Commencement

“So. Pretty nervous. I figured I’d start this way because it would be blatantly obvious even to those without the most astute intuition. Honestly if you were just passing by the stadium door and caught a glimpse my entire being would scream neurotic. Which is basically just a fancy word for anxiou-. I’m sorry I don’t mean to insult your intelligence or ramble but I managed to do both in one fell swoop. I don’t honestly know why I was chosen as the Salutatorian, I can’t remember one time where I did something remotely significant that would garner this honor, but reluctantly here I am. I have been racking my brain ever since I was chosen to give this speech and as I look out at all the families and loved ones, but especially my fellow classmates everything that I had planned seemed irrelevant. I wanted to talk about how great it is that we all made it and worked so hard. That we are all so lucky to have our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and so on, but I’m quickly realizing how ignorant that comes across. We don’t all have two parents or even any parent as much as it pains me to say, and for lack of a better word highschool sucked. It was awful, full of different smells, and personalities and each day was jam packed with drama and monotonous on and off again relationships featuring the same people. It’s exhausting, when we first walked into those doors four years ago we had no idea about the pain we would endure, the crippling insecurity, the fear of doing something one day that would ultimately shape how you would be viewed for the rest of your scholastic career. One slip up and you are forever etched in stone as whatever it was that was ill received by your peers. We all choose our own paths, but as much as I believe that to be true we also all choose each other’s paths. I think that I was chosen because I wasn’t significant, that maybe being irrelevant is what caused me to be significant, which is an oxymoron but it makes sense. We all endured the same experience in one way or another, but not everybody who started this journey with us is sitting in front of me today. We have a decent sized class so it’s possible that today or at our rehearsal you laid eyes on people you could have sworn to never have seen in your life. It’s also very possible that the person sitting to the right or left of you was the very person you were cubby neighbors with in 3rd grade if only due to last names. Probably had lockers within the same vicinity as you as well. I don’t want to make rash assumptions but they most likely aren’t the people that come to mind when you think about all the triumphs and failures that you were exposed to in your four years. But that can’t be true can it? If you had a conservatory of butterflies in your stomach the first time your crush asked you to any of the plethora of school dances that we had, or had your heart ripped out of your chest when your intense but fleeting crush told you they didn’t feel the same way. It most likely happened in the hallways possibly near your locker, or at your locker, which were alphabetical, in the same manner we are sitting in now. The classmates to your left and right have an abnormally high probability of having been there when all your dreams came true or when you saw them slip away. I used to watch this show, well I still revisit from time to time if I’m being honest but there was a quote that always stuck with me. Of course I’m going to paraphrase but it talked about how we take pictures of significant moments in our lives, when we were happiest but if you look in the background there could be a complete stranger, someone of no significance to you, but was in painstakingly close proximity when you felt the need to capture a moment, and now they’re forever apart of it too. Without even knowing. I think that is my point in all of this, we started together and everybody here finished together and that bonds us. High School was like a maze with 300 different paths to the exit but when it’s all said and done we all escape to hopefully bigger and better things. In five or ten years there will be a reunion and the bulk of us will return to this town and dress up, all of us showing our faces for different reasons whether its to show off our success in adulthood or maybe to see that one person that always made us wonder if they were the reason why nothing ever worked with anybody else. Whatever the reason we all show up. It might not seem like a big deal but if there was a party tomorrow night and all of us graduates were invited I would bet even less of us would show up as opposed to a reunion, because what we don’t realize is this was the time in our lives that shaped us, whether it was miserable or the best time of your life, the friends we made and the people we met all share something in common that if you move away you will only be able to touch from the outside. The comfortability of knowing this is where you came from will never falter, no matter how much we try or believe it’s dissipated, it’s there. In all of us. So to all of you, some who are legitimately seeing my face or hearing me speak for the first time, or were by my side through it all. I thank you sincerely, because whether you know it or not you gave me something that I’ll never forget. A place where I belong and where we all belong if we ever feel the urge for it. So with all that being said, I congratulate you, The class of 2021”