Commencement

We've had four graduations in our family in the last 24 hours, and I've been privileged to attend three of them. Alas, one of them was out of state, and it was impossible to make it to the three here in town and also to that one. The three here were all high school graduations and the out-of-state one was college (undergrad).

I don't have children of my own, but I have 14 nieces and nephews, and one more child who is like a niece to me, so she makes it 15 (she was also one of the high school graduates this year). I love all of my nieces and nephews, and I'm particularly proud of them right now, for all that they've achieved, and for the hope for the future that they represent in our family and for the world. They are all really bright kids with great promise; though they've achieved much, their best days are still ahead of them.

All three of the local kids went to different high schools, which meant, of course, three separate ceremonies to attend. Having sat through three high school graduations, I've heard lots of speechifying over the weekend. Some speeches were better than others, but I have to admit that at this point, they've all kind of run together in my mind. What I come away with is that this generation, like most generations before it, have great potential, big dreams, and the sense that they can make a difference in the world.

That's what youth gives to the world: hope and dreams and energy. We adults know that, like every generation before it, this one will produce its greats, the artists and engineers and leaders who will shape the culture and the country in their time. Most of them will end up settling into quiet lives: working in jobs that they never even heard of while they were in high school, getting married, having babies, growing gardens, teaching, volunteering, and making their local communities better places to live. It will end up a less grand existence than what they imagine right now, but that is not to say that they won't, in fact, have great lives and do great things. Their greatness will just be on a smaller scale than they currently imagine.

And the thing is, that's really okay. There is something to be said for leading a quiet life, for living in peace with those around you, for continuing the march of humanity across time and space. Right now, they see some of these things--growing up to have regular jobs and families and houses--as mundane and banal and a mere "existence" that they want to avoid. And yet, these are the very stepping stones of history. Over time, it is the "ordinary" people who shape our culture, our history, our destiny--not the rulers and revolutionaries.

I am here today because ordinary people had ordinary lives. They grew up, they married, they had babies and jobs. But they also hoped for something better. Maybe it was just a higher-paying factory job than the one they had, but there was always hope: hope for themselves but even more so, hope for their children and their children's children. They left Ireland during times of famine and oppression for the promise of America. They left the squalor of the big-city tenements for the peace of suburbia. They wanted their kids to have better educations, better jobs, and better opportunities than they had had. Now the great exodus from famine-stricken Ireland in the 1800s is not seen as "ordinary," it is seen as history--history that changed Ireland and the U.S. forever. But it was a movement made up, not of presidents and kings, but of poor, uneducated, ordinary people who just wanted something better.

I truly hope that this current generation will do great things for the global community. That they will strive to make life as good in famine-stricken, war-torn lands as it is in their homeland. It would be an achievement of magnificent proportions if they could make it each person’s dream to be able to stay in their own homeland in peace and prosperity rather than having to dig up roots and move off to a Promised Land halfway around the world. Yet, what am I saying but that they should make it so that people all around the world should be able to have ordinary lives, without the drama of war and hunger and poverty?

So, with no further advice or editorializing, I say to the graduating class of 2011: Go forth! Be brilliant! Be great! Be ordinary! You will change history, whether you mean to or not.