted to be asked.
Graduation is an emotionally charged right of passage, blending tradition and adoring families with beauty, pageantry and an oft-time futile attempt at solemnity. It is the graduates themselves that gives flesh to the ceremony. Without them, the event would be meaningless, the ritual, barren. Parents and family, who were there throughout, swell with satisfaction (and maybe breathe a sigh of relief) because they know all the work it took to get to this point. Friends, who have known the graduates for nearly their entire lives, are also stirred with joy, and usually find the least said, the better.
As best as I can remember, the last High School graduation I went to, I stood outside the fence hoping for a peek when the names of the ones I knew were announced. That was 1994. When you fast forward to the present day, except for all the additional technology (confetti cannons included), the ceremony was “routine and uneventful,” as Woody Blalock would say.
I’m not sure, but I think that all the speeches must have been the “hand-me-down” variety, because it was the same rhetoric I heard in 1994. “Let’s go from this place and change the world!” “Be the best you can be!” “We are capable of endless possibilities!”
On the one hand, I was glad to see that “hope (still) springs eternal.” After all, this is the class that began their high school studies in 2001. “Nine-eleven” doesn’t seem to have adversely affected their enthusiastic spirit and energetic determination.
On the other hand, Michael’s sophomoric collegiate brother sarcastically mumbled a running commentary on the overly optimistic idealism presented in the oratorios. Kevin has become quite the card (or very insightful). “All goes well for about two weeks, then reality hits you and you realize??Ǩ?you’re not going to change the world.” “Custodians of the world? Yeah, in college that’s where we work??Ǩ?as custodians. Tell them the whole truth??Ǩ???If you are lucky, you will get a broom and push a little dirt one direction or another.’”
I can’t say I remember the speeches given at my high school graduation. I definitely didn’t listen as intently as I did this June 16th. But, hearing the 2005 version seems oddly similar to the 1976 edition. We were challenged then to dream big, conquer the world’s evils, take charge, because “I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul,” remembering that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Neither used those particular words, but the essence was the same (and should we expect anything different from the largest propagators of the humanist religion?).
In retrospect, “my” time wasn’t all that different from today. Instead of Terrorism, it was the Communists in Vietnam. However, maybe there was a Terroristic pre-cursor. Do you remember how those (little-known) Arab nations conspired together, creating an oil “embargo” that pushed gasoline up to near a dollar a gallon? They called it an “embargo”? We had no clue where those nations were. We might have been more outraged and might have done something about it, had we not needed to wait in long lines at the pumps hoping to get our tank filled??Ǩ?ahh, American consumerism at its best!
Isn’t there some old saying about “the more things change, the more they stay the same”? Graduation 2005 will soon be in the annals of history. Evil will continue to terrorize the world. Graduate idealism will mellow, sooner or later, to become those nostalgic “good old days.” Given an opportunity, if we listen intently, maybe a less cynical, much older brother’s sage counsel just might be heard above the generic rhetoric. “The grass will wither, the flowers will fade, but the word of our God shall stand forever.”