Jenny, I have thought a lot about your question regarding the value of a graduation and although I know it is long past being relevant, I have my view of it. Certainly a few pretend (mostly school administrators) that a graduation is a ceremony of a class, it really is a celebration of an every one person graduation. No one comes to see a graduating class; everyone is there because of one person…or two one persons…or even three. We come because we are thrilled to have one person in our life…one person who is in a crowd of a bunch of other one persons. You do not graduate so much as make my life better. Sure you get a diploma because you passed a bunch of classes and maybe you are better than nearly everyone else at studying but the real truth is that each graduate is to someone watching, the best person crossing the stage. A graduation ceremony is a snapshot of love; a still of how it is to be excessively glad you have a brilliant ray of light streaking across your horizon. No one comes to watch a graduation, we all come to see a graduate and we cheer, not because you passed a silly little geometry exam; we cheer because you have made our life better and that is a real reason to scream and blow air horns and take pictures and sit on metal benches with the sun bearing down on us. A graduation ceremony certainly is an artifact of days when kids grew up illiterate because they were too poor, too isolated, too busy. We still remember that it is a glorious thing to learn and have dreams and try at building a life. We also remember that it is most wonderful to stand and be seen, be loved and wanted. That is why we came to your graduation Jenny. That is why we watch you with interest. You are someone worth loving and being proud to know. Keep graduating and you never become a better person…the first spark of life God put in you made you as good as you will ever need to be…at least for those of us who want to watch you graduate!
