Good day to you and congratulations on earning the piece of paper that you are about to receive. It cost about a cent or two to make and it cost you about a million times more to earn. The fancy ink you'll see on it cost perhaps a few more cents to add on so don't feel too bad. However, I fear I must tell you that you have mortgaged far more than your parents' money. And no, it isn't the four years you spent trudging to class here firmly in the grips of your sleep deprived stupors. Your whole life is defined now. You are a graduate, with your road neatly traced and paved by previous generations. I, who possess no gift of prophecy, do prophesy that for the next forty years you will wander the desert of 'get-up, eat, go to work, travel home, idle entertainment, sleep, repeat'. Only then, if you should be a Joshua or a Caleb will you cross the Jordan into the Promised Land of retirement and its seemingly limitless disposable time. But by then, the hairs on your head shall be grey, and you shall have no laughter and gay, only aches and pains. And then, you shall die with only a scant few having been aware that you lived at all. Congratulations graduates!
That you are here today is a testament to how much you value the opinions of others and how little you value your own. What of that still, small voice inside your head reminding you of your dreams for the future? Is it still audible amidst the noise around what you would wear today, or what jobs you have and haven't heard back from, or what GPA you graduated with? Or has it been sacrificed, botched ritualistically with its blood sprinkled upon the altar of your parents' expectations? Is the smell of its burning fat pleasing to your lord, public opinion? Only you can know.
I must say that you impress me to some degree. How is that you motivate yourself to assimilate vast quantities of information whilst being safe in the knowledge that ninety five percent of it will never come to bear in the boring, soul-sucking occupations to which you will devote the next forty years, and for which you will likely be grossly overqualified? Is that 'A' on a transcript which you must pay to see (what a racket) and which most employers will never care for really that valuable to you? Furthermore, you assimilated a whole smorgasbord of woke ideas that were in vogue which you grew to defend with a zeal that would make Torquemada blush. You memorize the slogans and bleat them out at bewildered passers by as they admire your wooly figure. After all, who has time for basic grooming when there are midterms to study for and uneducated, socially asleep heretics to shout down, for the betterment of humanity of course. To burn them at the stake would be antiquated after all, and you are all about progress.
And now, what to say of your finances? The lucky among you have kind parents who will help you get back on your feet without preconditions. (bless them) The rest of you however will be saddled with a Federal Reserve's worth of debt and parents who have long since washed their hands of you. Do not think that they will bail you out of your debt trap that they encouraged you to sign up for. And those trade school kids that you sneered at? Well, they have long since finished school and if they are wise with money, free of debt and accumulating assets. Yet here you are, deep in the red and better off dead. You think you're mad, too unstable, but no, this really is your life now. If you are lucky, you will land the job you had long been longing for. Otherwise, you will spend many months on the sidelines as the water levels, I mean interest fees, pile up and the only escape is whatever job you can get regardless of whether or not it is germane to the subject of your studies.
So, after four years of drinking yourselves silly at frat parties and drinking in the adulation from friends and family here today, I hope to have rendered you a tad more sober. This is reality in all its unvarnished glory. Please don't be too downcast if you find yourselves working for the 'dumb kids' you used to celebrate not having to study with anymore. On the contrary, rejoice in life's knockabout sense of humor and how it plays with you. Enjoy trying to find meaning in the meaningless. Find the invincible summer within your winter of rolling the boulder of expectations up the mountain Monday to Friday only to watch it fall back to the foot of the mountain on Sunday night. Be your own absurd hero if you can, or end it all if you must. As for your paper, somewhere in a forgotten drawer or exalted on a fancy picture frame it will remain, bearing witness to the fact that in this theatre of the absurd called life, there existed a character that was you. In that regard, perhaps this piece of paper is worth the money, effort and neglected dreams you expended to have it. Ok graduates, you may throw your hats in the air and celebrate now.
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