What Lies Within (my graduation speech)

There is a universal truth that we all have to face, whether we want to or not, everything eventually ends.

As much as I’ve looked forward to this day in my life, I’ve always hated endings.

The last day of summer, the final chapter of a really good book, or parting ways with a really good friend.

But endings are inevitable, they are a part of life that we will never be able to shake. Leaves begin to fall, you close your book, and you say goodbye.

Today, for us, is an ending. It’s the last day of high school, the last chapter in a part of our story of life, and for many of us, the goodbye to close friends we’ve known for most of our lives.

Today, we say goodbye to everything that was familiar, everything that was comfortable. And it is going to be scary no matter how brave we are.

Courage is a funny thing, it doesn’t just happen naturally. You don’t get courage just by telling yourself that you are not going to be afraid, that you’re going to be strong. It doesn’t work like that. You need to be afraid. Like the first day of high school when we didn’t know what we were doing, where we were going, who we were going to sit with at lunch. Suddenly life was changing and we didn’t know what we were going to do. Fear is what helps us get through things, just like it has helped us all get through these past four years of high school. Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do and I believe we all have it inside of us.

Now, as we go off to do new things with our lives, meet new people and accept the new challenges we are going to face, we don’t know what lies ahead. But I believe that what lies behind us is only just the start of a great life for all of us, and what we have inside us, that courage and that strength that has helped us endure high school, is bigger than both of those things. The past is now history, the future to us a mystery, but right now is the biggest gift. That is why they call it the present.

Congratulations Class of 2012, we made it!