Jenifer’s Journal: A letter to a graduate

Dear James

I made it home alive!  

After the sun-struck whirlwind of your college commencement weekend (I get teary all over again just typing this) where I started sobbing the moment “Pomp and Circumstance” began to play. Small matter that there were thousands of family members in that field, half of them, like me, wearing their fancy red commencement programs like sun hats, and squinting up toward those big screens, their only hope of seeing that special one — in my case, you — amidst the couple of thousand graduates.  

Grueling, especially for you grads, who had to wait for the next four hours for a diploma and a handshake. Oh, but it was worth it. With you, it’s always been worth it.

I was never one of those women who suffered from Grandma-Lust. If my married daughters wanted kids, they’d have them and, in that case, of course, I’d be interested in what they produced, but no rush. But then your parents produced you. Love at first sight. You just yawned and stretched your baby-way into the center of my heart, and there you’ve stayed.  Over the years, your sister and your cousins have joined you there, but you, James, were the first. We go back a long way.

Carrying you, my first-born grandchild around the house singing you early morning lullabies on your first visit to Shelter Island; the fearless Red Power Ranger leading his band of 4-year-old heroes on death-defying missions; breakfast stories of the Easter Witch and Hoppin’ Halloween Bunny; the pirates, the maps, the buried treasures, the clues scrawled on driftwood in the sands of Cape May; the wizard’s staff, the spells, the amulets, the book of magic;  you and your kid sister in the back seat, singing Munchkin songs like little Broadway pros and swapping riddles on the way out to the Island; the walkie-talkies and summer pals and your talking the remote control helicopter down out of the tree; the earnest 4th-grader standing at the dinner table, reciting what he’d memorized of Kipling’s “If”; the sometimes-reluctant Little Leaguer pondering big ideas out there in the outfield; the 6th grade computer-wiz-video-game-creator; the Karate almost-Black Belt kid, the Ski Team captain; the reader, the writer, the “Youth Sunday” preacher who spoke, in turns movingly and amusingly, holding the congregation in the palm of your hand; the justly-proud high school graduate — I could go on and on, lifting up memories like snapshots out of a shoe box — but the future is calling…

Writer-philosopher-theologian and civil rights leader, Howard Thurman (1899-1981), somehow sounds like he’s talking directly to you when he says, “Don’t only ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” 

And he’s right, James, the world needs strong, educated, purpose-seeking young people like you even though, at the moment, that’s not the message it seems to be sending. That message is: “There’s too many graduates, no work; AI can, you can’t; you’re irrelevant, don’t bother.” 

That’s the message that’s making the noise that most of you are hearing, including this young woman who spoke to The Guardian in April: “Gillian Frost, a 22-year-old student at Smith College in Massachusetts, has been searching for work since last September. Majoring in quantitative economics with a minor in government and set to graduate in May, she described a grueling and often discouraging process. ‘Every weekend, I dedicate over two hours to job applications. As of today, I’ve applied to over 90 jobs. I’ve been ghosted by nearly 25% of them and rejected automatically from around 55%,’ she said. Despite securing some interviews, Frost said the lack of communication from employers had been particularly frustrating. ‘I’ve gotten around 10 interviews but many of them don’t even bother to tell you you’re not a good fit … I feel helpless. No one seems to know how best to prepare due to the unique conflux of events occurring…’”

If that’s the state of affairs you’re in at the moment, James, clearly you’re not alone, but clearly, too, the world is clueless about what it needs, anyway. With patience and perseverance, you can become an irreplaceable part of the quest to identify and fill that need. Yes, you, the somewhat shy, startlingly funny, big-brained, big-hearted, kind, creative dreamer, who’s a doer, too, not satisfied with having ideals, but in manifesting “what the world needs” for the good of all, whatever that good turns out to be.  

Because, my beloved grandson, you already have in you everything you’ll ever need to become who you are meant to be — and that will always be true — especially, perhaps, in those times when you least believe it. Believe it.

With deepest love and pride, Grammy