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.