Shining A Light On Graduates’ Path To Happiness
A riddle: What is the meaning of high school graduation? The answer: To provide a forum for older folks to give foolish advice to the young.
Air-brushed graduation pictures of the smiling senior arrived in many a mailbox this week. (Remember, folded cash beats a folded shirt or blouse any day…)
Such video moments seem to compel the classes of ‘68, ‘78, or ‘88 to dig deeply into their personal life stories for words of wisdom.
Dig as they might, the problem quickly is unearthed.
The passing of years doesn’t seem to provide much insight into achieving the one, most-often spoken aspirations of the newly graduated.
“I want to be happy.” The general aspiration to be happy, to live a happy life, to happily pursue a career, raise a happy family and be happy with service to a community appears in dozens of valedictory comments published in the paper a few days ago.
Abby Hornstein, a valedictorian from Mead High School, said of her future: “To always be happy and live without regrets.”
Peter Lattin, North Central High School valedictorian: “Ski the powder and to be happy.”
The list could go on.
If happiness itself wasn’t cited as a life goal, happiness as an adjective to other goals often was: a happy career, a happy family, the happiness of contributing to a community.
Givers of graduation advice probably will provide long lists of suggestions on how to land a good job and be a good parent.
Compared to prescribing the formula for happiness, the ingredients needed for a successful career are easy. Think computers; show up for the interview without your ears, nose or tongue pierced.
Advice on family life won’t be as forthcoming. Think of your spouse’s wishes; don’t have children too soon; stay in it for the long haul.
But advice on how to be happy?
Those chatty aunts and wise uncles may offer up a generosity about “pursuing your passion.” If they were honest, however, and if they have lived with a whole heart and half a brain, they will stop short of offering a simple formula for happiness.
If they say happiness comes with money, or success in a career, or even a loving family, they will be telling half-truths.
In his book, “Home from Nowhere,” James Howard Kunstler rather gloomily asserts that unhappiness more often is the byproduct of the striving American culture.
“Unhappiness is manifest at every level of the natural scene,” he notes, because “We have used our unprecedented wealth and technical ability to construct a massive edifice to deny life’s essential nature… .”
In short, life isn’t just one big cartoon. It’s not just a fun ride at a theme park, not a long kiss at sunset.
These things can make us happy, but these are not the nature of life, Kunstler argues. “Life,” he says “is full of surprises, dilemmas, hazards, pitfalls, vicissitudes, calamities and amazing reversals!”
So, where might happiness-seeking graduates like Abby and Peter go looking for happiness?
They must look in that same messy place called life. Job, family, community all bring happiness along with author Kunstler’s list of challenges.
It’s just not possible to have the happiness without the other stuff. Happiness, when it appears, might best be described as a feeling of genuine affection for life itself in all its glow and darkness.
Happy to be alive says it all.
This sounds simplistic but really it isn’t. A few years ago when I was in the midst of a routine struggle over my job, my family and where I lived, my friend John Brennan gave me a gift.
It was a single sheet of paper with the words of an American Indian elder named Oriah Mountain Dreamer.
Recently, when I again began pondering the secret to happiness, the sheet appeared again.
It is entitled “The Invitation.”
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from God’s presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes!’
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
For the class of ‘98, I humbly submit that in these words can be found the secret to happiness.