Graduation Thoughts

Note: I wrote this piece March of 2001.JB, Caro, Debbie, Gary, Me, Marina
Earlyn, Budjik, Ethel, Ruel, Mayang, Yves
Crissy, Melissa, Rey, Roselle, Aison, Erick

Noel, MM, Eunice, Christine, Steve, Me, Loric, Carmi, Bal, Eric

This Sunday is again exceedingly hot. And uneventful. And boring. Thus perfect. It is in moments of silence like this that I find the opportunity to look back on past events.

Last night would be a good starting point. It was a graduation I admit, as memorable as the one I had a year ago. No, this is not then entirely about my graduation, but if you insist, this is more about me and my friends.

I have been teaching for a year now. I was fortunate enough not to go through those job interviews and months of waiting for financial independence. The defensive part of me would like to back up the naïve part of me that thinks anyway that there is probably something good which comes out of those moments of limbo and insecurity. Anyway, my point is, I was at least secure of what was there after graduation, so that I could easily move on.

You see, I have a problem with moving on. I can get to be so attached with little details. I have with me all the quizzes and tests returned to me since Grade 2 – because I might be famous one day and these papers could catch up a hefty sum, notwithstanding the fact that I might have to be dead before the prices appreciate. I can also get to be so immersed in details about people – it’s either I love them terribly or I can never let go of one small bad thing they did to me in the past.

For me, graduation is a time of moving on. Now, it’s time to face the real world (God knows how I hate cliches to death, so I must be having the time of my life now). This cliché assumes that the academic environment is not like the real world – whatever that is. I agree, though I admit that it’s up to us when we’re “out there” to decide if the real world and the ideal are necessarily mutually exclusive. I guess I live in an ideal world. I haven’t moved on, have I?

I have been in this ideal for quite some time now. Last night, my graduating friends, with arms raised and fists clenched in the traditional graduation song, bade farewell to academic life. Last night too, my arms were raised amidst a multitude of fellow journeymen, as if taunting the gods, proclaiming to them that the world is ours, that we can summon the convergence of the ideal and the imperfect, the not yet real, and what actually is.

I’m happy for them – my friends. They are so pure and so foolish, raring to immerse themselves into a future where there is no turning back. I myself have too much more to see myself, but I admit things could still be more complicated than what our experiences allow us to see. In the past, our only problem was trying to sneak past the imposed afternoon naps so we can watch the “Thundercats.” Now, we see more and more that the world doesn’t revolve around the self, that things really aren’t that simple anymore.

I really don’t have anything profound to say here which will improve the human condition. How could I, when I take pride in being sarcastic, although I’m not always successful in this department. I’m just writing all these because I’ll miss some of my friends terribly. Now, this piece you might say, is a year late. Yes, I still miss my own batchmates sometimes, although I get to see some of them once in a while, so this could very well be also for them.

To them, for having taught me to do many things – those which I am proud of, and even those I shouldn’t have done but did anyway, I am forever grateful (where forever, according to my dictionary, is only as long as I want it to last). You are such little devils – in the nice, cutesy sense of the word.

Thank you for disappointing me once in a while, because you brought me back to earth. Whether you were all academically outstanding is an entirely different story which is irrelevant now. Thank you for being heartless sometimes and inconsiderate, and damn juvenile, because you made life more exciting and worth a second glance.

Thank you for being reckless and making the world a less safer place to live in, because you finally made it real for me. Only then did I see that it could still be so much better than what it is now.

Today, for you, is a new day (oh yes, we do love cliches). It is supposed to be another day for me. I have one more set of final exams to finish checking today as the submission of grades was yesterday, after all. Never mind that. Foolish you may be, but I think that as far as I am concerned, the world still revolves sometimes around me (try being swell headed sometimes, it’s nice). Let me then choose this to be a new day for me as it is for you.

What’s in it for me? Nothing much. It’s just the day where I can be so mushy and admit grudgingly that you touched my life so much to draw three tears from my left eye, as we hugged each other last night even if that meant missing the dinner for faculty members as I was celebrating with you. Your insignificant lives as insects surprisingly had a dent on my profound existence to drive me to spend money and a week thinking and looking for gifts you would like.

Some people will be unfair – get used to it. Congratulations – you’re now about to face them, love them, and hate them. You could even get to be very productive there. I’m sure you have the potential to be unique dregs of society. Outside, and most of the time, you seem not to care, but you know it – your hearts are in the right place.

Finally, you’re moving on. You’ll be leaving me here in the school where we met, where we had fun, where we thought each other was a jerk. You’re accompanied by a sense perhaps of relief although I’m sure you’re also confronted by a sense of the unknown. Will we still talk to each other after ten years? Will we even bother to say hi to each other when we meet each other by accident? If fate (do you still believe in fate?) would have it that our paths would cross again, would we even care? Would I myself even have these same sentiments in that time?

No, chances are, these issues wouldn’t matter anymore. What would we possibly talk about? Here again is the pessimist in me. Do you also admit the pessimist in you? It’s because like you, I’m also probably afraid. I’m afraid of how temporal we are, and of how forgetful we are. Like I said, our problems and issues would be more complex in the future. What we are worrying about now will be so juvenile and childish in the future that we won’t even have time to think much about each other. We might end up to be just specks of dust in each other’s memories.

Never mind that for now. Let me choose to dwell on the here and now. Who do you guys think will get drunk beyond control the next time? Who will we push on the ledge of the stage in Streetlife next? You wanna bet?