To the graduating Class of 2019, I offer this advice. Take what you need:
Wear sunscreen. It’s good advice I heard in a Baz Luhrman song.
“Youth is wasted on the young” is a phrase you will one day understand 1 , but only too late. Know that youth is given in fair trade 2 for the wisdom you earn over time.
Admire the pageantry of humanity but do not believe it. We all wear silly hats. Mortarboards, for example.
Don’t take yourself so seriously. You are your own worst critic and only you have to live with your decisions. Life is far more flexible than you imagine.
Vote wisely in the ballot box, at the cash register and with your feet. Money is ink on cotton and paper which people trade you for time 3. It does not buy happiness; you must find that on your own.
People join causes if they have no because, so be cause 4 . Armchair complaints do not leave your living room, so fight for justice, question, protest, criticize, write and read letters, poetry, songs, speeches, sermons or legislation. The arc of the universe tends toward justice, but you must bend it.
Do not fear evil, instead fear the indifference of good men 5 . Never be indifferent. Protect the innocent and those who cannot protect themselves. With great power comes great responsibility and often that power is simply being in the right place and right time.
If you get cut, watch yourself bleed. Understand time is doing the same thing to you. We are water and dust breathed into life with an expiration date.
Death is inevitable. Accept this. Live like the Grim Reaper may knock on your door tomorrow. One tomorrow, he will.
If it is unclear, rephrase it. If it unusable, remove it. If it is imperfect, rework it until it is as much a part of you as a limb. Write poetry, even if it never leaves your notebook. If it does, proclaim it loudly from the stage. Make art daily, so when you reach old age, you have a lifetime of beauty to remember 6.
Name constellations in your honor. Invent their mythologies.
Spellcheck. If language is incorrect, what is said is not what is meant and what must be done remains undone.
Anonymity is for cowards, so always sign your name. Proudly. In ink.
Dance 7. Your body is a gift that took billions of years to create. Use it unabashedly and unshamefully.
If you are reading this, you are beautiful. You are perfect. Nothing is wrong with you 8.
Be welcoming to strangers. Odin walks among us. True friends will offer a lift when you’re stranded on a sofa for the night. Do the same. Don’t overstay your welcome. Build yourself an army so you have ground to go to.
Being hated for your honesty is more honorable than being loved for your deception. Lies are hard to remember but the truth is easy to corroborate. If you borrow, cite your sources [see footnotes below].
Embrace solitude, don’t fear it. It will save you on the lonely nights. Once a year, lay down in a gutter to learn how to sleep there if need be.
The world is one big small town. Treat its residents accordingly. Serve your community selflessly and it will repay in kind. Youth, friends, lovers, coworkers and neighbors all come and go. Family binds you to your ancestry and is the only thing that survives you. You are the microphone of your ancestors.
Forgive your parents; they were young once, too. Where they failed, do not 9. If you have children, your whole world will change. Savor it. Raise children intelligently, you owe it to your grandparents. Teach daughters to be warriors. Teach sons to be gentle.
Send love letters, handwritten and in envelopes. Keep a box of all the love letters you receive. Attend weddings and funerals whenever possible. Ceremonies bind us to our history and remind us of our humanity.
Be brave. Love like a brass section; love like brass knuckles 10. It takes guts to say “goodbye,” “I’m sorry” and “I love you” 10. Words can kill, so use them wisely. Speak honestly and slow. Enunciate with conviction 12 Your words will bind you when all else is lost.
Ask for advice from your elders. The best is offered freely. Take what you need and make a list. Change it whenever you change yourself 13-18. When you are old, offer advice to any open ears. Some may forget it, others may ignore it, but a handful may take your best lines and repeat them long after you are again water and dust.
The past is unchangeable, the future is unknowable 19. You live in the moment between.
Glory is fleeting but obscurity is forever. Become worth remembering 20.
— Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
1: From the French proverb, “Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait”
2: Paraphrased from Frank Miller’s comic book “Sin City,” in which the dying Detective John Hartigan says of Nancy Callahan “An old man dies, a little girl lives. Fair trade.”
3: A paraphrased quote from Sedona outsider and folk art painter Brian Walker.
4: On March 13, 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York. Despite 37 witnesses, no one called police, assuming someone else had. The New York Times condemned the witnesses in an editorial for their indifference to her murder.
5: From slam poet Seth Walker
7: “I have no desire to prove anything by it. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance,” Fred Astaire, from “Steps in Time”.
8: Paraphrased from “If This Poem,” by the late Sedona poet Christopher Lane.
9: “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his,” Oscar Wilde, from “The Importance of Being Ernest”
10: From Sedona slam poet Claire Pearson
12: Paraphrased from New York slam poet Taylor Mali’s poem “Totally Like Whatever, You Know?”
19:
20: George Patton, Nellie Bly, Neil Armstrong, Georgia O’Keeffe, Samuel Clemens, Rosa Parks, Andrew Carnegie and Ella Fitzgerald were all young and foolish once. We know them for what they did.
