[This past
weekend, my younger son and co-favorite-Guest
Poster Kyle Railton graduated from high school. As I wipe away
proud Dad tears, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contexts
for this momentous occasion—leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next
for the new grad!]
On three
particularly stand-out moments from Mary
Schmich’s famous 1997 column (long falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut,
and eventually turned into a
hit song by none other than Baz Luhrmann):
1)
“Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes
you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s
only with yourself.” I’m not sure I know a more apt phrase than “Comparison is
the thief of joy.” This is an incredibly hard piece of advice to take, and we’re
all gonna fall short of it plenty no matter what. But I do believe in doing our
best to judge ourselves against our own journey, rather than what we see of
others’ (which is never how they would see their own in any case, of course).
2)
“Get to know your parents. You never know when
they’ll be gone for good.” Man alive do I
feel this one in June 2025, just a couple days after what would have been my
folks’
55th wedding anniversary. I most definitely got to know my Dad,
and will always be eternally grateful for all that I learned from him. But the
second sentence of the quote is still profoundly true nonetheless—there is no
way to prepare for losing a parent, you got to go there to know there (one of
my Dad’s favorite quotes), and all we can do is our best to make the most of
every second we have with those we love.
3)
“Wear sunscreen” (which is the speech’s first
and last piece of advice). As someone who grew up in the generation located
smack dab in between the prior total lack of skin health awareness and the
subsequent extremely knowledgeable sense of the sun’s dangers, I certainly agree
with this advice in specific terms. But what I also like about it is that, amidst
a speech that largely emphasizes living in the present and not worrying overly
much about the future (perspectives I mostly agree with—“No
day but today,” indeed), this deceptively simple phrase reminds us that
life is long, and we want to make sure that our long lives are as healthy in
every sense as they can be. Graduates can feel invincible, at least in their own
skin (ie, probably not as much in the larger world in 2025), but the truth is we’ve
got to take care of that skin to truly make it last.
Special
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Graduation texts or topics you’d share?
