Sayonara

Dear Class of 2020, I’m not super sappy and speeches aren’t really my thing so bear with me. I’m not going to sit here and tell you lies that I liked high school or that I think that college will be 10x better because I don’t know that it will be better. I am going to thank high school and Oak Hill for giving me my friends, no, giving me a 2nd family. If it wasn’t for high school I would not have the friend group I have today. I am going to thank Oak Hill for the football team I had grown to love over the four years of being here. 

Anyway. I never would have thought that I would have made it this far. I feel like it was just yesterday when we were all in elementary school learning our ABC’s and how to color inside the lines. Now we are going to be doing what we want to do for the rest of our lives. And I have high school to thank for that. For high school, being that bridge that we all needed to cross to get to the other side. It is our central conflict that we needed to go over. To find out who we are truly meant to be and who we are. 

When I was in middle school, I didn’t know who I was. Yeah I was a kid from Litchfield that hung out with friends. But I didn’t know who I was. I was inexperienced in this thing called life. I didn’t know my right from wrong, even my left from right. and I was afraid of everything, so how on earth could I be ready for the next 4 years of my life. So going across this threshold called high school was the most terrifying experience for me. What if I fail? What if I lose touch with all my friends? What if I don’t fit in? These are the questions that kept running through my head as I walked into the building for the first day of freshman year. At this point I still had no idea who I was. I wondered if I would ever know who I was.  The reason I couldn’t find out who I am is because I am thinking of one thing I can be and only that one thing would define me and my whole life as a person. And instead I was looking In all of the wrong places.  But the truth is no one fully knows who they are at the age of 17, 18 and we still have our whole lives ahead of ourselves.

But who we are is what we have in our lives that define what people we have become today. It is not about one trait at the age of 15 that will define everything my life will be for the next 60 years. Who I am is who I chose to be. Who I am is a son, a grandson, a brother, a friend, a teammate, a co-worker, a student and most of all, I am me. I am courageous, skillful, mindful of others, thoughtful, and now, experienced. It took me a while to figure out we are not defined by one memory or defined by one trait. We are defined by every experience we had in our lives from our first words to being a high school student, to being a high school graduate to being a future father, mother, wife, husband. The only thing that can define who you are is who you chose to be. And no one can change what you chose to be or who you are. The future is ours to control. Ours to construct. Our decisions will decide on what path we take in our lives. With our traits and our mindsets there’s no telling what we could accomplish. Look out world. Here comes class of 2020! 

Thank you.

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