I cannot recall which classmates I sat between or who handed me my diploma or if, at the end of it all, I tossed my graduation cap high into the air as I have seen others do in the years since then. Nor can I recall what the weather was like or what was said as we stood shoulder to shoulder – my friends and I – on the lawn outside the graduation hall afterward. Even the cake made in celebration of the event has been forgotten, which is just about the craziest thing ever because there is nothing in this world that leaves a deeper impression on me than food that is frosted.
I graduated from Vermillion High School 29 years ago. Like day turning to dusk, the details of that moment have dimmed – but one.
Even now, all these years later, I still remember the terrific sense of possibility I felt that day. No, I wouldn't be patrolling centerfield for the Minnesota Twins. I knew that. And for obvious reasons, neurosurgery and the priesthood were out. But that was it. Everything else, I was convinced, was in play. Whatever I wanted to accomplish, whatever I wanted to achieve, I thought I could – or I thought I at least could give it a shot.
If you are graduating this spring, I hope you, too, carry that feeling. Of the advantages one might want in life – intellect, money, hair – believing in yourself strikes me as perhaps the greatest of them.
Though I suspect the mere mention of his name at this point in your lives triggers narcolepsy, William Shakespeare once wrote: "Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt." Here, too, the mindful poet (whom I encourage you to read again someday when life has had a chance to unwind itself and its beat is not so short) seemed to have it figured out.
Conviction and uncertainty, for reasons that yet escape me, do not exist in us equally. Where one is portioned in ounces, the other comes in bulk.
This anatomical imbalance probably is something you have observed already. You wanted to take some class – but didn't because you didn't think you were smart enough. You wanted to audition for some group or try out for some team – but didn't because you didn't think you would be picked.
In your regret you were left to wonder what if. And that question – unlike the thousands of others you've had to solve so far in your lives – has no answer.
Of all the graduation gifts you will receive, confidence will not be among them because confidence doesn't work that way. It isn't something that can be shoved in a box or stuffed in an envelope.
Confidence, instead, is the distillation of one's deeds. When you produce something for which you are proud, it is the happy byproduct. To get it then, you got to do.
This is not to say confidence cannot be encouraged or cultivated or fanned like a fire. If your experience is anything like mine, you will encounter people along the way who will believe in you. They will offer you a job. They will buy what you are selling. They might even marry you. When the rest of the world is saying no, these people will say yes, and just like that, you're Popeye, and it is raining spinach.
You should thank them for their faith.
Not everyone, of course, will think you're swell. Some will be unable to see what is plainly evident to all of us, and you will find yourself rejected. At that point, let me be the first to welcome you to the club.
I suppose by now you might be wondering why I am so interested in your well-being. For the sake of those who've stubbornly spent their lives trying to grind into me some goodness, I'm tempted to say part of the reason is human decency, and to their credit, maybe that does explain some of it. But if you really must know, the origin of my motivation is mostly human survival: my own.
If you fail to prosper, you see, there is a good chance so will I. In this I-am-the-universe-and-the-universe-is-me era we're in, you can scoff at this notion of a shared future and common fortune all you want, but this theory is simple economics whose proof can be found in any Third World country or suburban country club on this planet.
Our fates are linked. I believe. So I need you to give yours your best shot.
No doubt you will.