Commencement

Greetings, fellow classmates!  This is a commencement, which as you probably know means both ending and beginning, just like how bad can mean good, or with can mean fighting with someone or fighting with someone… you grok?  They’re called contronyms.   So anyway,  welcome to the end of your past life, and the beginning of something new, just like a birthday, or being born again, or like any moment at all, really, right?  

    The old is past, the new is present.   And it’s always the present!  Like a gift, tomorrow is a new day.   Not a nude A, a new day!  So you can prepare for each new day the night before, with taking a minute to outline what you want to accomplish.   Or you can meditate, take 20 minutes or whatever to sit silently, and do a bit of brain maintenance, noting things that arise, and letting your monkey-mind stop its chattering, so you can be calm and equanimous.  Equanimity means letting things slide off you like water off a duck’s back.   Did you know ducks rape each other?  I’m getting off track, derailing.   Excuse me.   So as I was saying it’s always now.  Which is kind of weird, when you think about it.  Just like how, for 300 people, a second is like 300 seconds, which makes, for us collectively, a ten minute talk into 3000 minutes, which is 50 hours!   So I’ll be brief.  I won’t get off topic about briefs and pants, the plurality of which you can ponder on your own time.  You can splash in that pond, later.

     There’s a type of therapy called logotherapy, which focuses on the future, unlike other therapies which dredge up the past, your childhood memories and such.   The therapeutic value of the future lies in giving yourself purpose and meaning, things to look forward to, projects to complete, bucket lists etc.,  as opposed to being nihilist and seeing all life as pointless, meaningless, and absurd.  True, we are getting closer to death daily, like the Pink Floyd lyrics says, but we’re also making progress, hopefully, toward our goals, and have a healthy outlook toward the future, which shouldn’t be a dystopian wasteland of oblivion and being pushed around by forces outside our control, feeling hopeless and empty.  Paradoxically, we need to fight for peace, and die to live.  The French call orgasm the little death.  I’m getting off topic, but I think you get my point.  As an example, my vision for my own future, my dream, if you will, is to stay healthy and die of old age, with a healthy diet and daily exercise, with maintenance as a minimum, and improvement as the ideal.   I might even be a bodybuilder, if I enjoy pumping iron enough.  Strength and beauty and health are worthy goals.  Maybe you’d rather spend your time serving others, volunteering planting trees or teaching kids how to swim or donating books to prison libraries or inspiring others through your example, doing good works, being good, better, best.   Aim high, right?  Each day is a new opportunity to seek growth, or - if you’re like an Olympic athlete- even perfection, a personal best.  

    How high can you go?   What is the height of the tallest mountain?  Or maybe you want to shoot for the moon, be an astronaut.   Or even Mars.  Or, like a priest, aim for the goodness and godliness of the deity Himself, as God the Father.  Which of course, for most of us, means starting our own families, and being the best dad possible.  The Buddha found a way to extinguish suffering.  You can aspire to Buddhahood, enlightenment, great wisdom - and share your insights with others, who are also aspiring to escape suffering.   The world is heavenly, I mean it can be…. and we should all help each other through our bad times and personal hells, to the good life, the ideal of love-bliss, and community, and harmony, and laughter and fun.  There’s FU in fun, and fun in funeral.  There’s love in evolution.  And hate in Haiti.  So let’s be all that we can be, aim high, and approach the future with the highest expectations for ourselves and others.   Let’s each of us make a better world, and be a part of the solution, not the problem.   We’re each in our own skull-sized universes, so make your own world pleasant and happy, even as you engage in service to others.  Utopia beckons!  The future begins… Now!