The Graduation

 

The sun rose early on graduation day, happy to cooperate and participate as the fresh young forest of students assembled in the lush, green garden behind the school, for the ceremony, since it was forecast to be a bright, beautiful day and much more pleasant than the dusty, musky halls of the grammar school. Birds sang in the trees and butterflies fluttered about. Each fresh faced student full of promise, stood erect and optimistic ready to face the new day. The trees and bushes were confident for all those budding young people. The students were all green, lacking any meaningful experience but their open-mindedness and enthusiasm were refreshing for all that would follow.

 About the time when the children entered the school, the group of young tree saplings and bushes had been planted on the perimeter of the garden, all straight, adroit, green and fresh, full of all that was good, well fertilized and watered, trimmed and given ample sunlight to reach their full potential. They were filled with the joy of youth wishing to grow in the sun’s rays.

Each student had received proper nutrition, exercise, loving care proper education and training from their parents and teachers in order to shoot up and prosper in life with limitless potential, basking in the illuminating sunlight of a proper education, and these were the roots of their future success.

If the children faltered in this course wandering off on a limb into unpromising or dangerous directions, this would be dealt with as soon as it was detected, either by parents or teachers and the offending acquaintance or behavior weeded out, pruned and discarded ending this unfortunate foray before it branched into a serious malady, parasitically robbing and distracting the young person of their goals.

The young trees and bushes leaned forward to hear the graduation ceremony of the fresh green young people that they had grown up alongside. They were happy and excited for the children to go out into the world and conquer it.

This was but a distant memory now as the graduates filed back into the garden for their Fiftieth Reunion. They were not quite as bold and confident, no longer ten feet tall and bulletproof, but here just the same.

It was clear that the ravages of time had taken its toll. The battle scars of illness, bankruptcy, divorce, and disappointment with themselves and others shown on the faces of the assembled graduates, some withered, battered and torn by life’s vicissitudes and unfairness, not unlike the trees and bushes twisted, withered and gnarled by storms, pestilence and hurricanes. It has been said that Darwin turned Thoreau’s serene meadow into a silent battleground with each species struggling to snuff out the competition for sunlight and nutrition to propagate its own kind. The serenity being an illusion for the unobservant, hiding an inaudible battle.

But there were also the strong humans still erect and having shrugged off life’s challenges, forming deep roots in the community while having branched out in a network of friends, business partners and professional acquaintances, aggressively defiant of all that life would throw in their path.

Some of the trees and bushes also had remained green and strong reaching to the sun as they grew and intertwined with their fellows.

It was a good day to celebrate the power of determination and positive thinking over adversity.

Jim

Dec 2020