Commencement 2017 - Walking and Tying Shoes

Commencement 2017

Welcome to all. Parents, Students, Board, Relatives, friends, teachers, and the entire CHAMPS community. 

Welcome to the Pasadena Civic Auditorium and to the Commencement ceremony for the CHAMPS class of 2017. I’m Chris Bright, Executive Director of CHAMPS Charter High School of the Arts, Multimedia and Performing. 

About 16 years ago or so, each of you took a first, unaided, step and were suddenly thrust from a crawler to a walker. Those of us in the room today who witnessed that moment will likely recall it with great clarity and some emotion.

It was one of those big moments.

Now, you’re ready to take a few significant steps again, across this stage to pick up your diploma, shake a few hands, have your picture taken, and to try not to trip on the way back down the stairs to your seat. 

This is another one of those big moments. 

In between walking for the first time and walking today, you’ve done thousands and thousands of things: some significant, some insignificant, some memorable and some forgettable, some things that were worthy of high praise and some mistakes that were made and learned from.

But, when it comes right down to it, it really is the simple and basic things that matter, in the end. Things that we do and move on from quickly - things that in a universal sense don't seem to matter much, but actually do. Holding a door for someone, saying please, being happy for someone else’s success… 

At an even more basic level, there are things we do in life that are incredibly mundane and yet connect us to something great and transcendent. For instance, do you remember the last time you tied your shoes? Could’ve been this morning or maybe a week ago? How conscious of actually doing it were you when you tied them? Do you remember learning how to tie them the first time?

Take a deep breath, pause, and reflect on the moment when you picked up the laces, one in each hand, and moved through the process to end up with a snugly fit shoe and a knot that’s both attractive and functional. Take a minute to go through the steps in your mind. 

While you’re doing that,  I’ll try to describe what I do: 

I pick up both ends of the laces, one in each hand, lay the right lace over the left lace and tuck the end under and through, pull both ends out and tighten. Next I take the right lace, make a loop, holding it with forefinger and thumb, while picking up the left lace, circling around the right loop, and..

This is where I get a bit confused and cloudy. 

I’ve done it thousands and thousands of times. It is, literally, ‘in my hands’. But it’s really tough to describe it, step by step. 

Some 47 years ago, when my parents taught me (and you can ask them - they’re here today) I was not handed an instruction sheet, sent back to my room and left alone to just figure it out. I didn’t get a grade out of 10 and they didn’t circle anything with a red pen. 

They worked with me, guiding me, showing me, and letting me practice and fail many many times. They were patient, they took time to understand where I was doing well and where I needed redirection, always with the end goal in mind: to teach me to tie my own shoes.

They taught me so that I could do it myself. 

Tying a simple knot with a couple of loops in a way that will keep them tied is an incredibly important thing to know how to do. So are lots of other things, like learning a language, being numerically competent, reading, and writing - and especially becoming a good and decent human being who wants to make a difference in the world. 

We don’t learn any of those things in isolation from other people; in fact, the values we learn about how to be with others are only learned with others, through trial and error, success and failure, with feedback, correction, guidance, and the love of those who are rooting for us. 

The words you hear from this podium today are attempts to wrap up and define and then send you off on your way, and while your graduation is really just only another one of the moments that make us who we are, it’s an incredibly important end, and a beginning.

The end of the beginning, I suppose. 

Thankfully, you have ends and beginnings every single day, even without all the pomp and circumstance of today. 

Remember that those individuals who gave birth to you, helped raise you, taught you to ride a bike, tied your shoes, made your lunch, wiped your tears, celebrated your big successes, and loved you more than you will ever likely know, they are cheering you on today like it was the first time they laid eyes on you when you were brand new, and couldn’t walk.

But that’s what they do every single day, and although today is a great occasion to remember all those things and to pat you on the back and cry tears of joy for what you’ve accomplished, they and we are always there fighting for you, dreaming with you, and loving you.  There are a lot of very proud and happy people sitting behind and around you. You’ve earned every single ounce of that affection, and they will continue to surround you with love and acceptance and support throughout your lives, when things go well and when you may need a helping hand. 

We don’t grow up alone, we don’t parent alone, and we don’t teach alone. We join together in intentional and accidental ways, with the amazing idea that if we do it right, you will become happy, successful, and fulfilled with an appreciation for your community and the relationships you will cultivate. And, so that you will do the same when it’s your turn to sit behind or around someone you’re proud of and can celebrate, selflessly, as they take their big steps into the world. 

The experts say that we should all embrace the challenges of the new millennium in the following ways. Since you’ve lived your lives almost completely in the new millennium, and there’s so much thinking about what it will take to be successful ‘21st century’ people, the ‘experts’ have spoken and generally agreed about the following ways of being that may help you succeed and be happy in your lives. See if you’re in line with this… (This is where I give you some advice).

Strive to Grow - Lean In - Accept the challenge, overcome personal setbacks, persevere over time, seek out feedback, be inspired by the success of others (not jealous or thwarted).

Ask Questions - Be Critical - recognize bias, deep analysis, embrace plurality in the search for new perspectives

Learn from Doing - Step Up - things that drive our performance - initiative, be speculative, assess risk, fail better the next time

Have Conviction - Take Action - make a difference in the world. 

You’ve had the opportunity to learn in a place that values the whole person, creativity, inclusivity, and opportunity to become your unique and spectacular self. Education is a whole person journey within the embrace of a network of relationships that help and guide and support each of us and it lasts an entire lifetime. You have embraced the challenges in your time here and before you came to CHAMPS and you’ve helped build a community that honors the very things that make life worth living and elevates us all.

The relationships you have with people who are on this journey with you and the actions you take to make the world better are the things that create the world you want to live in.  I have tremendous confidence in each of you to carry on the work and to not only become the finest people possible but to create the finest and most caring world imaginable. 

So congratulations, all. This is a big deal, we are all proud of you and celebrate with you these giant steps you’ve taken toward a life lived well. 

Today - Commencement 2018

Today - Commencement 2018

Welcome Parents, Faculty, Staff, Board Members, and especially the CHAMPS graduating class of 2018.

By an almost unimaginable alignment of forces and circumstances, we’ve all somehow ended up here today in the same place at the same time: June 1, 2018, at the beautiful Pasadena Civic Auditorium to celebrate your journey. We’re here today to listen and learn from each other one more time, and to honor you during your last few minutes as a CHAMPS student before you step outside into the sunlight and into your future.

Our mission here at CHAMPS is simple: we educate, guide and inspire creative and critical thinking through artistic experience. CHAMPS is uniquely creative, funky, inspiring, challenging, hopeful, inclusive, accepting and out-of-the box, and so are you. And this ceremony is about you.  Your graduation from our school, today, is the exemplification of our school’s mission, And our mission doesn’t mean one thing on its own, without you. The core meaning and entire reason for our mission (and today) is you.

So, today we celebrate this point in your life, considering both what came before but also what’s going to happen next. Today, sandwiched between both past and future, we pause and breathe together. We look to our left and to our right, in front and behind us, and we (all of us) assess each of our own contributions to a greater purpose: to make a difference. I’d like for you to today to be attuned to this singular idea: that at CHAMPS over the past four years, all the work you’ve done and all the hopes we’ve all expressed in community with each other is simply an expression of our passion to make the world just a little bit better. And it’s this that I hope you carry with you.

Today, our dreams, our histories and our futures, successes and failures, hopes and regrets converge to mark the time in permanent ink where we recognize a sudden and new direction. In a few minutes, you’ll be at a singularity where your past and future collapse into one moment, where you reach out with your left hand to grasp your diploma and when you remember to shake hands with your right. Where you become immediately and symbolically open to an entirely new set of nearly limitless possibilities. 

Because of physics, we know that a singularity lies at the center of a black hole. It is infinitesimally small and has incredible power - so much so that light itself is sucked into it and cannot escape. It’s a place where the normal laws of physics collapse into something very foreign. 

Here, in Pasadena, today, however, light bursts forth. Your light fills this space and expands far beyond these walls. Today, just like all the other todays that have preceded us, we are illuminated by everything you’ve done and we glow in anticipation as you pursue your lives beyond CHAMPS and high school and begin to figure out not just what you want to be, but more importantly, how you want to be. 

Today we remind each other that all the past years have been filled to the top with encouragement, help, love, guidance, redirection, refocus, hope, fears, decisions, successes and failures. And today, as we fade into your memory you will embrace your new challenges and your new directions. Today we wish you well. 

But, although today is a really big deal, let’s not exaggerate the importance of just today, because tomorrow you’ll be faced another today, with a similar set of circumstances, the exception being that you’ll have a piece of paper that certifies that you’ve completed a defined set of tasks over a certain time period. And although that certification will open doors and put you on the same footing with millions of others who have preceded you, in the end, it’s just a box that you’ve checked. To make meaning, you must be relentless in your quest for fulfillment and to live a life worth living. 

We’ve tried to teach you how to think, not to fill you up with knowledge. More important, however, we’ve tried to teach you how to understand what your value is. Today, you should have a fairly good idea about those things that motivate you, and which things you want to do to make the world better.

A wise person told me once that pretty much most of our life choices are driven by one of two forces: Fear or Love. Fear definitely serves a purpose: it keeps us safe from lions out in the Serengeti, for instance, but its value is limited and its power should be kept in check. Love, on the other hand, is always powerful but it’s also essentially humbling; it takes us out of our selfish selves. 

We have a responsibility to create the kind of world the world needs, and so we must be fearful of forces that encourage selfishness and vanity. Considerable damage can be wrought by an unchecked ego; so do things that will help someone else, stand up for injustice, stop to listen to someone who is in pain or who simply needs a sympathetic ear. Be keenly aware of things that can harm you - be fearful of things that will limit your awareness or that will encourage you to make self-centered choices. Surround yourself instead with hope, but in everything, choose to do things that will bring peace and joy to others. There’s always someone who is in need of something you can offer; so reach out your hand and always aim to help those less fortunate than yourself. 

Choose love today.

Finally, I congratulate each of you not just for what you’ve done, but who you’ve become. And as I conclude my own time at CHAMPS, I want to thank each of you for making my life better, and for reminding me every day that I’m part of something miraculous and powerful.