Twenty-One Years Is a Long Time. It Is Also Nothing.
Last week, I sat in the bleachers on a high school football field, in the kind of May Florida heat that makes your program fold over like a limp noodle, and I watched my marvelous twin nieces walk across a stage.
E. first, then M., together like always. Each one climbing the steps, shaking all the hands, accepting a diploma, finding each other on the other side of the stage.
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
When I say that I've been to a lot of graduations and heard a lot of commencement speakers, I don’t just mean my own and my siblings. My husband and I are just those people who shows up for everyone in the moments that matter. We grabbed tickets for pretty much all of our closest friends’ college graduations. We’re always there for close friends’ kids. So I’ve heard the good, the bad, and mostly the mediocre when it’s come to speeches.
This graduation made me reflect differently. Maybe because I watched these two girls grow from double trouble chaos-agent toddlers into the kind of young women who give you genuine hope for how bright the future can be. Maybe because, sitting there in that heat, my own graduation came rushing back to me with a clarity and a grief I wasn't expecting.
As I listened to my nieces’ commencement speakers talk about how high school was the “best moments of your life” and that “kindness will carry you through”, I thought not of my nieces (who are so loved, so bright, so likely to be caught when they stumble) but of their classmates somewhere in that crowd for whom this was not a sparkly life moment. The ones for whom life and others have perhaps not been so kind. For the teenagers sitting there with a pit of fear in their stomach.
Twenty-one years ago, I was the one in the cap and gown. And I had absolutely no idea what was coming in life. So here’s what I would say to that crowd if I were the one giving the speech…
What I Wish I Had Heard At Eighteen
At 18, I remember sitting on my own high school field, being so uncertain and weary. Everything in my world had come crashing around me a few months before graduation. There was a before-life and after-life.
I just remember feeling so old at the time. Maybe some of you are feeling that way too, while others are feeling all the joy and achievement of this important life moment.
To all of you, the ones feeling the joy, the ones feeling the sorrow, and the ones feeling something in-between, here is something I wish someone had said to me, loudly and clearly, on the day I graduated:
You have more time than you think. And you are allowed to use it.
Or in the words of Ms. Frizzle, “Take chances, make mistakes!”
The culture we've built around young people, especially now, with the speed of social media and the visibility of everyone else's highlight reel, communicates the opposite. It says: others have it figured out. What’s wrong with you. What’s your plan? You should already be building. You should have a brand, a niche, a trajectory, a five-year plan with quarterly benchmarks and a LinkedIn profile that tells a coherent story. What are you going to be when you grow up?
Sorry if that sentence gave you a minor panic attack just hearing it. It’s quite wrong, because in fact, life is long and has never looked like a five-year plan.
The not-knowing what to do next is not a failure. It is, in fact, a form of honesty to accept that life doesn’t look like a straight line. Life looks like a rugged valleys of mountains and peaks and a whole lot of plateaus.
As a person currently 21 years in the future from the moment you’re currently experiencing, I want to say that the moments that have meant the most to me were the ones where I didn’t actually have it figured out. Like showing up to a dinner party only knowing one other person (it’s how I met my husband). Or moving to a city on the other side of the country where I knew no one (here’s looking at you, Chico friends!). Or taking a step back from a career I was passionate about because my body was screaming at me to halt (and now I have two beautiful kids).
When I was in all of those moments, it felt like pain and uncertainty. It’s only with time and retrospection that I found all the beauty and the joy.
That’s why life is both long and short.
Through the jobs and the moves and the pivots and the moments when I genuinely didn't know what was coming next, I’ve learned that perseverance is less dramatic than we tend to imagine it.
We think of perseverance as the cinematic kind: the Rocky montage, the comeback, the triumphant moment when the thing you wanted finally arrives.
But somewhat boringly, perseverance looks like Tuesday morning… when you get up and eat breakfast even though your heart is aching. It looks like going to the party with your friends on Saturday night to make a memory even when you want to get some sleep. (Or for some of you, vice versa - it’s getting the sleep you need even when you want to party!) It looks like staying curious even when you feel stuck and frustrated. Like taking a small opportunity to try something new.
Perseverance is often uncomfortable. It is also the thing that will set you quietly apart from everyone else.
As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds…”
So be the person who stays in the arena, even when you feel the dust and sweat and blood.
What Has Changed, and What Hasn't
I will be honest with you: the world my nieces are graduating into is genuinely harder in some ways than the one I graduated into. The cost of everything is staggering. The noise is constant. The stakes of every decision feel enormous even when they're not, because someone somewhere is always there to document it.
And yet.
When I watched E. and M. cross that stage, what I saw wasn't anxiety. What I saw was the same thing I felt at eighteen, underneath all the uncertainty: drive. The desire to do something that matters. The hunger for a life that means something beyond the paycheck and the metrics and the résumé line.
That human drive has not changed in twenty-one years. Not in me. And apparently not in them, either.
That's the thing about humans, we are wired to seek meaning. We will work incredibly hard for things that feel important. We will endure a remarkable amount of discomfort in service of something we believe in. The drive doesn't go away. It just needs direction, and patience, and the occasional reminder that you're not behind.
You are not behind. There is no finish line you're going to miss.
A Few Final Thoughts
Since I seem to be in a reflective mood (blame the heat, the bleachers, and the way a graduation speech always manages to get to you even when you think you're too old for that sort of thing):
Be bad at things before you're good at them. Lean into the moments where you fall over in yoga class or make a big ugly streak on your art class canvas. Learning is just the beginning of every skill you'll ever have and there’s no end to how far you can stretch your brain.
Collect mentors and friends who tell you the truth. Encouragement is lovely, but the people who have the most cache in my life are the people who I know will tell it to me straight. They will challenge you not to settle for the ‘nice’ but to strive for the stretch.
Let your plan change. The plan changing is not the plan failing. It's the plan getting smarter.
Rest without guilt. You are a person, not a productivity machine, and the quality of your work will always reflect the quality of your life. You are more than the sum of the things you produce (I’m still learning this one, so please don’t judge me either!)
And finally: stay in touch with the reason you started doing the thing. Maybe you picked engineering as a career because you knew it would make good money and give you satisfying work. Maybe you chose it because you really love solving problems. Maybe you chose it because you like aircraft. Who knows? Everyone may have different paths that led them to the same place. Reflect on yours and if it’s no longer serving you, find a new path. It’s okay to set something down if you’ve lost the reason why you are doing it in the first place.
And For You, E. & M.
It’s been one of the rare privileges of my life to have known you for all of yours. From the tiniest preemies to these gorgeous, sure young adults that you are, every moment with you two has made mine richer for you being in it. And please know that the road ahead is going to surprise you in ways none of us can predict right now — some of it hard, more of it wonderful, all of it yours to make of it what you will.
And I hope that twenty-one years from now, you'll be the ones sitting in bleachers on a football field, watching someone you love walk across a stage. And you'll think about this time and your (now old) Aunt Laney. And I hope you'll think: wow, that was just the beginning.
Because it was.
XOXO,
Laney