Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson

The youngest of my kids graduated from high school today. No, I'm not going to lament about where the time has run off to; how he was 2 years old just yesterday, etc. Even though that's all true. Sitting through the commencement ceremony and speech after rah-rah-sis-boom-bah speech, I got to thinking about what I might say if I were ever asked to deliver a verbal greeting card to a group of young graduates. I think I would speak the facts, as I have learned them, dispel the myths, clobber the cliches.

I would begin by saying that opportunity ISN'T at your doorstep waiting for you to answer. It's hidden out there in the world and if you don't go and seek and scour and seek some more you may never find it.

Good things don't come to those who WAIT. Waiting implies a passivity that'll get you frustrated very quickly. Good things come to those who work like crazy to make them happen, even when so much time passes that you forget why you even wanted it in the first place.

And what about that famous one-liner courtesy of Jerry McGuire; "You complete me." Wrong. YOU complete you. You came into this world a singular unit and you're going out the very same way. The faster you learn to rely on yourself, and not others to provide for you, the better off you'll be.

Your next day is not a guarantee. It's a gift. Assume at any given moment it can be taken away, just like that. If you choose to moan and groan your way through life, it'll pass the same way it will if you smile through it. So smile once in a while just for the hell of it.

The best laid plans will often go awry so make more than one. Plan B is likely to end up a better option so for God's sake, get a notebook and pen and draw a map if you have to, from here to there. Then follow it.

Anyway, chances are if I said any of those things I may not be invited back. Not a problem. I'll save my preaching for the choir. In the meantime may the Class of 2010 be the writers of their own stories, the directors of their plots and the authors of many happy endings before they reach The End.