Convocation 2014

I was asked to speak at our high school's convocation ceremony. A commencement address type talk.  It was a HUGE honour.  I love teaching.  To be asked to speak to the graduating class, by the students organizing the event, meant a lot to me.  Here is the talk I gave.  Oh, by the way, I brought a Gandalf staff with me, (because, I used the same quote as the post before this one) and a lightsaber.  There was pretend magic and confetti cannons.  It was a blast.  If I ever get pictures I will put them up on Instagram or something.  It might make more sense.  It was fun and an absolute honour.

Anyway, here is talk;

Well, 20 years ago, I had my graduation. I’m going to start off with a short story.  I was an MC for our banquet and I thought it would be hilarious to fake faint.  So I talked to a few buddies so that they would for sure laugh so that everyone would know it was a joke.  I started talking, and then proceeded to pretend to get light headed and fall on the stage.  One guy laughed, the others just stayed quiet, so to this day, I don’t know who thought I actually fainted.

Moral of the story, it’s not the first time I have made a fool of myself speaking at a grad so if something goes sideways, we’ll just roll with it.

Seriously, it truly is an honour for me to stand here and take part in this with you.  Graduation is really a weird thing man.  I remember my high school grad being a bit anticlimactic because it was built up into this thing and I didn’t know really what it should look like, and by the time I thought I had figured it out, the night was over. That’s what I kind of remember.  I was having fun, and I knew I was graduating, but it’s hard to know what graduating means until you have enough life to develop the hindsight to realize what it was.

So what is it really all about?  Well here’s one way someone could put it:  You are leaving the school that is Winston Churchill and entering the school of life.  Did you see what I tried to do there?  I tried to say that in a low deep voice tailored for maximum impact, then I paused, looked over the crowd, waited for it to sink in and then felt good about myself.  Because you should remember that point.  Remember it children, remember.

I said it, but not because I think it’s a great phrase, I said it because just wanted to illustrate how cheesy that is.  I mean, you’re not just now entering into the school of life right?  What the heck have the past 18ish years been about?  According to low voice dramatic guy you haven’t yet begun to learn about life. It’s flat out bonkers to think that you haven’t already been learning lessons at the school of life.  Life has been happening to you this whole time.  Trust me.  I’m a bio teacher. 

So what does it really mean? To me, what today signifies, is that, you are about to start the journey of figuring out what YOU want your life to look like. 

YOU.

You are going to start having control over a lot of your own destiny now.  For your parents, today is significant in that it is a symbol of you leaving them.  It’s an exciting and emotional day for parents, probably even more so than it is for you, so if they want to hug you or kiss you a few more times than normal today just deal with it.

Life is a strange thing.  I always get my biology classes to think about the fact that their thoughts are really just a smattering of electric and chemical signals passing through different parts of their brain.  It’s crazy.  Everything you think you are sensing is just a series of non-living processes.

Your body just works.  Your heart is beating right now and you don’t even think about it.   Till just now that I mentioned it now you’re all thinking about it.  What’s insane is that your mind interprets all these things and can tell you that you are experiencing joy, pain, confusion, elation.  A plethora of feelings and emotions and thoughts are propagated by things that aren’t actually alive.  Isn’t that awesome? 

Life is also strange because at some moments throughout your life, you can’t possibly believe it could be any better and at other times you can’t conceive of how it could possibly be worse. All the parents, family, friends and teachers in the stands today have had these thoughts. 

5 years ago this August I had one of the best things happen to me, followed by the worst thing that has ever happened to me occur within 4 days of each other.

On August 26^th 2009 my wife Krista and I welcomed into the world our third child, Sophie, and my 6 year old son Jaxon and 4 year old daughter grace were excited for a new sister and that Grandmas and Grandpas and aunts and uncles were going to be hanging out to see the new baby.  A new baby is a symbol of innocence that can rarely be matched in this world. 

When Soph was born, it was a joyous occasion.  Honestly, if you have kids some day, you can’t get a happier, more pure moment.  I’m sure your parents can remember when you were born.  It’s scary too of course, becoming a parent.  I remember bringing Jaxon home when he was born, and Krista and I kind of looked at each other as we walked into the house kind of wondering, “What the heck do we do now? When are this kid’s parents coming to get him…wait…WE’RE his parents”

Parenting is a fascinating thing.  I thought that my parents knew what they were doing when they were raising me.  When I had my own kids I realized that parents don’t know a lick about what’s going to happen.  They do their best.  Sometimes they make mistakes.  Sometimes they have things that dog them in their lives that you don’t understand.  We are all still working on ourselves.  You will be working on yourself the rest of your life.

Anyway, we were going through these feelings again when Soph came home.  Really happy, and a bit confused, because we didn’t really know what it would be like to have three kids at home instead of two and all kinds of other stuff like that. But there was a peace about it, and we were happy.

A couple days later my life had changed from one of the happiest moments to the saddest, most confusing moment I have had yet to face.  My wife Krista experienced a pulmonary embolism the day after we brought Sophie home.  It’s a blood clot that caused problems with breathing and blood flow and she passed away the next day.  I didn’t know what to do. I know many of you students know this story.  That was just about 5 years ago now.

I don’t tell you this to gain sympathy, or for you to feel sorry for me.  The thing about life is that it isn’t all about good times. There is loss and there are hard times.  Each of us goes through hard times.  I am not the only one.

I tell you these things because 5 years ago I could not have ever pictured standing right here right now talking to a group of great graduates.  In those few days after Krista passed away I never knew how I was going to get to the next day, let alone 5 years into the future.

(Get Gandalf staff)

Now, you all probably can tell that any guy brings a replica staff from a fictional wizard to a talk at graduation is either crazy or has been impacted by something that character did or said.  I’m sure it’s a lot of both for me.

Anyway, I’m a big fan of the Lord of the Rings, and the movies, and there are words spoken by Gandalf (a wise wizard) to Frodo (a Hobbit) that sum up the reality we have to face when hard times arrive in our lives.

The context is that Frodo had a magic ring come into his possession, which in the past had been used to do the worst kinds of evil in his world.  It is a symbol of evil.  Once the ring came into his possession his life was never the same, and was much more difficult and frightening than his life before. The future was unknown. So on the way to get rid of this ring, a group of characters get lost in a series of caves and in this bleakness, Frodo talks with Gandalf about his plight.

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil.

I get emotional about this because I feel that, that is how I have to live my life.  Krista’s death was not mine to decide, I have to decide what to do with the time that is given to me.  I can’t be stuck wishing that things had never happened and never move forward.  You will come into struggles in your life, your own “ring”, what are you going to do with the time that is given to you.

The second part of that is that “There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil”

For me, a faith in God is the major focal point in my life.  It grounds me.  I’m not going to preach at you or anything, if you wanted to talk about faith later I would be happy too.  That’s not the point of this.  I just feel that we all need some grounding somewhere, something that represents the “other forces in this world besides the evil ones”, so that when unsolvable problems come, with questions that we can’t answer, we can find a place of peace.  Many of us don’t search for that grounding until something horrible happens.  I would encourage your to define what your source of strength is.  If you can’t, then search for it so that when hard times come, you can cling to your source.

Now there is no magic in this staff, but there is magic for me in those words.  So let me put this thing away….

Go to put staff away. ----then pause and say---you know I don’t think there is any magic in this staff, but how do I KNOW there is no magic? Well a science perspective would say I need to test it.  So let’s try this once.  You need to help me though.  ON the count of three, and after I say three, let’s all yell out, You Shall Not Pass!

Well apparently, Grad has bestowed magic on this place…

You also need to understand that you can’t have a full life living in isolation. 

I love the idea of love.  The word Love can mean a whole lot of different things to a whole lot of different people in a whole lot of different situations.  One of my favourite authors N.T. Wright said, “ There’s a problem about this particular blessed word, “love”.  The English word “love” is trying to do so many different jobs at the same time that someone really ought to sit down with it and teach it how to delegate.” 

Words like “love” are just things we’ve invented to communicate thoughts and expectations.  When those words don’t match the actions it can cause hurt.  Nobody wants to be involved in a friendship or a loving relationship with someone who is constantly failing to live up to their promises.  Nobody likes a liar.  Your words need to match your actions.  Trust is the key in any relationship, whether it is romantic, or friendship, or family.  Trust is the base of love.  I think love is the base of life.  So I believe it follows that we should live in a trustworthy manner.  Integrity is important.

My late wife Krista used to say, “Jared, don’t overpromise and under deliver.”  I hope that you take that into account when you move forward in your life.  Say what you mean, live up to what you promise people.  If you don’t, apologize and learn from that experience. 

Grad is sometimes an event that is emotional for many because the milestone can remind us of times we have failed to live up to our words and promises.  This happens when we think of our family relationships or our friendships. Big moments remind us of mistakes that we wished could be remedied.  Things that have sat undiscussed for a long time, but need to be fixed.  I hope that in each of your lives, this day can serve as a renewal for you to move into your adult life free of regrets.  It’s never too late to say I’m sorry, or “I love you.”

I also think you need to follow your dreams, but live up to your responsibilities.

Let’s say I had a dream of entering the field of interpretive dance.  All it would mean is that I quit my job, and move my family to New York where I can make it.  Look, that’s stupid.  Not because I wouldn’t be a great interpretive dancer, but the upheaval I would be subjecting my family too would be counter to my responsibilities as a father. I would encourage you to evaluate what your decisions are by a combination of your feelings, wise council and true assessment of your responsibilities.

Don’t get me wrong.  Living responsibly doesn’t mean that you should never take a risk.

We all love stories, movies, adventures.  Any character we find fascinating takes risks.  They come through things, they fight through.  The characters that are loved, step up and take risks they need to take but often they do it for the sake of others.

If your life is a story, what kind of character would you want to see yourself as?

Time has the ability to fly by, or crawl.  5 years ago can sometimes seem like yesterday, and other times it seems like a lifetime ago.  I can’t explain that.  Think of where you were 5 years ago. That was the end of grade 7 for you.  Do you remember what you were like going into grade 8?  Do you see yourselves now?  Think about what could happen 5 years from now.  Do you have any concept of that?  I don’t.  5 years is like an eternity really.  So many things can happen in our lives.

A wise martial arts master once said, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift.  That is why they call it the present.” That was Master Uguay from Kung Fu Panda.   I hope you can take the gift of life that has been given to you today.  If you are in tough time, even if it’s the hardest time in your life, remember, you may not know what tomorrow looks like, but keep going.  Honestly, things can get better.

Also remember, there is just as much chance of great things happening in your life, (probably more so) as hard things. When was the last time you had trouble sleeping because you were worried about how the next day would turn out? I’ve found that when that has happened to me, usually whatever I was worried about ended up looking different, or even as close to as bad as I played it up to be.  The reality is that tomorrow is full of opportunity, we don’t know what good is coming either.  We can’t forget that.

So to sum up:

You need to identify your source of strength to weather the storms,

You need to love others more than you love yourself, life is best lived in community and not in isolation

You need to follow your dreams, but live up to your responsibilities and your words.

You also need to give Jared a million dollars if you ever win the lottery.  How else am I going to afford to get into the interpretive dance game?

Love you guys and girls from the Churchill Grad Class of 2014.  I really do.  Thanks.