For the graduating batch of 2014, a challenging future awaits you

MANILA, Philippines – Guess what, it’s March! So it’s time to graduate.

Just like that. The four years you spent toiling — and maybe partying, but also toiling, as far as your parents know — is finally going to pay off in a piece of paper that isn’t from Recto, that says you paid off the institution in due time. You also did some learning in there somewhere, and that makes all the difference. Doesn’t it?

You probably have no time to think about it much. Not yet. Not with graduation under way, celebrations and awards abound, scores of relatives congratulating and asking after you, and — assuming you’re sossy enough — that Bora trip.

If you’re graduating high school and are on your way to college, well, congratulations —you’re about to embark on the last sure chapter of your life, the last stretch where you have a concrete goal that is more or less like everyone else’s.

(My only advice to you is to make the most of the time in your life when your only real obligation is school. With a system so structured the way education is structured, it’s actually easier than you think to try new things. Never shy away from meeting new people, either, and for God’s sake try not to turn college into little more than a high school sequel.)

If you’re graduating college, then congratulations. You’re going to have to think about the time after the Bora hangover fades, when the long sweltering ceremony that is marching is a memory, when your last graduation feast has been had. You’ll have to face the question:

Are you ready for the waking world?

Well, here’s a spoiler alert: Nobody is ever ready. 

I mean, think about it. Are you ready to launch into a life where you hardly use a thing you learned at school?  

Are you ready to become a responsible and valuable citizen, and to worry about money in a way you’ve never had to before?

Are you ready for employment, which is really just group work magnified times ten with deadlines that have worse consequences than minus points (I’m not kidding)?

Are you ready to either become a sheepish follower complicit in all the systematic ills of society, or a rabble-rousing rebel on the way to lifelong social exile and probably manic depression?

I doubt it. There are a few extraordinary graduates who manage to go against expectations, but the vast majority sail along with the tide. Most ships will weather life’s oceans well enough, though some are better navigators than others, and we’ll all get there in the end.

So the answer is that it doesn’t matter if you are ready or not, because you’re going to face life after graduation regardless. The question that actually matters is, what will you do now that you are free from the dock, to give your voyage value?

I’m not here to assure you of anything. I’ve only graduated about a year ago myself. And ten years from now, if I were to write another piece on graduation, I honestly doubt I will have anything wiser to say.

I’m here to warn you that the voyage is full of epic labors, a kind of odyssey we each will face, and each ship will inevitably encounter hardship one way or another (Will it be the Cyclops? Will it be the Lotus-Eaters?), and what matters will be the choices we make in face of them (Charybdis or Scylla?). So I won’t tell you the future looks bright for you, because I can’t promise that.

(Be suspicious of anyone who does, by the way. People who tell the young that their futures are bright do two things: imply that things will simply happen for them, as though the young don’t have to work extra hard to keep what brightness in life there is alive; and pin the burden of creating a brighter future on the young, as though the old and not-so-old have no part in it themselves.)

Still, there is something in graduating. There are the symbolic points, of course — the primary one being the transition into adulthood, the coming-of-age. Graduation is a salute to a significant time of your life. For better or for worse, school makes up a huge percentage of where you spend your time, and your most productive hours. So graduation is really about celebrating who you’ve become, and what you can do from here.

And while the youth fetishists really need to stop with the “you-are-our-future” shtick, it really is important to recognise that you are now going to have to employ everything you’ve ever learned, be it from school or not, into your being who you want to be. And there are only two things you can absolutely be sure of, through graduation and beyond:

You’re going to change. You can’t expect to move past graduation and remain exactly the same. All attempts to stop the clock are futile, as are attempts to remain exactly the same. (Those youth fetishists I mentioned earlier? They tried to stop the clock and failed, and now they’re taking it out on you.)

And you’re going to change other people. As much as we are masters of our own ships, we sail the same waters as everyone else. And whatever we do will affect other people, whether by a ripple or a tidal wave. It’s a strange power not everyone realizes they have.

So what’s left to you is to combine these two powers, so that you can do what you’re going to do, and do it well. I can’t assure you a bright future, because the future’s got gales and storms, and monsters, and islands you shouldn’t even think about setting foot on. But it’s not all dark. It has night and day, with a moon and some stars mapping out the sky, and a sun shining fairly often, and islands even nicer (much nicer) than Bora you could discover. It’s really only as bright as you manage to make it.