You and your classmates will go down in history as the COVID Class of 2020. You will say to your children yes, I graduated from high school when in this country alone, 140,000 lives were lost in the blink of 90 days, that’s half the population of Glendale, when globally 6.2 million people contracted the virus and 407,000 people died. I lived through the stay at home order, social distancing, virtual class rooms, face masks, the physical separation from my friends, my girl friend and my track team, the loss of my senior Spring track season and numerous senior year events, standing in line for groceries, a run on toilet paper, hand sanitizer, disinfectant and jigsaw puzzles, a surge of interest in painting and cooking and now daily demonstrations in over 300 cities and all 50 states, curfews and a new death count of lives lost due to police violence. Yes, this was my senior year.
Just when the finish line of high school was in sight, with parents cheering wildly on the sidelines, exhausted yet proud, when all academic requirements were nearly completed, a monumental extra assignment landed on your virtual desk. This turned out to be the most demanding task of your life: the COVID-19 Pandemic. Your teachers were unable to help you, ditto, your parents. Indeed, they were now seated alongside you, students all. There were no text books, no cheater websites.
This class commenced in March on Friday the 13th, your last day of school before spring break. In the evening, you were informed that spring break would be extended to April 3. No big deal, we all thought. March 19, Governor Newsom invoked the Stay at Home Order. April 1, Glendale Unified announced that school campuses would remain closed for the remainder of the year. From then on, the cascade of cancellations was breathtaking: basketball, baseball, the Olympics, music festivals, anything with gatherings of over 30 people, then 12, and worst of all, the cancellation of 40 million jobs. Unemployment skyrocketed to 15%.
Daily, the media streamed pictures of enfeebled men and women on ventilators gasping for air, isolated caskets with families unable to mourn together, exhausted medics, empty city streets.
In the darkness of night, alone in your bed, you studied your scrambled notes, for each new morning brought a new test, one for which, no matter how hard you studied, you were unprepared. Although grading was pass/fail, the stakes were life and death. And Lord protect you from failing
What lesson was taught? It was this: Innocent suffering is a fact of life. Most parents avoid teaching this lesson. Here in our cloistered neighborhood, it’s pretty easy to keep it out of mind, floating along in our pink protective bubble.
The pandemic popped that bubble in a heart beat.
We teach you about a world that is just, a world that rewards good behavior and hard work.
But eventually comes the awareness that though that’s our hope, that’s not quite how it works. There are children who contract terminal cancer; there are seniors who die from a mysterious virus, and there are people of color out for a jog who get gunned down in cold blood.
That too is our world. And that is a most difficult final lesson.
Still you marched on. You struggled through the darkness to get to this day, and you have made it.
This then marks the end of your childhood, of mandated education, of parental shelter. It’s time for the rubber to hit the road.
More intoxicating, it’s time to be in charge of your time.
How will you spend it? For time is a fortune, and you will spend it, all of it. The question is how. The good news for you, unlike so many others – due to poverty or a restrictive culture and government – you are free to choose.
The bad news is you might squander it.
For your immediate future, you will go to college. A college diploma will afford you a higher paying job, so they say. More money brings you a better neighborhood, better house, better vacations, better clothes, better food, even, in this commodified world, a better partner.
In this world ruled by survival of the fittest, we become isolated individuals competing against each other. You run the race, climb the ladder, fight the good fight.
Are you good enough? Will you succeed?
What happens if at the end of your life you didn’t get that coveted job, you didn’t rise to the top, you didn’t achieve your dream. That’s a lot of pressure.
Yet perhaps there’s another world, an invisible world, with a different economy and a different value system. And, in this world, your race is already won, your mountain already summited. You are never alone. Everything is interconnected. You move, the world responds; you think, the world hears.
Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” That’s this invisible world she’s talking about.
In this world, love is the connective tissue. Enlightenment is the way. It is the hero’s journey. Once attained, there is the recognition that what you so desperately sought was within you all the time. Your race had always been won. Though you continue your life seemingly unchanged, or as the master says, continue to chop wood and carry water, every moment now is infused with love and a compassion for all living beings.
So let’s take a moment to recognize the love that has surrounded you from the beginning. From the promised sunlight at dawn to the million points of light by night, from your mom and dad to your teachers, from your Little League to your Varsity Track coaches, from your preschool to your high school friends.
Love: you receive, you give; like breathing in and breathing out.
Yes, climb the ladder of success but don’t forget to walk the path to enlightenment. Enlightenment trumps success, pun intended.
So COVID Class of 2020, the yoke placed upon you has been heavy, yet now and forever it will sit upon your head as a crown. Your suffering has joined you in solidarity with the suffering of humankind.
And in case you haven’t noticed, the world desperately needs you. Humankind has taken a collective knee, for the world has fallen. You have heard the words, “I can’t breathe.” It is the words not only from the innocent, but from our very planet.
Heed the call. Come personal challenges, you will not turn back; you will not back down; you will prevail.
Abraham Lincoln, memorializing the fallen at Gettysburg, said: “It is for us, the living, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work…” No finer education could leave you with a better credo. There is much to be done, time is of the essence, the stakes are high, and from the sports field hear the universal cry: “You can do it!”