Friends, you are supporting each other in so many ways. Today, please join me here on Twitter for a virtual graduation ceremony! @LucyinNorCal has completed her Master's in Child Development! 🎉 Please send your best congratulatory gif.
Please also share any commencement-worthy sentiments (in gif form or not!)
And gather around for this commencement address: Dearly beloved, we are gathering to celebrate Lucy and her colleagues in the class of 2020.
You deserve a robe and a cap and a walk across the stage as an administrator poorly pronounces about 30% of your names and the audience applauds even though they've been repeatedly asked to hold to the end.
You deserve that ritual, not because it is a perfect one, but because you expected it, because you did all of the things you were supposed to do to earn it. I am sorry that you are not getting what you expected and earned. There is nothing easy in that.
Because we cannot facilitate the beautiful awkwardness and camaraderie of an in-person ceremony today, we are celebrating you as we can. Some of us are lighting candles. Some of us are sending a kind thought or a low-key funny gif. All of us should be partaking in cookie cake.
The importance of your achievements is not diminished by social distance. You are stepping into a world armed with knowledge that the rest of us desperately need.
Understanding who we are, how we are formed, what traumatizes us and what uplifts us, how we can best learn, how we make sense of the world around us -- I cannot think of more important skills for this era in the history of our complex, wild, wonderful, dangerous, strange species
You are needed. That need might take forms you don't expect, but don't doubt for a minute that your study has been worthwhile. You are valued. Not everyone you encounter will express that well or in ways that feel affirming, but don't doubt for a minute that your work matters
You are doing enough. It might not feel like it every day or any day, but don't doubt for a minute that you are holding your link in our human chain with vigor and applomb.
We would wish you a different ceremony today. We would wish you a different world in which to deploy your knowledge and skill. What magic you could create on the perfect canvas!
There will be days when you think, "I didn't sign up for this level of suffering or dysfunction or for the rudeness of this parent or the ineptitude of this supervisor or for the gazillion ways I am being let down by the world around me."
You'll be right every time, and, of course, being right is worth less than a pumpkin spice latte. We cannot wish away that unfortunate truth
So we wish you instead resillience and the capacity to keep joy playing in the background. Joy in your relationships. Joy in the questions you dare to ask. Joy in the ways you keep showing up. Joy in the occasional pumpkin spice latte.
Joy in the way you are holding your link in our human chain.
Joy will play quietly many days, especially in the middle of a global pandemic. When you have the opportunity to turn up the volume, please do.
Please unselfconsciously revel in the good you create -- every time you make yourself or someone else laugh, every moment you stand your ground in the face of daunting opposition, every second you remain hopeful against all the odds.
Please don't take yourself so seriously that you forget to dance in your kitchen to the best music the 1990s has to offer. Please eat dinner with your people, whoever they are, as often as possible. Please keep your calendar open for the brilliance that boredom can create.
Please speak out loud to your plants, ingredients, and deceased loved ones. Please work outside whenever the weather permits. Please see enthusiasm as evidence of a life well-lived instead of an absence of sophistication.
Please be brave enough to change what isn't working, even if it once worked quite well.
Please understand that you can't influence people without being in relationship with them. Please keep the best relationship with your own heart.
Congratulations to you. You finished what you started when it wasn't easy and you didn't feel like it every day because you believe it matters. You are right that it does.
And so do you. And so does this celebration. And so does every moment of our lives, even and especially those moments that most disappoint our expectations, that most deprive us of what we have earned.
We cannot really make plans, except that we plan to keep holding up our link in the human chain. Thank you for all you have done and are doing and will do. Here's to you, @LucyinNorCal , today and always.
