Santorine: You’ve Been Changed!

It’s graduation time!

It’s that time of the year when young men and women upend what they have known for the past four years, leaving friends and familiar surroundings behind and step into an unfamiliar, yet exciting future.

The past pulls hard on all of us, but the future is full of new friends, new experiences and really cool projects to be part of.

So here are my musings and thoughts for this weekend’s graduates, in no particular order.

• You’re in the people business! There are 8,760 hours in a year, and you’ll likely spend more than half of them with people. People like you. People unlike you. Find joy in them. Remember that people like to work with people they like.
• Smile, dammit. Walking back to the car after a middle school chorale concert the other night, and all we saw were frowns. I prefer smiling and laughing. Most people do.
• If you didn’t grow up with a tradition of charity, now is the time to get one. It does not need to be financial in nature. Your time is valuable. Priceless, actually. Get with it, and be part of it. You’ll meet really amazing people there, and you’ll make a difference.
• Have two books that you’re reading at all times. It’s a lifelong commitment. One that you enjoy, and that could be a novel or for a hobby. The other is for your vocation at the time. Interesting people never, ever stop learning.
• Accept that organizations call forth the worst in human nature and be liberated by that knowledge. All organizations – your work, your church – all of them. Emphasis on being liberated.
• Endeavor to change what you can, and deal with what you can’t.
• Mistakes are OK. If you’re not making them, you’re not doing anything.
• Keep you and yours on top of a financial cushion. It’s that important.
• Seek out worthy allies and earn their allegiance. You are truly the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Choose well and carefully.
• There are 24 hours in a day. You get 8 for work, 8 for play and 8 for sleep and meals. Not a bad deal when you think about it.
• No, you can’t get by on 4 hours of sleep. Sooner or later it’s going to catch up with you. One of the greatest gifts I give myself is no alarm clock, and I had to retire to get to that. I wake up naturally about 7 hours after my head hits the pillow. For parts of my life it was 8 hours, others 6, but never less. It’s good.
• Refuse to be ordinary – pursue excellence and kill it.
• Own stuff. Don’t let it own or define you. Ever.
• Touch “communities” Your church community? Your hobby community? Your charity community? Join up with like-minded people. Like school, all of them are a place to learn without repercussions. You’ll provide value, and the value you receive is the soft stuff that surrounds the hard stuff.
• We multiply our effectiveness by working together with others.
• Don’t be judgmental.
• You have two ears and one mouth. Do twice as much listening.
• People don’t care about how much you know, until the know how much you care.
• If not you, who? If not now, when?
• Learn to tell stories well. Your stories.
• Look at any prospective spouses parents. Realize you’re going to get a bigger part of how they act than you ever expected.
• People can change themselves. You can’t change them.
• What you think you want to do might not be what you want to do. Some of the most interesting people I know didn’t know what they wanted to be when they were 40. They figured it out by doing things.
• Almost always, the easy thing to do is the wrong thing to do.
• Develop your sense of humor.

I’ve covered a lot of ideas here, and they are not necessarily connected. Consider a few. Or more than a few of them. They will make a difference for you.

Go forth. There are no wrong decisions regardless of what your aunt tells you.  No timetable, either. You don’t need to own a home by the time you’re 25. New cars are overrated.

You do need to be creating a vibrant, interesting you. Only YOU can do that. There are decades of an amazing journey ahead of you. Take joy in all you do, be well and have fun.

Graduation is a demarcation point, but more importantly, crossing that line is the start of something wondrous and new.

But if there is one on this list that will do the most to effect your life, get some sleep.

Graduates – You got this.