WE ALL have a different reaction to the uninvited reality of graduation. Some of us would rather face a weed-whacker vasectomy. Others are somewhat more eager to get out of here and go someplace where the natives don't speak about Mr. Jefferson as if he's still alive and kicking, wandering around the hallowed hills of Monticello like Moses with a stone-tablet carving of the Honor Code in his arms.
But most of us are somewhere in between. Sad to leave, yet excited to go. Ready to take a bite out of the real world, but a little scared about how -- and where -- it might take a bite out of us.
We've heard all kinds of words thrown at us lately about what's called for in a college grad these days. Hard work. Compassion. Determination. Justice. Courage is sometimes added to this list, but its true value is commonly obfuscated by the pleasantries and polite smiles of our well-wishing elders.
At this time in our lives, cowardice is more seductive than ever. It's not an overt cowardice, in the sense that it's not likely to garner any blame or scorn for those who indulge it. It is rather more subtle and much more insidious because it often goes unnoticed by all outside observers. This is the easy cowardice of the path of least resistance, which entices and threatens everyone in its own private way.
Every day, some people decide to go to law school or settle for a job because it's the safe thing to do. Because it's a reliable, relatively certain ticket to a fairly respectable job that pays decently well. Not because it's what they really want to do. Not because they dream about being lawyers or accountants.
These people need courage. Courage to live according to their own vision and not someone else's. Courage to sketch a blueprint of their own lives, roll up their sleeves, and start building brick by brick.
No generation has ever enjoyed more wealth, more freedom or more opportunity than ours. And yet so many of us succumb to cowardice by so readily selling short our longings, our hopes, and our aspirations. So many of us play it safe, conceding a quiet defeat before the fight even starts. Why?
This life is a one-way, non-refundable ticket. You only get one trip. If you don't act now to make your life what you want it to be -- something you can unflinchingly affirm each morning when you wake up -- when will you act? After you go into debt under a pile of tuition bills? After you get locked into some boring career path?
Carpe diem is a cliché, but it got that way for a reason. That hackneyed Latin phrase embodies the accumulated wisdom of thousands of generations of human history trying to tell us something. Don't lead a life of quiet desperation.
Have the audacity of will to ask yourself honestly what you want out of life. Whatever you want -- a quiet family life, or a high-powered corporate law career -- just make sure that it's you who really wants it.And then have the strength, the tenacity, the grit, the defiance to go out and get it.
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