Dear soon-to-be graduates,

The big day is right around the corner. You may need to wrap up some final exams, or turn in that last composition, but in the next few weeks you’ll be handed a diploma and step into the next stage of your life. Maybe you’re headed from high school into the work force or off to college, maybe you’re collecting your university diploma and starting a job. Whatever the case, here are three bits of advice from a slow learner to help you along your way, plus a piece of fantastic news you’ll never hear on CNN or FOX.

Make Each Day an Adventure

Here’s a trick no one taught me until I was 40. Before getting out of bed in the morning, say to yourself, “Today is going to be an adventure.” Repeat those seven words a time or two throughout the day. That apothegm still changes my attitude and the way I see the world whenever I remember to say it. It sprinkles spice into mundane encounters; it transforms horrible difficulties into challenging problems to be solved; it makes the ordinary extraordinary.

Experiment for a week or so, and see if “Today is going to be an adventure” works for you. You have nothing to lose. If it fails to add some zest to living, put it aside.

When the Covid pandemic with all its fears and frauds slammed into America, followed by the uproar over the 2020 presidential election, two editors with whom I was working, both female, reminded me time and again to avoid negativity in my writing. I might start a piece with a black cloud, the latest cultural or political fiasco, but my two editors, unbeknownst to each other, insisted each article end with some sunshine. Readers needed hope and inspiration, they said, not more doom-and-gloom.

The consequence? This old dog learned some new tricks, so well, in fact, that I can no longer write anything, as do some writers on both the left and the right, that ends on a bleak or hopeless note. I’m not quite Mr. Pollyanna, but I’m close. This cautious optimism, as I call it, has changed not just my writing, but my life for the better. Give way to despair, and you’ve lost the battle before it’s begun.

Practice Gratitude

Two friends of mine were once talking about the lottery. One of them kept trying to convince the other to start buying tickets every week. “You could win some big-time money for just a few bucks,” he said, to which the other replied: “I already won the lottery. I was born in America in the 1950s.”

You, graduates, have won that same lottery. You were born in America in the 21st century. Despite all the negative news spilling from the mainstream media, we are surrounded by blessings, from antibiotics to being able to feast like kings to our myriad ways of travel and communication. These things and many more would have astounded the men and women who founded our country, and these are only the material benefits of our age. Given even less recognition is the fact that we live on Planet Earth, breathing its air and whirling through the universe, mysteries wrapped up in mysteries.

Only in the last 10 years have I learned that opening and closing my day with a short and simple prayer of gratitude heightens my appreciation for the gifts of this world.

And now for the good news I promised you.

You’re Needed

Your country abounds with good-hearted, creative people who never make the national news, but who are making an enormous difference in the lives of others. I know this because in the last 10 years I’ve interviewed dozens of them.

Among these subjects were a good number of homeschooling moms, women who day after day were doing their best to raise bright, virtuous children.

But there were many others as well. Vanessa Elias of Connecticut, for example, founded Block Party USA, a way to build community that is spreading across the country. Karen Olsen’s organization, Family Promise, has for several decades helped tens of thousands of homeless families find shelter, food and work. Best-selling author Mitch Albom spoke about his books with me, but was much more interested in talking about his work with an orphanage in Haiti.

At this banquet table of noble hearts there’s always room for one more. Bring your passion and talents, pull up a chair, and join the party. This dented, old world needs all the help it can get.

Cheers to you from your Boomer friend and advocate,

Jeff

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: (Cag112, CC BY-SA 4.0)