My letter to you, the class of 2025 college and high school graduates.
Your walk across the stage to get your diploma is the perfect symbol for what life is all about. On one side, it is goodbye. Goodbye to friends and classmates you’ve spent countless hours with making memories, stressing over relationships and exams, and trying to carve your place in this world. Hopefully the friendships you’ve made will last a lifetime. This chapter has closed but your future is filled with many blank pages, all waiting for you to write the rest of your story.
Which brings me to the hellos in your life. As you walk out those doors for the last time, it is now “hello world.” Hello to new relationships and experiences. Hello to an uncertain future which can be both terrifying and exhilarating. Hello to a life you’ll have to figure out on your own. Your teachers and textbooks tried to prepare you for life, but life can only be lived to be fully appreciated. Besides, if you had all the answers, life wouldn’t be fun or interesting. If a jigsaw puzzle came with numbers you would return it.
Make no mistake though. At some point, life is going to break you. Being broken isn’t always bad though, it’s how we let the light get in. It is also in those moments where you find out a lot about yourself and the people who surround you. You’ll find out about the life you want to live. Like the time you spent in your classrooms, there will be countless lessons to be learned. Possibly the greatest one will be that life is not always fair. As someone once told me, the only thing fair in life is a ball hit between first and third base.
When I graduated, the only reference point I had about 2025 was the Jetsons. 2025 seemed like a year out of a science fiction novel. Back then, there were far more hellos than goodbyes in my life. Now, the opposite is true. As you enter this next chapter in your life, the world will come charging up that hill and you’ve got to be prepared to meet it head on. I could add a thousand sage pieces of advice from writers far greater than myself. The best thing I can tell you is to appreciate every day you’re given in this world and it sounds cliche but it’s true: Don’t blink!
So, as you take your walk across that stage, walk confidently and bravely and go out and happen to the world. Don’t measure your success solely by your bank account or social status.
As the great Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
Be true to yourself and others. Be humble and hungry. Most importantly, be a good human being. The rest will take care of itself, and when writing the story of your life don’t let anyone else hold the pen.
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