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What matters require achievement?

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High school graduation does a very good job of embodying idioms often trotted out by the wise ones we let speak at high school graduation. Idioms such as “don’t settle,” as spoken by Steve Jobs in 2005 to the graduating class of Stanford, or “be better,” as spoken by beloved teacher James Yamamura at Elphinstone Graduation circa 2018.

Such idioms reflect off the shiny rectangles on the wooden blocks given to those students who have taken them to heart and proven themselves first among equals – through good grades, athletic prowess, leadership or volunteerism.

It’s easy to be seduced into worshipping socially imposed external markers of success – best grades, best athlete, most volunteer hours. It makes it far easier to hand out awards. But at the tender age of teenagedom, I think that messaging can lead those who didn’t win to feel as though somehow they have lost – or worse, are less than equal. 

And it leads me to my favourite commencement idiom of all: “The most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about,” as spoken by David Foster Wallace in his famous commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College in 2005.

In that speech, he tells the story of two young goldfish who swim past an older one swimming in the opposite direction and who greets them with, “How’s the water?” The younger goldfish swim on until one eventually asks, “What the hell is water?”

Wallace imparts the wisdom that we all worship something, whether that be power, money or intellect. And we often do the worshipping unconsciously. The danger in worshipping these markers of success without knowing we are doing it is that we are doomed to always feel weak, poor or stupid.

The only way to prevent the insidious worshippy parts of human nature from hooping us, he says, is to recognize that we get to choose what we worship, and to do the hard work of constantly reminding ourselves of that truth.

This year, more students than ever received awards and scholarships, thanks to a banner year of donations. And those students deserve to be credited.

But to the students who didn’t win an award, let it be known that this lack has no bearing on your ability to strive for what matters and will never stop you from choosing what to worship – or choosing not to worship at all. Don’t compare yourself to the winners – something I did, continue to do, and wish I could refrain from doing. Instead, choose to remind yourself, as Wallace did in 2005, that this is water.