Dear Class of 2020:
We who came before you, who donned the cap and gown for a long anticipated commencement as high school graduates, sincerely feel so sorry you may not share the time-honored rite of passage and official welcome into the adult world. But we are living in the worst health times imagined. Yet your generation is tech-savvy and used to logging on to the world and maybe not too keen anyway with posting photos and video of you and your class mates in graduation regalia smiling huddled together one last time. Perhaps being more worldly than we were at 18, a graduation ceremony may be ‘old school’ or jejune. We older graduates are sincerely saddened by the unfortunate and unexpected turn of events in world health that ruined your senior year.
Some of my generation posted on Facebook our high school senior portraits, the ones for the all-important school yearbook: a heavy faux leather tome of black-and-white snapshots, clubs and organization group shots, candids of students mugging the camera or engaged in studious work and stage performances, and the pages of individual portraits that in the future we would look back on and fondly reminisce. By now we realize how very young we were, babes compared to our image in the mirror today.
My suburban high school boasted around 600 graduates. We waited during the humidity of late May in a four-hour ceremony at the former Texas Stadium as each of us walked across the stage to formally receive a diploma. The graduation ceremony meant a lot to me because I had spent my entire school years in the same town and knew a fourth to half of the class pretty well. Through the decades, I’ve attended class reunions marking 10, 20, 30 and next year 40 years. Most of my classmates are grandparents now, many retired, some living far away and surprisingly never returning to congregate with our dwindling numbers come reunion time. And some classmates are deceased.
When I look at pictures of myself way back then, the age you are now, I hardly recognize that young gal. I had not become who and what I am today, though at 18 I thought I knew myself well. I was a responsible teen, always working one place or another, my senior year writing as a reporter for the city newspaper along with features for the school paper and leading production of our school’s annual literary journal called Scribunt. That last year of schooling, I took shorthand and the required government class, both hard courses for me. I took a class in research techniques and the required English IV. That year I also had quit band to join choir. I already decided to go to college to study music (because I thought I knew everything about journalism). Actually, journalism had become all engrossing my last year in high school. What I remember about my senior year is a blur of activity and no sleep. I was busy all the time: writing and rewriting by hand then typing long and involved feature stories while either staying late after school or at home writing into the wee hours of the morning in the still dark silence. That’s quite an impressive memory actually and a solitary one.
If there is one impression I’d like to leave with the Class of 2020, it is this: We do not know where life will take us, so enjoy the ride. This strange and sudden time in history is shared with everyone on earth. Your generation already is used to online studies and homework, so maybe having to stay home is not so grueling. It’s just that the fun and camaraderie of the senior year has been taken away unexpectedly. It’s as if you’re already a high school graduate, quietly online with little fanfare. Your senior portraits may have been printed prior to beginning this final year of school. Maybe the senior ring and graduation notices were ordered months ago, too. Wear the ring, and mail the notices announcing the set date. You still graduate, having been given the worst situation but proving resolve to follow through to completion. Congratulations!
Many of you may want to journey on with your education through college or other endeavors, some of you probably already taking college courses to save time and money. Very impressive and something else of which to be proud. College was very important to me, and I was determined to go. What I did not know back then is how higher education would mold me into a more responsible adult but also change me into a different person, the type of individual I would become today. My worldview was challenged. At first, I didn’t like it. A lot of my classmates didn’t either, being talked down to by professors, learning big new words every day, having to study all over again science and math and writing and literature and history. Didn’t we know this stuff already? The answer was NO. We came into college knowing nothing or very little. So, don’t let that bully you into quitting or from even attempting college if that is your dream.
One early morning in August 1981, I drove off to college and though unintended spent the entire decade in East Texas, then a few years later ended up returning to the region twice as a newspaper reporter. The college experience challenged my beliefs, which were a mass of assumptions and prejudices gathered in childhood. High school education was a primer for the intense, mind altering and unsettling studies, revelations and epiphanies that come with college research and trial-and-error learning. The whole experience was maturing, young adult years spent on evolving empathy for other people and cultures, and also dealing with anger in religious teachings and societal intolerance that always lead to bigotry and discrimination. At age 18, I thought I would always be the same person, think the same, believe the same. But education is like a jackhammer rudely busting up cemented preconceptions. Learning takes place when the student has changed.
The other thought I’d like to leave with the Class of 2020 is: This precarious time in which you find yourselves starting to really live is not the end of the world. I came from a community of impressionable people who believed in the 1970s we were living in the End Times, the Last Days they were called. This was before the sudden and mysterious HIV/AIDS epidemic that came and stayed and remained a headliner every day during the 1980s. Why did we believe 1979 then 1980 then 1981 were the Last Days—beats me. There were prophecies about the alignment of the planets in 1979 (which I would later learn is a cycle). Among my people, there was a lot of satisfaction every time Middle Eastern nations like Israel and Egypt worked toward peace because we believed the Bible warns every time nations cry “Peace! Peace!” there will be sudden destruction (as if we should give up on peace in the world). There was a pop Christian suspicion during the 1970s over scan labels, printed in futuristic computer font of vertical lines and a long list of numbers. The labels were placed on every grocery item and clothing price tag and then all manner of merchandise as cash registers were converted to computers (which read the unified printed scan codes). There were preachers and televangelists citing the Bible for prophecies somehow meant just for the 20th century: references to the wounded beast (believed to be Pope John Paul II once he was shot), one-world government and currency (large businesses were pushing workers into direct deposit to save time and labor printing checks), the Mark of the Beast (once thought to be required Social Security number then the merchandise scan tags, now microchips required in pets and perhaps humans this century), and all the earthquakes in diverse places (earthquakes and enormous natural disasters have always occurred on the planet; we’re more aware of them because of fast-paced news). When AIDS came along, the End Timers felt victorious and disgusted with the afflicted, ill and dying. The rationale was nothing more than evil incarnate.
Because I was young, I believed what I had been taught. I clinged to it for I knew nothing else. Living in the End Times made me feel special. After a few years, however, especially during my all-important senior year, I thought it unfair that I had to be living in the End Times. I had my whole life ahead but wouldn’t get to be 20, 30, 40. God! Older generations for hundreds and thousands of years got to have fun as young adults. Why not me, I pondered.
When the student is ready, the teacher will come. That is Buddhist wisdom. Asian religions do not believe in a Big Bang theory or an End of Days. They believe the cosmos is eternal, no beginning and no end. And I didn’t start exploring world philosophies until after I graduated college. When you truly join the world of adults, you are free to determine your own beliefs and to think for yourself. You’ll do a lot more thinking and questioning and a lot less talking and asserting. Our beliefs change and evolve as well as our minds, worldview, direction, passions and essentially our entire life.
In conclusion, rest assured Class of 2020: You will live through this time. Go forth and enjoy your young adult years! Your senior year is more special by a pandemic that disrupted life on earth. There are many viruses, some more deadly than others. They come and go, but each virus must run its course. If we humans are to survive, we have to learn about this latest one and figure out a way to prevent it or control its spread.
You also have been the generation of Americans who grew up with perpetual war. Know now that war is not forever, that governments cannot maintain war financially and more importantly humans cannot maintain a state of war emotionally, psychologically, and yes spiritually. Our nature as human beings is to love, to get along, to understand and respect our differences, and to live in peace. The many generations who’ve come before you and me learned these lessons, too, and so will you. Take your time in life. Don’t stop learning, and always validate your information sources. Listen first. Think second. Speak and debate third. And throughout life’s journey, celebrate each moment … which indeed is a graduation from the past.