Rites of Passage

So many of our transitions are gradual. My hairline has taken years to recede to its current location. I became really good at dicing potatoes after decades of cooking.  Rarely is there a before and after; there is only progression along a timeline.

Tomorrow is my university's Commencement, when we pay attention to something that does have a before and after. Before the Commencement, the participants are students at the university, and after they are no longer, at least not in the same degree programs.

There is hooplah, speeches, fancy outfits. We do all we can to draw attention to the fact that for this one thing there is a before and after and we want to be able to remember it vividly.

I attended Commencements of older students before my own and being in academia I have attended many others since then. I spend time looking at the faces of the students who are the focus of this rite of passage, since however jaded I may be it is new for them.

Many students are indifferent to the ceremony and attribute it as essential for the families and not themselves. There is much truth to this in terms of how resources are spent making sure the families know that they have been to something important.

Folk I knew in graduate and professional programs skipped their Commencements. I went to mine and I am glad not just for my family but for myself that it did.

It is important to use Rites of Passage to calibrate our sense of ourselves, to establish phases of our lives, to emphasize the differences in the gods we worship in those different phases. What once mattered no longer does; what I never cared about before drives me now through my days.