The Cape Elizabeth High School graduates sat on the concrete bleachers facing their audience of parents, friends and family. The graduates anxiously and patiently listened to all the speeches and songs that included all their accomplishments of the past and the hopes and goals in their future. The audience also patiently listened to the speeches while experiencing their own anxiety about where the graduates have been and where they were headed. Everyone was there for the same reason. We were all there to celebrate the graduates’ successes, challenges and achievements.

Looking around at all the participants in the day’s ceremony, I couldn’t help but think that all the respective smiles, sighs and excitement of the graduates and the audience meant different things. My guess is the graduates were thinking, “Can you believe it? It took forever but today is finally here, we’re graduating. We’re out of here.” Meanwhile their parents were thinking, “We can’t believe it, it happened in a flash, you’re graduating. You’ll be leaving soon.”

The graduates’, with their joyful anxiety, celebrated what was in store for them that day, summer and into the fall. They couldn’t wait to get out there and embark on a journey that would happen during what they were told would be the best years of their lives. The parents with their guarded anxiety, celebrated how far the graduates have come and where they were going in the near and distant future.

In what I could see, there was no fear of the unknown on any of the graduates’ faces. They were excited, ready and willing for all the unforeseen experiences and adventure waiting for them. They can’t wait to see what it would be like the day they would be on their own. The parents’ faces revealed their excitement as well but they seemed to know something that the graduates didn’t. They knew all about good and bad experiences and the lessons they teach.

On some level, I can’t help but envy the graduates’ lack of fear. I think we can all remember feeling that way and how thrilling it was to try something for the first time even though there may have been a risk associated with it. Sometimes it worked to our advantage, but a lot of times it didn’t give us any kind of advantage but hopefully we learned something from the experience.

Didn’t we teach that fearlessness to our kids on that day they took their first steps? After they mastered those baby steps, we told them to always go forward, take bigger and bigger steps and face their fears while trying new things. Those baby steps graduated into giant steps that finally landed them on the concrete bleachers where they waited patiently and anxiously to be dismissed for one last time.

After the graduation a friend of mine asked her high school sophomore daughter and friend if they cried like her during the ceremony. They looked at her, shook their heads and her daughter joyfully replied, “Why would we cry. It was very exciting to watch all those seniors up there, finished with school. It seems like forever but we can’t wait or our graduation.” My friend wiped her eyes and thought, “I better get ready. I’ll be back here in a flash.”

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