Katdish.net

If you watch or read the news with any regularity, you may have seen snippets of the commencement speech where speaker David McCullough, Jr. tells the graduating class of Wellesley High School that they are not special. Much to-do was made of what some might call mean-spirited exhortations. Most of the clips I’ve seen have been the portion of the speech where he says things like:

If everyone is special then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality, we have of late, we Americans to our detriment come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point, and we’re happy to compromise standards or ignore reality if we suspect that’s the quickest way or only way to have something to put on the mantelpiece. Something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.

No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn, or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it. Now it’s, “So what does this get me?” As a consequence we’ve cheapened worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Boden than the well being of Guatemalans. It’s an epidemic and in its way not even dear old Wellesley High is immune–one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide Wellesley high school, where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C and the mid-level curriculum is called “advanced college placement”. And I hope you caught me when I said “one of the best”. I said “one of the best” so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable and count ourselves among the elite—whoever they might be—and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition. But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can only be one best. You’re it or you’re not.

Even those who whole-heartedly agreed with what Mr. McCullough was telling these young men and women are getting an incomplete understanding of what the man was ultimately trying to get across to them if they did not hear his speech in its entirety, because I believe the most important portion of this speech was left of the news room editing floor:

Like accolades ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying by-product. It’s what happens when you’re thinking about more important things. Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you. Go to Paris to be in Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being worldly. Exercise freewill and creative independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others—the rest of the 6.8 billion and those who will follow them. And then, you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special, because everyone is.

If you haven’t seen the entire speech, I invite you to do so now. It is a great reminder for graduates and the rest of us to live our lives not for ourselves, but for others.

There are some things you know because you’ve been taught, some things you know through experience, and some things you just sort of figure out through observation and equal portions of common sense and courtesy.

Lately I’ve felt convicted about my attitude towards my fellow human beings. Where I used to try and see the good in people, now I seem to only notice an abundance of rude and self-centered behavior. I mostly blame this phenomenon on my spending an inordinate amount of time in grocery store parking lots, but that’s a whole other post and I digress…

As graduation season comes to a close, it occurs to me that there is an unspoken etiquette one must follow when sending and receiving graduation correspondence–at least that’s been my experience. And because I’ve decided it’s better to shine a light than curse the darkness, I wanted to share with you, dear reader, my wealth of information about graduation season, and perhaps prevent a potentially embarrassing faux pas in the future.

I know. You’re welcome.

The graduation announcement

Dear katdish,

Over the past several weeks, I have received several graduation announcements from distant nieces and nephews, children of women in my Bunko group and the young lady at the end of the block I used to buy Girl Scout cookies from. Since many of the graduation ceremonies are being held on the same day, I can’t possibly attend them all. How can I graciously decline these invitations and how do I determine which ceremony I actually do attend?

Sincerely,

Perplexed in Poughkeepsie

Dear Perplexed,

Relax. A graduation announcement is not an invitation to the actual ceremony, it is merely an invitation to send the graduate a gift, preferably in the form of a check or money order. In the event that you receive an actual invitation, be advised that the graduate or the parent of the graduate considers to a special friend or relation, therefore the gift should be at least thirty dollars. If you were actually expected to attend, you would have already received a phone call confirming your attendance.

The graduation party

If you receive an invitation to a graduation party, congratulations. You are in the inner circle of close family and friends. You probably already know whether your presence is expected. It’s been my experience that if the graduate is young enough to be your son or daughter, you may politely excuse yourself after hors d’oeuvres and/or dinner has been served so that the young folks can crank the music and get their freak on.

Decoding the thank you card

Thank you so much for the gift! It really means a lot to me. I had a very special day.

Sincerely,

John

The above was an actual thank you card I recently received. Unless you bought the graduate a new car or paid for their first year of college tuition, a generic thank you card is perfectly acceptable. In this age of electronic communication, it’s nice to get a hand written thank you note from anyone, let alone an 18 year old whose main source of written communication is texting on their phone. And while I know the same note may have been written to several people, knowing the kid (and his mother), I also know that his appreciation was sincere.

So there you have it. I hope I’ve helped in some small way to demystify the secret language of graduation correspondence.

Any recent graduates in your life?

Any sage advice to pass on that I may have missed?

It’s graduation season again. It seems like every year we get at least one of two graduation invitations–mostly from kids we know from church, but this year we received invites from some very special kids, special to me, that is. Because these kids grew up right before my eyes. I swear it was only last week they were graduating kindergarten, and now here they are about to enter college. Even though they’re not my own, I’m so proud of them all, and their graduations remind me how little time I have left before my own kids will be sending out those invitations.

But that’s not the only graduation invitation we received. We also have a good friend graduating from law school. After three years of juggling a blended family with four kids (the fourth being born a little over a year ago), heading up the children’s ministry at our church, AND going to law school, she now has a law degree and a bright future ahead of her.

High school graduation gifts are as easy as writing a check, and that’s exactly what I’ll give to the high school graduates. But what do you give someone graduating from law school? A nice pen set? That would be good, I love a good pen set, but that’s so typical. In the end, I decided to combine two things I love: painting and a good quote:

In case you can’t read my scripty writing, here’s the quote again:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
~Marianne Williamson

I love that quote, and not just for the graduate. It’s for you, too.

Instead of thinking of a thousand reasons and excuses why you’ll never be the person you’d always dreamed you’d be, instead of insisting that you could never be good enough to do that thing that makes you feel truly alive, instead of asking yourself, “Who am I to think I could ever reach the stars?”, ask yourself, “Who am I NOT to?”

It’s your life. Live it or live in it.

Congratulations, Kerri. You’re amazing.