Before life hits
— positive expectations
Commentary
by JoELLEN COLLINS
I always
cry at graduations, and this last one at The Community School was no
exception. I knew the class well, had watched many of the students grow
up, and had also taught them briefly for 10th Grade English. They are an
outstanding group of scholars, athletes and, most importantly, decent
and caring individuals who will contribute to society. I share a pride
in their accomplishments. So, why should I cry?
I am a
sap for all ceremonies of passage: weddings do me in, and funerals are
beyond my control. I hate to say goodbye. I know part of it is my
sentimental, emotional nature. But, in the case of graduations, I think
it is more. Like the audiences for "Romeo and Juliet," we
observers know more about life’s perils they will face than do the
characters portrayed on the stage. We have knowledge they do not
possess.
Any
graduation ceremony attendee wishes the very best that life can offer
for those still unlined and fresh faces. Unfortunately, our hopes are
dimmed by the realization that any of those young graduates who really
experience life will also suffer pain and disappointment. And, while we
may wish to provide them with the most protection possible, in order to
grow successfully, they will have to take the bad with the good.
Perhaps
this is why predictions of success at 17 don’t always come true. The
boy chosen as "Doing the Most for JB" (my high school) was
eventually arrested for a heinous crime. That’s a dramatic exception,
of course: most of the rest of my yearbook honorees have lived positive
and contributory lives. Then there was short, studious Leo who, in the
reunion stories passed on by my fellow teens, got his M.D. from Harvard
and married a beautiful and bright woman, putting the rest of us to
shame.
I thought
about the optimism of a generation that doesn’t comprehend what is
ahead when I visited the UC Berkeley campus recently to research my
family history. I scanned several yearbooks from the late 1930s, noting
the saddle shoes, lace "dickey collars," and tight curls of
the senior class women, searching for a face of some young woman from
Texas who may have been my birth mother. That proved fruitless, but I
came across one yearbook that stunned me with its portent. The 1938
yearbook was dedicated to those countries that typified "the
turmoil prevalent throughout the world." Germany, with its swastika
carefully recreated, was touted for its "glory in the 1936 Olympic
Games" and for having a "progressive commercial spirit."
Italy was represented by these words: "The Fascist figure on an
ambitious poster superimposed upon the Italian shield indicates the
intense national spirit of the country." Japan: "The rising
sun of Asiatic domination is depicted by the central map and by the
radiating red stripes, the only nation in the world with both a first
class army and navy."
How
ironic these words seem as those graduates set off to a late-depression
world soon to be dominated by the events of Pearl Harbor and the Axis
coalition of World War II described in those capsule tributes. Many of
the handsome graduates in the senior class of 1938 probably fought in
that war, and many probably died. But their view of the world and their
hopefulness was evident in that yearbook and in the expressions of their
faces underneath the mortarboards of the Class of 1938.
Reviewing
the film "American Graffiti," I was taken by the ending where
the futures of the protagonists are revealed. Throughout the movie
covering the summer after graduation, each has been poised on the edge
of adult life. The events of that summer change the plans of some. Ron
Howard’s character chooses to stay in Modesto with his sweetheart
instead of going to college. We see, in the postscript, that he became
an insurance salesman. Another, we learn, was later to be declared
"missing in action" in Vietnam. Only we, the audience, see
their futures.
The Class
of 2002 may be better equipped than I was to enter the adult world; they
are certainly more prepared with knowledge of the devastation that
hatred can produce. They are also better educated. I doubt that I could
pass some of the difficult classes they have already taken; the
knowledge explosion has resulted in a challenging curriculum. And,
unhappily for many of them, they have learned to deal with issues I didn’t
have to confront until I was an adult. Some have survived parental
divorces and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Most have experienced the
pressures to succeed early. One may look at childhoods perhaps cut short
by the exigencies of a society bent on seeing 15-year-olds as sexually
active participants in lifestyles portrayed in tempting ways on film and
television and over the Internet.
I am
thankful that we don’t know the outrages that may await us. Otherwise,
we all might lose the sense of expectation of beauty that young
graduates radiate. And I hope there won’t be any more Pearl Harbors or
September 11’s for them. The bittersweet reality of living is that
hard fought joy is often attained from traveling through disillusion and
pain. In spite of the challenges awaiting them, I hope for the Class of
2002 a strong and productive life, one filled with the rewards they
richly deserve.