Life on the Outside

When I die and go to hell, I won’t be trapped in a burning lake of fire or torn apart by Cerberus. No, I’ll be stuck in a room full of screaming, sweaty, smelly children — day in and day out for all eternity. I really don’t like kids, or at least most of them. So when I was tasked with covering the local high school graduation ceremonies, I could not think of anything I would rather do less on a beautiful, early summer Saturday morning.

After putting this week’s edition of the paper to bed, we (the editorial staff and the publisher) were going through the coming week’s events and discussing who would be covering what. We quickly realized we had someone to shoot the photos at the local high school’s graduation but no one to write the story. I finally volunteered once it became it apparent no one else was available.

I arrived a half hour early to give myself plenty of time to park, find a good seat and maybe take a few pictures if I saw anything that might look interesting. Thankfully, the graduation ceremonies started relatively on time.

The valedictorian took the stage to give his speech, and imagine how surprised I wasn’t when he started with Dr. Suess’s “Oh, the Places You Will Go.” But rather than just reading Suess’s version, he only used the first one or two stanzas and then wrote he his own version tailored to the events, memories and specifics of his fellow classmates.  While I don’t know any of these kids, don’t know the teachers and I’m not familiar with anything that has occured at the school (outside of sports reports and the police blotter), it was still easy enough to understand the humor, struggles, memories and emotion behind the sentiments. Alright, I confess. I was duly impressed by his creativity and humor.

But I was most surprised when one of the senior class’s favorite teachers took the stage to give the commencement address. He talked about the future for these children now entering adulthood, the obstacles they have already faced and the many more to come, the joys and sorrows to come and the unending possibilities laid out before them. This teacher would make a great motivational speaker – impassioned and empowering without being overbearing or preachy.

I sat there in my highly uncomfortable, folding metal chair and tried to envision all of these 17- and 18-years-olds in another twenty or thirty years. I’m sure all 164 graduating seniors sitting on that football field were well aware, and highly excited, that life is really just beginning for them. Yet they have no way of comprehending how their lives will bring them an a complex and unending array of highly unpredictable changes.

Some will become politicians and captains of industry, many will get married, some will get divorced and most will have children. Some will die far too soon while others will go on to live beyone their wildest dreams. They only guarantee they have is that nothing in life will turn out as they planned it. And isn’t that absolutely wonderful?

I heard a writer once say she would never want to know how the book she’s writing is going to end because once she knew how everything would turn out, she wouldn’t want to write it. It seems like life is a little bit like that. If everything turned out just as we planned it — who we would marry, what our kids would be like, where we were going live, where we would work — then what would be the purpose. Life isn’t in the known, but all those wonderful, happy, sad, beautiful and tragic events that come along and change not just our lives but who we are as well.

As the ceremonies finally came to a conclusion, I found myself hoping that each one of these bright and shiny faces would not only make their dreams a reality, but will recognize all of those bumps and curves along the way for the blessings and opportunities they really are.