Parkway Center City High School, Philadelphia, PA
June 15, 2005
Welcome graduates, students, parents, family members, staff, administration and distinguished guests.
Robert Orben said, "A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that 'individuality' is the key to success." Truthfully, what most people remember about their graduation ceremony is that it was long and hot, and little else. I shall try, then to be brief.
Your theme for today is, "Honoring the Past, Embracing the Future." It may seem like a small idea, but it is an idea with tremendous consequence for each one of you.
It was once stated that, "Your schooling may be over, but remember that your education still continues." This statement is very true. Education is not something that happens in the confines of the classroom, but education happens within your own mind. In a world that needs hope and help, you can be the catalyst for change and you will know how to create that change if you allow yourself to be educated.
First, let us discuss the first steps of your life: "Honoring the Past." You have enjoyed four years (maybe more) of classroom learning. In those four years, your lives have changed and you have moved from being children to being young adults. The past has taught you many lessons in geography, algebra, literature, biology, athletics, art and more. Those lessons, while you may not remember all of them, have helped move you along that path to responsible adulthood. They have helped you to grow intellectually, emotionally and academically.
And yet, how many actual classes do you recall? Not too many, I am sure. Yet each one, like a paving stone, has helped to create a roadway to your future. Every teacher has had some part in helping you to become better by their example or by their instruction, every class has been one small piece of the instruction you have needed to bring you here. Some day you will look back and appreciate what sacrifices your teachers have made, and how important school is to whatever it is that you seek to do.
To honor the past is not to say nice things about it. Honoring the past is not wishing you were back with your old friends. Honoring the past is not even coming back to teach. When you honor the past, you take the education you have been given, you learn the lessons given to you, and you use them to build a life of service to others. Honoring the past means making the most of your life, and using the tools that have been given to you.
Many graduates are so happy to be done with school that they do not realize what privilege we have to be able to learn. Your teachers will never be satisfied that you just graduate, they want you to be ethical leaders and responsible citizens in the global community. If you would honor the past, you will take what you have been taught and create in yourself a desire to make it happen in your life.
Honoring the past is step one.
But the second step is "Embracing the Future."
To embrace the future means to take hold of it. You have a whole world of opportunities ahead of you, opportunities to do many different things with your lives. You may be a politician, a musician, a farmer, an athlete, a medical researcher, or a designer. Some of you will be parents; and you may or may not become famous. But each of you will in some way be an architect; that is, you will design the life that is laid before you.
Some of you will not design your life but instead you will let it happen. You will let circumstances make you who you are. You will let the future happen and mold you. You may even blame someone else for your life being what it is, and tell others that you could have been different if life had treated you better. You will design your life through carelessness and say that your life is what it is.
But others of you will be different. You will not design your life by letting it happen, but you will create your life by making it happen. You will use every advantage you are given. Every hardship, every defeat will become a tool to make your life better and stronger and more meaningful. You will make circumstances affect who you will be.
Embracing the future means you do not fear the challenges ahead. Embracing the future is designing a life and then making every detail of your life a part of the future you envision. You will dream and dream big and even if you do not meet every goal, you will love life for having tried, for having reached for the stars. Those people will find that circumstances may change little, but they awake renewed for every day.
Henry David Thoreau said, quite eloquently, "I have learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
My challenge to you, Class of 2005, is to advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, or to put it in another way, to embrace your future. When you look at your future, now spread before you, do not let life happen, make it happen. Do not let circumstances shape your life, let your dreams and ambitions for a better world shape your life. Do not let the hardships and the difficulties and the injustices of life make you who you are, become everything you dream to be, and change those injustices.
I cannot guarantee life will be easy for any of you, and, in fact, it is truly best for you if it is not. Nothing worthwhile ever comes easily. I can tell you this: If you do advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, if you honor the past and embrace the future, if you strive to be someone of significance, rather than someone of importance, you will find that the education you will receive throughout your whole life will be one that brings happiness.
What Is to Come
WHAT is to come we know not. But we know
That what has been was good--was good to show,
Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
We are the masters of the days that were;
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered...even so.
Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?
Life was our friend? Now, if it be our foe--
Dear, though it spoil and break us! --need we care
What is to come?
Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,
Or the gold weather round us mellow slow;
We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare
And we can conquer, though we may not share
In the rich quiet of the afterglow
What is to come.
William Ernest Henley
Today if you are to begin a life of success you will honor the past and embrace the future. Will you let life happen…or will you make it happen? That will determine for you…what is to come. Thank you.
|
