Every year around this time I try to offer up some words of wisdom for our soon-to-graduate seniors that will hopefully help them along their way. As with other times I’ve done this, this year I reached out to my circle of friends on Facebook and in the teaching community for their input. 

But in doing so I’ve found that many offer much the same advice, and then in a couple of specific areas. So instead of 100 individual snippets of earned wisdom, today I offer our seniors a condensed look at what the majority of those asked offered. 

First, understand that every adult on this planet was once very much walking in your shoes, and they were just as clueless as you are. And, like you, as young people pretty much all of them felt the adults in their existence had pretty much no idea what the heck they were talking about either. 

But the more you live the more you learn. That’s undeniable. As Mark Twain once explained: “When I was 17, my parents were so ignorant I could hardly stand to have them around. But when I got to be 27, I was astonished by how much they’d learned in 10 years.”

Getting older isn’t easy, and it’s a privilege not given to all. You don’t get to be old by being stupid. As aggravating as it may be, do your best to listen to elders in your existence you respect, and then heed their advice. All of their ‘been there, done that, got the scars to show for it’ are offered to try to help you avoid the same stupid mistakes they made. 

Even with that, be it living and/or loving, accept that you are going to make mistakes along the way – and you know what? That’s perfectly fine. Learning what not to do is just as important as learning what to do. Scratch the mistakes up to “lesson learned,” flush, and move on. Each mistake gets you that much closer to success. 

Second, while we all know you are “legally” an adult and feel a sense of urgency concerning where your life will take you, take your time figuring out which path you want to take to get wherever it is you will end up. You’ve got the rest of your life to work and worry and pay bills and all of the “adulting” stuff you’ve got coming. Right now is the least stressful your life will ever be. Kick your heels up and enjoy it – while you can. 

Third, surround yourself with people who make you better, and in doing so protect your spirit. If someone is a pain in the rear end then minimize their role in your life. You’re going to run into “spirit vampires” along the way whose primary role is to suck the joy out of living. If you allow them to latch onto your spirit and suck it dry then that’s your fault, not theirs. Or, as a very wise man Frank “Poppa D” Delaney so eloquently says, “if you let a fool cause you to act like a fool, then all you have is two fools.”

Fourth, please don’t be a sucker to the tsunami of negative forces “out there” today. Pledge to be an independent thinker. Make every effort to learn the truth about whatever “it” may be before you form any opinion on anything. Do not accept what anyone tells you to think. Just understand that anything offered up by online sources or the media is more than likely there because someone is profiting from it, not because it is factual. In other words: someone is selling you their version of truth. Don’t buy it. Things (nor people) aren’t as bad as you are being sold they are. 

Lastly, and most importantly, never lose your faith. Now let me be clear on this — when I say faith, I don’t mean religion. No, to be sure, what I mean when I say faith is the belief that eventually things will work out just as they are supposed to be. 

If you don’t heed anything else I’ve said here today, I want you to remember this incontrovertible fact: the path you are on is not entirely of your making. There are so many forces involved in determining where you will go from here, and many are unseen. 

So do your best to analyze whatever it is in front of you, make the best decisions you can based on the factors that are within your control, and move forward. But while doing so simply accept the fact that things are going to happen along the way that are completely out of your control that are just as an important part of that path as the things you can control. Trust that little voice that always tells you in your heart what is right and wrong. It’s there for a reason.

Leaving high school some 40 years ago, I never, ever envisioned the person I am today. Trust me on this — looking back, there were absolutely forces in play I had no idea about that helped me find my path. All I could do was control what I could and have simple faith that all would eventually be just as it was meant to be.

And you know what? I hope 40 years from now you’ll be saying the same thing. 

Best of luck, class of ’21.