Members of the School Committee; administrators, faculty, and staff; parents, family, and guests; and, most importantly, members of the Class of 2013:
This evening marks the end of one phase of your lives, and I know that you will soon be getting ready for the next phase, which for most of you will be college. You’ll be going shopping, most of you with your mother, to Bed, Bath and Beyond or Target or some such store to buy a few necessities for your dorm room. Although I grew up in Clinton, in 1986 I actually made that shopping trip with my mom to Shrewsbury, to the original Spag’s, a wonderful store that you probably don’t remember because, unfortunately, it was sold and changed when you were in second grade. On that trip, I bought a red backpack and a very inexpensive digital alarm clock. Twenty seven years later, the backpack is long gone, but the alarm clock still works perfectly and sits next to my third grade daughter’s bed - now that purchase was certainly what those of us who grew up in Central Massachusetts would call a “Spagtacular” value!
Many of you may be buying new backpacks for college as well, and they’ll be much bigger and better padded than the flimsy nylon one that I had, since you’ll likely be storing a laptop or an iPad inside. However, although they may be large, they won’t seem as ridiculously big as the backpacks I watched many of you carry into Floral Street School in the fall of 2001, when you were first graders and I was in my first year as principal there. I have to admit, you looked pretty adorable as you streamed off the buses, big grins often missing front teeth, with brightly colored backpacks featuring Barbie or Buzz Lightyear or Harry Potter. Those backpacks were so huge in proportion to your little bodies I was worried that, if you fell over, you’d be trapped on your back like a tipped turtle on its shell, unable to get up.
I prefer that image much more than other images of backpacks in my mind’s eye that are related to three terrible events that have occurred during your senior year. The first is of the backpacks belonging to the first graders murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School, hanging still in their cubbies, never to be worn home again. The second is of the photographs of smirking terrorists carrying backpacks stuffed with pressure cookers full of shrapnel, just before they left them to explode next to innocent children and other bystanders at the Boston Marathon finish line. The third is of backpacks scattered among debris in Moore, Oklahoma after a massive tornado leveled the Plaza Towers Elementary School there just last week, killing seven children.
Two of these events were caused by cowardly, evil individuals who acted upon the sickness in their minds to kill and maim the innocent; the other was a natural disaster with no intent, but heartrending impact. In all three, the victims had no reason to believe they were in danger and bore no responsibility for what befell them - they were truly victims of circumstance. This, perhaps, is what is most terrifying about these calamities: They remind us that, in life, there is a constant possibility of random tragedy.
The response by those at the scene of these tragedies gives me comfort, and hope, and confidence that the goodness in people far outweighs the evil in the world. It was amazing to see the courage displayed by the first responders and bystanders at the Marathon finish line, who saved so many lives while potentially risking theirs. It was astonishing to learn of the stories of the teachers at Sandy Hook and Plaza Towers, who bravely shepherded their students to safety or embraced them in their arms in order to protect them from harm, some dying as they did so. Over the years, I’m sure you have sensed that your teachers, deep down, care greatly for you -- what you may not realize is that, if necessary, they would risk their lives for you.
What gave those teachers that extraordinary courage? I believe it was the love they had for their students and the duty they felt to protect them. But what about those bystanders in Boston who helped total strangers? I believe it was also love and duty: Love that is expressed by helping another human in danger, as a proxy for what they would hope and expect others would do for their family or friends if they couldn’t be there when tragedy struck, and the duty to help that is a corollary to the universal truth that every life matters.
Fortunately, it is highly unlikely that you will ever be faced with responding to such dramatic circumstances. We all still need courage, though -- the ordinary courage to forge ahead despite knowing that something bad could happen at any moment and that something inevitably will. And what gives us this ordinary courage? At one level, it is the simple knowledge that while something terrible might happen, the odds are that it won’t. At a deeper level, it is because we know that the only antidote to worrying about what we can’t control is focusing on what we can control. That is, perhaps, our greatest freedom - the freedom to choose our goals, to choose our actions, to choose our response to the circumstances that are presented in our lives. All of you face the same uncertainty that every human does, and the same challenge: What will you choose to do with the life you have been given? Will you choose to be a mere consumer, a cluster of DNA and cells who looks to others to meet your needs and maximize your entertainment? Or will you choose to be a producer, a sedulous soul who takes initiative and acts to make life better for others? We know too well that any of us could be gone in an instant. The choice is whether to use that as an excuse to live a life of selfishness and indifference, or as a motivator to live a life of caring and passion. If you are wise, you’ll recognize that the latter may be harder work, but is vastly more fulfilling, enjoyable, and meaningful.
Over the past thirteen years, you’ve been using your backpacks to bring the tools and evidence of your learning from home to school and back again. The knowledge and the skills you’ve gained over more than two thousand school days have prepared you well for what’s ahead. Whether you will be starting college, joining the military, or going to work, you’ll still have a backpack. What will you put in it? Where will you go with it? What will you do with it? Whatever you choose, if you include initiative, and courage, and love, you’ll build a life that is worthy of the incredible opportunity that you have been given.
Please accept my very best wishes for a wonderful, fulfilling future. Congratulations.
