"I don't know a soul who's not been battered/ I don't have a friend who feels at ease/ I don't know a dream that's not been shattered/ or driven to its knees."
-Paul Simon, "American Tune"

I must be doing something wrong.

As a member of my high school and college bands and now a reporter, I have attended graduations every summer for the past 11 years, often more than one per year. Two of them, in 1998 and 2002, were my own. The problem is that, each year, the speaker gives advice that I’ve followed to a T. At least I’ve tried.

I’ve yet to see the results.

I’ve worked hard. I’ve followed my dreams. I’ve remembered my roots. I’ve shot for the moon. I’ve shot for the stars. And, I’ve believed in myself.

I’ve believed the hell out of myself.

I was promised I would change the world. I was promised that, if I did all those things, I would make a difference. But, here I am, seven years out of high school and three out of college, and I haven’t changed anything but apartments and girlfriends. As for making a difference, the world seems like it would do all right without me.

While 2005’s graduates head out into the world to make it a better place, I’m sprawled out in my stifling sixth-floor studio apartment, sweating, and awake after midnight, clutching a can of Raid intended for any of those mysterious many-legged crawlers that have decided to infest the place. Tomorrow morning, I will skip breakfast because it’s too hot to eat and drive 20 miles to work in a dented car, and I will make very little money writing newspaper stories about towns no one has heard of.

Let’s tell the class of 2005 where it’s really headed.

The most recent edition of my college’s alumni newsletter notes a charge given by the graduation speaker at this year’s ceremony.
Citing Tom Brokaw’s World War II book, The Greatest Generation, the speaker told the class, "What would it take to make your generation, all 80-million-plus of you great"...Could your generation be the generation that some day others will look at and say, without hesitation, ‘That was a great generation,’ not because you made a lot of money, not because you produced more things, but because of the way you lived""

If graduation ceremonies are the last time to teach students, we should, at least, in the spirit of education, tell them the truth.

The truth is, this generation will be the same as every generation before it and every generation after it. Some members will disappear into history as nothing more than names in a phonebook. Some will rise, for a short moment, and then fall or fade. Some will die young.

And a few, through sheer luck, will actually do something worth remembering. It will not be because they tried harder, believed more, or dreamed bigger. It will be for the same unknowable reasons that anything happens.
At Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s graduation ceremony last weekend, a speaker brought up a graduation classic. "This is not an end," she said, "but only a new beginning."

The truth is, the graduation ceremony is an end. It’s the day after that is a beginning. On that day, the class of 2005 will wake up and stand before the unknown.

This is why we have graduation ceremonies: to prepare, if we can, graduates, and everyone else, for what comes the next morning, and to acknowledge that the greatest achievement of all is just rolling out of bed and stumbling into the darkness, unsure.

The only thing on which we can all agree is nobody knows what’s going to happen. The future is a terrifying place. Entering it may be a crazy move, but most of us make it, and, in our weird and unbelievable logic, it’s the most admirable thing we can ever do because it’s the only thing we can do.

Graduates, dream if you want to and believe if you want to, but if you do one thing, get up tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and just keep going. I, for one, in all my insignificance, will be proud.