Dear new graduate: It’s all uncertain
Letter to a new graduate on embracing the middle place between uncertain times and one’s shifting axis, and living life, one tear and one giggle at a time.
A book, this book, lies open on your lap. Are you reading it through for the first time? The second? The hundredth? Are you embarking on this new, fresh, terrifying life, or are you looking back, having found this volume in some long-lost box, smiling on the words inside and all your life has held but had not yet come to pass?
No matter.
This book is a time capsule and a tribute. In it lie, too, the kind and supportive words of those you love and who love you. Wear these words like a cloak as you step anew into the world, for they are meant as so. These stories, photos, quotes and well-meant words of wisdom are offered to hold, keep and warm you in uncertain times (which I would offer is most times — for nothing in this world is certain or fixed, no matter how hard or long we cling to people, things or places).
Beauty lies in the constant shift on our axis: it does. It may take you a while to see the beauty — it did me.
But between the uncertain and the constant shift, there is a middle place — of life, of possibility, of choice. Enjoy that middle place for as long as you are there. Come to love that place of possibility. And then? Make a decision that fills you with love, excitement or satisfaction (satisfaction is about doing the hard things, yes, not because you love them, but because you must). Saying yes to one path will mean you will say no to others, of course. Such is the way of living. You won’t know if you are making the “right” choice as you navigate your own needs and shifts and the uncertainty of life around you.
No matter.
You will say yes. YES! Your yes will close some doors. It will open others. One path will lead to another. One person will lead to another. One tear, one giggle, to many, many others. Such is the way of living, and yes, loving.
It won’t be perfect, your life, but it will be yours — the one you will look back on with love and regret when you find this book again in a long-lost box. Dear one, you will stumble, you will fall. You will make mistakes. And you will grow. You will keep growing. And loving. And living. And my hope is, you’ll keep saying YES until the breath is taken out of you, and there are no words left.
