When I found out I had the opportunity to speak today, a lot went through my head. I didn’t want to talk a lot about our past here or try to predict our futures; I just wanted to talk and leave an impression. I’ve seen and heard plenty of graduation speeches before. I used to sit down there and play for the graduates like our awesome band is today, and honestly, I can’t remember a word of what those speakers said. What I do remember is how great each of them made me feel, and ever since hearing them, I’ve wanted to make sure I left at least someone in this room tonight with the same great feeling I felt.
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Growing up is about learning what we want. As children, we had such little experience or sense of direction. We depended on those around us to point us the right way and tell us what we needed. Come the beginning of high school, and we’re given this big, new range of pressures, responsibilities, and feelings. I, probably along with many others, came into high school feeling this pressure to validate myself with grades, accomplishments, relationships, and everything else, making sure it was all perfect, without any real purpose. I’ve seen us all grow from nervous, confused little underclassmen concerned with what others had to think, to young adults with confidence and integrity. As a clarification, integrity isn’t keeping a firm opinion or mindset. Integrity is speaking what we think now in hard words, and tomorrow speaking what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it may contradict everything we said today, paraphrased from Emerson. It takes a lot of confidence to have integrity. Now, we have that.
When we’re young, we think too much about the possible negative reactions or outcomes of a situation and forget about our wants, and of course everyone’s most innate want is happiness. When we put those possible consequences above our wants, we miss out on amazing possibilities. Maybe it’s an opinion or an action we might want to keep back in order to play it safe. Just don’t. Quoted from author Kyra Davis, “Sometimes we have to step out of our comfort zones. We have to break the rules. And we have to discover the sensuality of fear. We need to face it, challenge it, and dance with it.” To me, it’s when we face, challenge and dance with our fears do we find happiness. It isn’t ignorance and bliss that are synonymous, it’s fearlessness and bliss.
Seeing everyone present in government, our group conversations in English classes, seeing you all do your thing on the field or in the gym or on this stage, you all make me really happy and you’ve all surprised me a lot; there isn’t one person in this class who hasn’t made me happy in these past few years, directly or otherwise. You’re all so brave and strong, and I think that’s what I like the most about this class. We like, feel each other, it seems like, way more than years before. Senior year just has this way of breaking you down, making you realize you’ve outgrown it, and then making you stronger as a result. Like a bad relationship, you had your good times and you love each other deep down, but you know that there are better things out there for you now. I think we all kind of felt that this year, and it brought us together as one big, senioritis plagued, happy class. We may not have handed in our homework as much or studied as hard as we did freshman year, but were we happier. Overcoming all of those struggles and failures, that is what made us successful in our own rights. We finally learned. We began to understand over time, and we became much happier. Once we learned to follow what we deeply wanted, all of those pressures seemed to fade away, and everything seemed to fall into place. If everyone did what made them happy and let go of their fears, imagine how great and positive our world would be. Imagine how much we would do.
Graduation is one of many accomplishments, but there is just so much more to life than achieving; there’s trying, experiencing, and learning. Doing something outside of our comfort zones, talking to new people, seeing the best in someone’s first impression, being open to changing our minds, being great listeners, being happy for other’s successes, random acts of kindness, and love are some of the best joys in life, I think, but they can only be experienced if we free us from ourselves. There’s nothing fun about anxieties or stressing about the same things or dwelling on the past. Being afraid of what is out of our control is just one fruitless way in which we keep ourselves from success and happiness. Someone once told me when I was going through something really hard that everything will work itself out, and I think that really changed me. In the words of Carter Dawes, “I’m not worried about it.” So much more is out there than who we already know and what we’ve already done to worry about our pasts or our futures. We really don’t live a linear life; we live now.
Before this day, our success was defined by how much we did what was expected of us, and now, our success is defined by how happy we are. Because growing up is about learning what we want, I can speak for us all when I say it’s only going to get better. I can’t wait to see all of our successes someday, because we’re the happiest people I know. And to my parents for letting me be myself and giving me the confidence to have no fear, I love you so much. [/private]