High school graduation season is upon us, the time of year when communities across America celebrate the accomplishments of young people receiving their high school diplomas.
Graduation is a bittersweet occasion, marking both an ending and a beginning. For the grads, they will realize that the past four years, which they began as adolescents, are now culminating as they step into adulthood. They will be saying goodbye to their friends, teachers, and mentors who guided them through their formative high school years.
For every parent, watching a son or daughter stride across the stage as their name is called to receive their diploma will bring a flood of emotions, pride, and nostalgia. The sentiments expressed in the song, Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof, often come to mind:
Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don’t remember growing older
When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn’t it yesterday when they were small?
Even those without a direct connection to a graduate will smile at the sight of brightly-colored balloons and other festive decorations marking graduation parties in our neighborhoods. We will recall our own high school graduations and think about the happiness and expectations that filled our hearts and minds at that stage of our lives.
Today’s graduates will be tomorrow’s leaders who soon will be shaping our future. We will be counting upon them to make the world a better place. Let’s hope that we have supplied them with the tools they need to ensure that they can meet the challenges we are facing today and in the years ahead, both for the sake of their own generation and of those before and after.
We offer our heartfelt congratulations to the graduates and their families, wishing them sunshine and blue skies not only on their Graduation Day, but in the years ahead.