You can hear it in the air around high school football fields and college campuses all across the country. This time of year strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” play as millions don their caps and gowns to march across a stage and take their first steps toward the next journey in their lives.
In these exercises, we have to endure one last test: listening to the commencement speaker. While our mind wonders to the celebrations we’ll be attending; and our heads are craning to find family and friends in the audience, the speaker delivers an address chock full of helpful advice. Advice that we probably could have benefited from, if only it weren’t delivered at this moment.
In honor of the graduates in our community that might have missed a little in the speech, we’ve assembled some words of wisdom that we particularly like.
“The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” – Mitch Albom
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.” – Dr. Suess
“Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed.” – Erma Bombeck
Congratulations to our communities’ high school and college graduates. May you find and share all the happiness that you deserve.
