While some college commencement exercises actually did commence this year, the traditional pomp and circumstances were not so pompous due to circumstances beyond our control. Under ordinary circumstances the honor of addressing you would have been bestowed on someone with name recognition.
None of you know my name because I was never given one. Only a handful of you even recognize me. Nonetheless, it is fitting that I address you today, because I am circumstances personified.
On the one hand many of you would agree that you, the Class of 2021, were the victims of circumstances. You had no control over the power of Covid-19. You were subjected to the whims of a contagion that took pleasure in wrecking
havoc wherever it went. You zoomed and you zimmed. You were often locked into your residence hall, not even allowed to visit a friend who lived on another floor. Many of your meals were “grubbed.” Most of your extracurricular activities were scrubbed. Your dreams were often dashed. Your hopes for the real college life were diminished.
With all that said, I ask you to fill the air with a collective sigh.
Now get over it.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Life as you wanted it might not have been in the cards, but I ask you to throw off the shackles of victimhood. Many people, who skip though life thinking it’s a bowl of cherries, sometimes choke on a cherry pit. Life is what you make it.
I am reminded of the story of a young boy who is brought to a room waist-high in manure. The boy does not even hesitate before he is thrashing about in the manure…with a smile on his face. When asked why he is so happy, he exclaims, “with all this shit there has to be a pony somewhere.”
Life as we live it is a process. The sun rises and the sun sets. Sometimes it’s sunny and other times it’s not. Sometimes we write our life story without stopping to think that “circumstances” dictate that the next chapter in our life might not be the chapter we imagined.
After going through hell, Dorothy was finally going home. She, the Wizard…and Toto, too, were all smiles as they were seconds away from lift-off.
And then, as the saying goes, “the shit hit the fan.” Toto eyed my precious cat, who was minding her own business. Without warning Toto jumped out of Dorothy’s basket in hot pursuit of my cat.
Of course we all know what happened next. Dorothy “de-boarded” the balloon to get Toto and in a flash the balloon was up and away.
Poor Dorothy. We could say she was a victim of circumstances…and we’d be right because she had little or no control over what happened once Toto jumped out of her basket.
Life as Dorothy imagined it was changed in an instant. Her dream of floating back home to Kansas was never going to happen.
And then she appeared as if from nowhere. She went by the name of Glinda, but at the moment she had other names…chance, opportunity, good fortune, luck…or a host of other similar names.
Glinda was just the vaccine Dorothy needed at that moment in time. It was Glinda who told her she had the “power” all along to go home. All she had to do was click here heels three times.
Our lives are made up of circumstances. If you lived your college life to the fullest, despite Covid-19, you were presented with hundreds of different circumstances. How many of those circumstances did you fall victim to? How many of them did you take advantage of?
The word “circumstance” means to encompass and encircle. It means to embrace life, to hug it the way you might have hugged the stuffed animal you went to bed with when you were little.
The world might be waist-high in a lot of shit, but whatever you do, don’t stop looking for your pony.
Good fortune and Godspeed.
Past Commencement addresses:
Along The Yellow Brick Road 