Dear Class of 2020

Hats off to ya, Class of 2020!

Friends, tonight was supposed to be graduation at our little gem of a high school on a hill in the middle of nowhere.  The place would have been packed. 

The thing about graduation is that they're kind of the same every year.  They follow a time-tested formula.  The faces, hairstyles, shoes, and class colors change, but for decades, everybody knew what to expect from a high school graduation.

And yet, each high school graduation was also uniquely of-the-moment for the class it was honoring.

This year, though.  Whoa.  Some schools are doing Drive-Thru graduations.  Some, like ours, opted for a virtual ceremony.  I think ours will be broadcast tonight. 

There was no win-win way to go about celebrating the Class of 2020.  It was going to feel like a short-change, no matter what.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

I think if there's anything Being The Class of 2020 should impart on the people who are The Class of 2020 is that this year has given you a crash-course in making the most of what you've been dealt.  You can, and are certainly well within your rights to stomp your feet and rail at the heavens that All of This has gone down during Your Year.  COVID-19 wiped away better than a quarter of your Senior Year.  It took away your Senior Trip.  Obliterated Prom.  Irrevocably changed the Graduation that you'd envisioned and expected back when you began your final year of high school last fall. 

None of us knows how this is going to turn out.  Not even the adultiest of adults among us can even venture a guess about what kind of world we're sending you out into as you leave high school behind.  We've never seen anything like this.

You have every right to throw a bit of a fit over all of this.  Shed some tears.  Get mad.  maybe you've already done this.  Don't expect that to be a one-and-done kind of deal-e-oh.  Grief isn't a straight line from Grief to Fine.  It's a scribble.  Palimpsests and palimpsests of pain and healing and more pain and healing, layered over one another. You'll think you moved past all this, and be hit out of the blue by a fresh wave.  A memory of something that never got to happen.  A stray and impossible wish.  Most adults have this.  We grieve our youth and all the things, friends, and people we've lost since.  We grieve dreams we once had and the versions of ourselves we held before Life took hold of us and altered the courses we thought we were on.

But as I sit here thinking of the Class of 2020, I mourn that you didn't get to experience the Big Moments that sweeten some of that bitter at high school's end.  My heart breaks for you.

And yet.

Maybe that heart break and heartache ought to be dialed back to a more manageable volume.  Let's swing this all around and get a different angle.

Remember what I said about graduations and senior years following a familiar formula.  There are milestones we pass, rituals we carry out.  It isn't just our rituals and big moments that follow a familiar pattern.  Those patterns kind of take intellectual pressure off us.  They're a framework, and all we have to do is climb up the frame like ivy.  The ivy doesn't think about where it's growing.  It just follows its armature up and up.  Everything besides that frame is just Variations on a Theme. 

Way back when I graduated from high school, then college, then graduate school, all the graduation speakers talked about how they needed us and our fresh, young perspective.  They talked about how we were young and full of hope and energy and we were going to Change Things.  Things needed radical reimagining.  And we were going to be the people who radically reimagined and radically reengineered.

Nope.  My generation has changed the world some, but not as much as we'd hoped.  Not as much as the ones who came before us hoped.  We fall into patterns.  We fall into the patterns of our parents and grandparents.  I guarantee that the Class of 2000 heard "We need you and your Energy, your Imaginations, your Ideas..."  Just the same as the Classes of 1980, 1960, 1940, and 1920 heard it.  I think this is where some of our intergenerational friction comes into play.  At this ripe moment, when we're leaping from adolescence into adulthood, there's so much potential, and our elder statesmen adults are at points in their lives that they realize they didn't quite live up to their complete potential, so they want to live vicariously through the next generation.  "Finish our work."  That's a lot to put on an 18-year-old kid. 

We've spent generations as a society doing things kind of the same, over and over and over again, in an endless cycle.  "It has happened before, and it will happen again."  Sometimes there's a really big Black Swan that comes out and disrupts... wars, pandemics, economic collapse... but rarely do we get something that shocks the system enough to really reset.  And we really did need a reset.  The way things were before wasn't working all that great.  It was better than it is now, but there was a lot wrong, too.  And we were so gridlocked in it, we couldn't get ourselves out.

Class of 2020, everything that's happening right now, during Your Year might still feel like a curse, especially when you're thinking of everything you didn't get to do because of it.  But what if it's actually a Gift?

What if this is the moment where Everything Changes?  What if the world is finally shocked enough to shock us out of our ingrained patterns, and you get to lead the way?  You're kind of in a unique position in that you're just starting out, and we're all just starting over.  In whatever the New Normal is, we're all going to be beginners, in a way.  You hold as much expertise and authority as the rest of us do. 

Own the audacity to have optimism that This Time, Everything Is Going To Be Different and Better Than It Was Before.  Nothing changes until something changes, and we established adults have muddled through trying to get new results from the same old practices for long enough.  Straighten your shoulders, raise your chins, look us all in the eyes and own your place in this world. We need you.  We need your help.  We need your youthful exuberance.  We need your fresh ideas.  We need your strength.  We need your resilience.

My Dear Class of 2020, you stand to gain far more than what has been taken from you.  Have your moments of grief, and then Rise Up.  Be brave and bold.  Make mistakes. Learn from them.  Fail upward. Do not let the present storm make you hide in the dark and wait for a better time for you to let us know you're here and ready. 

Now, more than ever, we need your light. 

Hats off to you, Class of 2020!