If any of you parents out there have older children, or if anyone else in the audience has ever needed to attend another high school graduation before, you understand the Senior Graduation Speech. The cute introduction filled with cliches, the references to inside jokes about the high school, and the mention of a personal anecdote from elementary or middle school. It’s cute. It’s safe. Celebratory, even. But perhaps the one thing it’s not… is honest. To be honest, to be the one to acknowledge the anxious elephant in the room during a celebration marked with fancy gowns and these cool caps with tassels isn’t really fun. But beneath the celebration, many of us feel the same thing about the coming years: fear, uncertainty and doubt. One thing these emotions have in common is that they usually take the form of questions. About the future, each other and our lives. These questions can be harmful, but by the same token can be immensely beneficial. I’ve boiled the beneficial questions we all must ask ourselves down to the three worth talking about.
The first important question we all must answer: What is important to you? In a time of so much change, there are certain things we’ll keep with us, and certain things we’ll let go of. With life seemingly moving at light speed, our most fundamental sources of happiness may be left behind if we don’t grasp them and take them with us.
The second is something your mom may have told you when she thought you were sad and there was something on your mind: What are you thinking about? There have been many ages in our civilization, from the Bronze Age to the Jazz Age, and I’d argue that the current one is the Age of Distraction. From our devices to our interactions with others, every moment we are awake has been packed to the brim with stimulation, leaving little moments for solitude. One downside of this is that it can make us lose sight of the things we should really devote our thoughts and attention to: our values, our aspirations and our future.
My last question is one I think we all will have to ask ourselves now or in the coming years. What are you searching for? A hard question to answer at first, some might instinctively reply, “Nothing, and that’s the problem.” Contrary to what some of our teachers have said at PMHS over the years during class discussions, there are wrong answers to some questions. And that’s one of them. The reason it’s wrong is very simple: Every day, we are all searching for something. Sometimes, it’s immediate needs: water, food or a bathroom break. Sometimes, it’s deeper—think a search for validation, belonging or meaning. The reason this last question is so important is because if we get too lost in the short searches, we’ll be blind to the beauty of things that take years to develop: relationships, connection and meaningful long-term pursuits.
As much as I criticized the “average Graduation Speech” in my introduction, I’ve allowed one cliche in this speech, so here it is: You are all explorers of your own lives. At PMHS, that meant national competitions for music, science research, forensic speech and athletics. For college, it means Pelham graduates traveling all across the country (and the world) to explore new ideas, cultures and people. While we all might be nervous about our future explorations, there is something so quintessentially human about the search itself. In fact, that desire, to plant our own flag in the abyss of the unknown, is what makes something like social media so addicting. It’s the hope that the next video, song or piece of entertainment will finally be the thing that will satiate our hunger, once and for all. But it won’t. We all have an appetite to explore the unknown that can never be satisfied, not by social media, or college or anything else. In one sense, that’s a good thing. It’s what will motivate us long beyond our graduation to find the solutions for the world’s biggest problems. However, if we only keep our eyes open for whatever is coming next, we are blinded to what we’ve already found.
If someone asked me to succinctly explain the meaning of life, I’d say: This. Family, Friends, Education and Achievement.
While you’ll probably forget my speech, like the tens of thousands of others given across the country at ceremonies just like this, I hope you don’t forget what got us all here to this moment today. I hope you can use my questions to solidify what is important to you and pursue that goal, whatever it may be, ceaselessly for the rest of your lives. But before we all take the big leap into the unknown, I’d implore all of us to savor this moment one last time. As Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Okay, maybe I gave myself two cliches.
Thank you all, and congratulations to the PMHS Class of 2025.
Christopher O’Meara was one of three students chosen to speak at Saturday’s Pelham Memorial High School graduation ceremony.
