Navigate the Future with Common Sense, Context and Civility

Class of 2022. 

Thank you for having me speak at such an important moment in your life. You have all gotten here through hard work and hitting the parental jackpot, and it truly is an honor to have the opportunity to pass on some sort of final lesson to you here, while we are all dressed up, surrounded by family, faculty and friends.

What a four years it has been. Starting in 2018, the year you navigated high school as a bunch of awkward freshmen, people were in Hawaii, living and vacationing in arguably one of the best places you can be on this planet. 

Every person on every island at 8 a.m. one morning received an alert on their phone that there was an incoming nuclear missile attack and they had 10 minutes before it hit. What a 10 minutes that must have been. Confusion and clarity all mixed together, culminating with a frustrating, but importantly not world-ending: “What the hell was that about?”  

No missile hit that day. Instead, some random guy hit a random button, and it went down as one of the most ridiculous events in recent history. A practical joke of enormous proportions that not a single person laughed at then, but we all can now.  

If that’s not the definition of absurdity, I honestly don’t know what is; but either way, that was your freshman year, and that year is always ridiculous, so things must have started making more sense in your sophomore year, right?

That year, as many of you met Shulman or Gheewala for the first time, two of our world's most indestructible places decided to catch fire: The Amazon Rainforest and the Cathedral at Notre Dame. Why and how these eternal symbols decided to go up in flames at the same time is beyond any sort of reason or expectation. But still, what can you really remember about sophomore year that wasn’t ridiculous? Remember Jacob’s haircut that year? I mean, come on…

Plus, there was that other thing that happened that year. You said goodbye to your teachers and friends at spring break and came back six months later for your last two years of high school wearing masks, sticking sticks up your nose constantly, and maintaining a six-foot safe zone bubble like some sort of cartoon character. Your junior and senior years have continued this way with events rapidly progressing towards an episode of South Park at record speed. 

My point is, none of this makes any sense. So before you get into the illusion that we are somehow headed back to normal, just remember that the world never is or ever has been normal. There will always be murder hornets, UFOs, and an immortal queen ruling over the British Isles. There will also be frighteningly frustrating events that rip our souls out with an eerie regularity. 

So how do we fix this and try and grab a hold of the absurd events that seem to control our attention on a daily basis? As these socially awkward robotic nerds try to convince us that the answer is to move our lives into their metaverse or ship us off to the barren hellscape that is Mars; instead let's focus on improving, even if only slightly, our planet and our reality. 

So now to the ideas on how to address the nonsensical. Think of these as a rough first draft of tide reversers, and instead of me tackling the big topics that feel too overwhelming, alternatively let’s focus on the process. 

First up, as you move on from here, never stop believing in common sense and context. As information becomes even more monetized and manipulative, sticking to “your gut” is vital. No matter how many views a TikTok video gets explaining the evidence behind why the Earth is flat, don’t believe it. You know it’s round, and that’s that. When thinking through something more difficult than shapes, give it some time and appreciate the context of the situation. Just because a person is loud, hot, or popular, doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about. Stick to your gut, take everything that Sam Geddes tells you with a grain of salt, and make up your own mind on what this world is. 

Next, try and give every real person that you meet in the flesh the benefit of the doubt. Flat earthers and incels live on the internet, and everyone you meet in this actual world will be quite reasonable and approachable if given the chance. Not everyone so easily exudes kindness and openness like Hazel Remington, but that’s not their fault! Don’t let their political affiliation, sports team, or accent flood your head with stereotypes that will make you distrust this person before you even give them a chance. The same goes for folks you have known for quite a while. Although there are plenty of monsters out there, their true number is exaggerated. The rest of us are simply doing our best, and at times of weakness, stress or fear, we sometimes do things out of character. As every aspect of our life becomes public, readjusting our attitudes toward perfection is necessary so that we can all keep moving forward. 

Finally, if we all want to get on the same page in combating the nonsense that is this current world, we have to maintain civility above everything else. Some things that seem so obvious to us as right, might be worrying or confusing to someone else. Instead of making people feel like bigots or otherwise less than for their view of a complex topic, give them space and understanding to figure things out. Shutting down, or even worse, shutting people out of spaces or conversations, will only create more animosity, division, and of course, ridiculous events that lack explanation. 

I think back to the flood of senior boys that came to me wanting to play junior varsity soccer for our school this winter. You have no idea how close I came to pulling the plug on this team, but they proved me wrong by working hard at every practice, creating amazing team culture and even beating a few teams, granted full of tiny freshmen, along the way. 

Was it ridiculous? Of course. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt, went with my gut and demanded civility from them which they adhered to nobly. 

All in all, whether you choose to listen to this Banana Slug or not is up to you. In fact, as Frankl shows us, everything you perceive is up to you, so good luck with that and good luck dealing with monkeypox. I’ll miss you and I hope you come back to talk about whatever silly things happen to you in your future. 

Congratulations, class of 2022.