Ten years ago today, on June 4, 2007, I spoke at my high school graduation. I talked a little about that experience in this post. I thought it would be interesting to write down what I would say if I were to speak to this year’s graduates at my former high school, as an adult.
What up, class of 2017?! Congratulations on making it this far. I know many people treat graduating high school like it’s no big deal, but I’m sure there was at least one time along the way where you felt like you might not make it. But you did! Remember this feeling, because as it turns out, a lot of life is feeling like you might not make it. But you almost always do! The more memories you can collect along the way of making it, the more you will start to remember that you actually can do things, even when they seem impossible.
When I stood here 10 years ago and addressed my own class, I could only assume that by this point, at age 28 and ten years later, I’d have all the answers. After all, 28 year olds are real adults. They have real jobs. Many of them have kids. They have it all figured out. Well, let me let you in on a little secret, class of 2017, — that couldn’t be further from the truth. Most of adulthood feels like you are barely keeping your head above water. I don’t mean that to say adulthood is constantly miserable (though at times it is). I just mean that I often sit in very important meetings with very important people and think to myself, “I can’t believe they are actually letting me be here right now. Don’t they know I’m not a ‘real’ adult yet?” I complete many adult tasks with the assistance of Google. You might find yourself asking, “Does this feeling ever go away?” And honestly, I can’t say. Maybe ten years from now I will come back and tell the class of 2027 something different. But something tells me that everyone is just making it all up as they go along.
So, aside from pretending you know what you’re doing when you really don’t, you might be wondering, what is adult like life? Well, class of 2017, adult life is nothing like what you imagine it to be. However you are imagining your future life, the majority of it will not come true. Sure, a few of you will go into the career you envision. And some of you might even marry the person you are dating right now (though most of you won’t.) But for the most part, life will turn out really different. Sometimes, this is a good thing. You may find yourself in a career you never pictured yourself in. You might find a relationship that’s even better than the ones you have had in the past or even the one you’re in now. You might travel more than expected. You might make more money than you could have imagined or live in a city you like much better than where you live now.
But other times, things turning out differently than you expected ends up being not so good. I’m going to tell you something no one usually tells teenagers: life can really suck at times. Friendships you thought you would always have, end. People break your heart. You break people’s hearts. You don’t get jobs you deserve. You get fired from jobs you thought you were good at. People you love die unexpectedly, and too early. Senseless acts of violence take place all over the world on what lately seems like far too regular of a basis. The best people you know seem to have to face the most challenges, and the worst people you know seem to prosper and thrive even when they don’t deserve it. There are times when nothing makes sense. There are times when everything seems so random, so unconnected, so without reason, that everything feels pointless. Even when you think things are under control, they’re often not. Sometimes you see a spider in your house, and you feel confident you can kill it, but you don’t realize it has an egg sac on its back, and hundreds of little baby spiders burst out and start crawling all over your carpet. But, eventually, even if it feels like you can’t, even if it feels impossible, you force yourself to find a way to move forward, because you don’t have a choice. You will eventually pour water all over the spiders and then vacuum them up, because what else can you do? Just accept that you live with hundreds of spiders now? Let your house turn into some kind of spider colony in which you are the servant to the Spider King, all the while wondering what would have happened if you had just used the damn vacuum to end this when you had the chance? No. You might only fix the problem while screaming and squirming and dancing around, afraid to put both feet on the ground at once, but you will have to fix it nonetheless. (No, I’m not at all traumatized over this spider situation, thanks for asking.)
However, while life can sometimes feel like hundreds of baby spiders crawling all over your house, there are other times it can feel…the opposite of that. Like…hundreds of fluffy, cuddly puppies crawling all over your house…Okay, I admit I’m not actually sure what the opposite of that is, but just stick with me here. For as awful as life can be, it can be equally beautiful. I hope that for every horrible moment, you have at least two great ones. I hope you experience times when you don’t remember laughing harder than you are at that exact moment. I hope you periodically meet new people that make you think, “Wow, someone finally just gets me.” I hope you know the feeling of falling in love, and the feeling of true friendship. I hope you experience the kindness of strangers, and of loved ones. I hope you witness someone you care about overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. I hope you overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and are surrounded by loved ones while doing it. I hope you travel to the other side of the globe, and see that for as different as we all are, we are also similar. I hope you tell people how much you appreciate them, and I hope someone tells you how much they appreciate you.
Even though I have just confessed to the fact that we are all just making this up as we go along, I do think there are five pieces of advice I can impart on you.
The first piece of advice: read. Read a variety of things, by a variety of people. Read books and newspapers and magazines and blogs and whatever new media get invented during your lifetime. Read fiction and nonfiction. Read memoirs, read romance, read science fiction, read humor. Read stuff written by people with different opinions than you. The world is increasingly globalized, and the United States is increasingly diversifying. Experts estimate the United States will be majority-minority by 2050. If you want to learn about something you don’t know a lot about, read about it. Specifically, read about it by people who know first-hand what they are talking about. Want to understand the Black Lives Matter movement? Read stuff written by Black Lives Matter activists…or, at the very least, actual Black people. And I mean more than one or two Black people, not only that one crazy Black Sheriff and Ben Carson, okay? Want to understand more about Islam? Read stuff written by actual Muslims. Or, better yet, read the actual Quran. Its similarities to the Bible may surprise you. We live in an age where information is more readily available than ever before, and yet people are seemingly more reluctant than ever to do actual research. Don’t ever become so convinced that you know all you need to know that you stop learning new things. Formal education, for many people, isn’t necessary. Yes, for some fields you may need a bachelor’s or even a master’s or doctorate degree. But for many of you, to be successful, you don’t necessarily need a piece of paper and 40k+ student loan debt. What you do need is a commitment to never stop learning, and that starts with reading.
The second piece of advice: Make sure your job does at least one of two things. I am convinced that when it comes to professional careers, there are three categories of people.
- The first group needs to have a job they’re passionate about, even if it doesn’t pay well. This is the category I fall into. I get bored very easily, and we spend too much of our time at work for me to devote so much of my life to doing something I don’t genuinely care about. People in this category will feel very personally fulfilled, but if you don’t make a lot of money, you may miss out on some things. I don’t get to go on every single trip with my wealthier friends. I have to buy used cars. I rent instead of owning a house because I can’t handle the stress of an unexpected expense. But, if you plan things out, you can still have a very full life. I still have fun. I still travel. Anything you want to save money for, you can. It might take a bit longer, but you can do it. There are apps now that will pull money from your bank account in such small increments that you don’t even notice it, and before you know it, you have enough for a vacation. You may not be rolling around in extra money, but you can make things work if you fall into this category.
- The second group needs to have a job that makes a lot of money, so they can spend their free time doing things they love. This is the group I genuinely wish I was part of. But, I know myself, and as I said, I couldn’t do something for 8+ hours a day that I didn’t truly care about. Don’t get me wrong, some people in this category are truly passionate about their job, they are just lucky enough to be passionate about something high-paying. But some people in this category don’t care about what they’re doing for work as long as it makes money. Either way, this group spends their disposable income and free time on things that make them happy. They travel, they buy the expensive things they enjoy, they live life extravagantly. They often have no problem being miserable 40 hours a week if it means their free time can be spent exactly how they want it. These people are usually also personally fulfilled, albeit in a different way than group one.
- The third group doesn’t enjoy their job or their free time. They make just enough to scrape by, and they don’t enjoy their life outside of work all that much either.
Obviously, you want to be in group one or two. If you find yourself in group three, please get out of it. We all fall on hard times, and we all have times where we have to sacrifice fun just to stay afloat. But if you find yourself in group three for an extended period of time, please do something about it. Apply for scholarships until you can take a class to learn a new skill. Work on your passions in your free time until you are good enough at them to earn money from them. Do something. We spend too much of our life at work to not either feel fulfilled by our job or by our hobbies that our job allows us to fund. Living life constantly on the grind isn’t worth it if you don’t have SOMETHING to show for it in the end, even if that something is just personal fulfillment and internal pride.
The third piece of advice: Use your privilege or skills for something bigger than yourself. Some of you sitting here today were born into immense amounts of privilege. Others of you struggled a lot and may feel like you don’t have any privilege at all. But the reality is, as bad as you might have it, there is always someone who has it worse. And, the very fact that you are sitting here today, graduating from high school, shows that you are better off than a lot of people your age. (Nationwide, about 20% of students don’t even make it this far. That’s one in five.) So, do something to help. If you have a lot of money, donate it to causes you care about. If you have a certain skill that is in demand, offer to complete tasks for a local nonprofit. Contact organizations you care about and ask them how you can help. Or, start on a smaller scale. If you are a good cook, offer to cook a meal for a local homeless shelter, or families visiting loved ones in a hospital. On an even smaller scale, if you have a car, drive a friend to a job interview and don’t accept the gas money they try to offer you. Just do something. There are over 7 billion of us on Earth. Don’t be selfish.
The fourth: Travel. Travel as much as you can, while you can. If you plan to attend college, enroll in a study abroad program. Go for a semester or a year if you can, but even if it is just for a week or just for the summer, go somewhere. If you don’t plan to attend college, there are plenty of organizations geared toward group travel or internships for young people if you don’t feel you can handle traveling alone. No matter how you do it or who you do it with, just do it, while you are young and energetic and unencumbered. Take photos, write things down. You think you will never forget, but you will. I have already forgotten so many small details of my travels that I swore I would never forget, and I kept pretty decent records along the way. Travel internationally whenever possible. Visit the tourist spots, but visit other places, too. Talk to people. What ended up being quite possibly my favorite day abroad involved my friends and I asking a group of women on a train in Japan what they would do if they only had one day in their city. Ask people what they think of Americans, and really listen to their response. Research your destination, read reviews, have an idea of what you’d like to do, but leave time for aimless wandering. Some of my favorite moments in other countries were not pre-planned. Allow your beliefs to be questioned, allow yourself to feel things that are uncomfortable when traveling. One of my clearest memories from studying abroad took place in a Hindu prayer ceremony in India. I remember watching some Priests-In-Training perform a prayer of thanks, and thinking, “How can Christians be so sure they’re right about religion? These people believe they’re right just as strongly. There are so many of us on Earth, who is to say who is right?” That’s not to say every moment traveling will be profound, many won’t be, but when you find yourself thinking something uncomfortable, let it happen, and try to process it. When you don’t have the time or money to travel abroad, at least visit different areas of the United States. We live in a huge country. Different states can feel like entirely different worlds. See things that are different than what you grew up around, different than what you are comfortable with.
The fifth: Love and friendships are kind of a mess. This can all basically be summed up with the idea that “nothing good comes easy.” When it comes to romantic relationships, there is no such thing as a “soul mate.” Being in a relationship is hard work and a conscious choice. It is something you work at and decide to remain in every day. There is more than one person that you will meet in your life that you could, theoretically, make a choice to be in a long-term relationship with and have that choice end up being fairly successful. But, with many of these people, it will be a case of wrong place or wrong time. One or both of you will decide to not make this choice, because the circumstances don’t allow it in that moment. Or, you start out feeling like you could make that choice but as time goes on one or both of you get complacent and stop making the necessary effort and things end. Appreciate these people for what they are and what they added to your life, even if just for a short time. But, don’t mourn them for too long. Don’t wish things were different. I once read the quote, “What’s meant for you will not miss you” and while I don’t believe in fate, I do believe this quote to be true to an extent. If something ends, it means it wouldn’t have worked out long-term. Many of the same things can be said of friendships. They require effort. Some end, even ones you thought never would; but, even the ones that end can teach you something about yourself and about life in general. All you can do, in romantic love and friendship love, is treat people as well as you possibly can. Be honest. Tell people what they mean to you. Have the decency to end things with respect, if they must end. Don’t let things drag out until both of you are even more hurt. Always put in the effort to save something you care about, but at the same time don’t be unrealistic about your ability to save something. Make sure you aren’t giving more than you are getting, but, more importantly, make sure you aren’t taking more than you are giving. And, for the love of god, don’t be one of those people that forgets about their friends when they enter a new relationship. Whatever you do, don’t be one of those people.
That’s really all the advice I have for you, class of 2017. I guess I will end by saying, don’t believe people when they say they have no regrets. That’s a lie. We all have at least one or two regrets. But, most of us regret the things we didn’t do more than the things we did. I only have a few regrets in life, but most of them involve not taking a trip, not telling someone how I felt about them, not putting in the effort to repair a friendship that maybe could have been repaired, not saying sorry when I was in fact sorry. So make the most of your life, because it could end at any moment. Don’t get so nervous, so worried about the outcome, that you don’t tell someone you have romantic feelings for them (it very well may not go your way, but you will always regret not letting them know). Don’t get so preoccupied with money that you forget to have fun; as they say, you “can’t take it with you.” Don’t get so wrapped up in stubbornness that you forget to apologize. Don’t assume you will always have the chance to do something, or say something, because you might not. It’s always better to go all in than to hold back. It might not feel that way as it’s happening, but I guarantee it will feel that way when it’s over.
Again, let me congratulate you for making it this far. I hope in ten years, one of you will address the class of 2027 with even more advice and wisdom than I could offer you today…assuming Donald Trump and/or robots haven’t wiped out humanity before then.
