Your Education Is About To Begin

Dear Graduate: Congratulations! Give yourself a pat on the back.

After studying numerous subjects and sometimes wondering how you would possibly ever use what you were being taught, it’s time to either begin laying that knowledge aside or to find out just how important it really was to learn.

After years of doing what others have said was best for you, it’s time for you to start making many decisions for yourself.

What you do, where you go from this point forward, will likely play a bigger part in shaping your life than anything you have done previously.

Your high school graduation is an achievement along the path of your emerging life, but your education is really about to begin.

Think for a moment about this achievement. You have come far, but this is not something you have accomplished on your own. Rather, it is an achievement of many people, all focused on you.

First of all there is your family. Your parents not only brought you into the world, but also delighted in your first words and were thrilled by your first steps. Each stage of your development was mysteriously interwoven with what you were yet to learn, yet to experience.

It was your parents who led you by the hand to your first day of school and who, most likely in hesitation, let go of your hand to watch you run off to learn, not only from your teacher but from your new classmates as well.

It is your parents who will lay their hands upon you now and say, “Congratulations! I am proud of you!”

Then there were your teachers. Most will fade into memory. Some you will remember because you thought they were out to cause you mental pain and discomfort. A handful - maybe only one or two - you will long remember as having touched you, moved you, inspired you, made a difference in who you are now and who you shall become.

As you think about your achievement - and theirs - take a moment now or in the future to thank them.

Finally, there is that mysterious unseen hand that has guided you. Some call it a soul or spirit, others call it fate. Whatever you might call it, there is something beyond yourself, something greater than you. It is what you were destined to become, something imprinted in your heart and personality, something still calling that demands you to continue to grow and learn.

Many others have had their hand on you as you have grown and learned.

Can you look back and see this as a blessing?

Your achievement is all about what you have been given and have received, but your education from this point forward is more about what you are able and willing to give.

The question, now, is not what have you gained, but rather what are you now going to give?

What will you offer to others? How will you touch the developing lives of those whom you will yet come in contact with?

As you have been blessed by the touch of others in your life, may your continuing education and achievement be in the bestowal of blessings by your touch upon others who will now learn from you!