Commencement 2014

Good evening and welcome to Commencement 2014! My name

is Matt Sanger and I am fortunate enough to be the principal of
Garden. Spot High School. Congratulations Class of 201 4.. . it sure
is a great day to be a Spartan!
I'd like to start this evening by sharing with you a story. Before I
do that, however, I want you to take a look at a quote that I
recently came across while reading the news. It is projected on
,
the screen before you. Opportunity is nowhere. Honestly, spend a
few minutes reading or watching the news and it's pretty easy to
validate that statement. Please, keep that quote in mind as I
speak with you this evening. Opportunity is nowhere. Got it?
Great!
Now, on to my story. There are these two young fish swimming
along the Conestoga River and they happen to come across an
older fish who is swimming in the opposite direction. The older
fish nods and says, "Good morning, guys. How's the water?" The
two young fish swim on for a while, and the one suddenly stops,
looks over to the other and says, "What the heck is water?"
Commencement 2014
The point of the fish story is simple: the most obvious and
important realities in life are often the ones that are the most
difficult to see and discuss. In laymen's terms, the fish story is a
moral. However, the fact is that in the day-to-day challenges of
adult existence, moral stories can be of life or death importance.
Seniors, let's be honest.. . you haven't a clue as to what "day-in,
day-out" really means. There happen to be large parts of adult
American life that no one ever talks about at commencement.
One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.
Your parents and the older folks in attendance know all too well
what I'm talking about.
Think of it this way, it's an average adult day, you get up in the
morning, go to your job, and work for eight or ten hours. At the
end of the day you're tired and stressed. All you want to do is go
home, eat dinner, and maybe, just maybe, unwind for an hour
before hitting the sack. Because, guess what, in a few hours you'll
have to do it all over again.
Commencement 2014
Unfortunately, as you're getting ready to make dinner, you realize
there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week
because of your job. Now, you have to get into your car and drive
to the grocery store. And guess what.. . it's the end of the work day
so traffic, as one might expect, is terrible. Consequently, getting to
the grocery store now takes hours instead of minutes, and when
you finally do get there it's overly crowded, because it's the time
of day when all the other people who just got off of work try to
squeeze in some grocery shopping. So, any hope of quickly
"getting in and out" goes right out of the window. What's more is
you have to wander all over the store's confusing aisles to find the
few items that you want. Oh, and that huge race car grocery cart
that's covered with baby drool and animal cracker crumbs
happens to be the cart you're trying to maneuver through this sea
of humanity.
Despite these circumstances, you eventually get all of your dinner
supplies and head to the checkout line. Except now it turns out
there is only one check-out lane open. Imagine that! So the line
you're in is unbelievably long, which is overly annoying and just
plain stupid.
Commencement 2014
As you try to wrap your mind around why none of the self-
checkout lines are open, you realize that you can't take your
frustration out on the frantic teenage girl working the register, who
is overworked and whose daily tedium surpasses the imagination
of any of us here at this ceremony.
At any rate, you finally get to the front of the checkout line, pay for
your food, and are told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the
absolute voice of death. Then you take your 3 foot long receipt,
your green canvas man-bag of groceries, and your race car
grocery cart (with the one crazy wheel that pulls annoyingly to the
right) all the way through the crowded and bumpy parking lot. You
start your car and mentally prepare for the drive home through
slow, buggy-laden traffic.
Everyone here has done this, of course. However, it hasn't yet
been a part of you graduates' actual life routine - hour after hour,
day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after
year. But guess what, it will be! And there will be many more
annoying, seemingly meaningless routines that I refrained from
mentioning for the sake of time.
Commencement 2014
That is not the point, however. The point is that petty, frustrating
day-to-day routines like this are exactly where the work of
choosing your perspective is going to come into play. The traffic
jams and the long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I
don't make the conscious decision about how to think and what to
pay attention to, I'm going to be furious and miserable every time I
have to shop. That's just how our brains have been culturally
hardwired here in America. We simply are not trained to "pay it
forward" as Dr. Hollister just encouraged you to do. Let's be
honest, the certainty of situations like this are really all about me.
My hungriness, my fatigue, my desire to just get home, and it's
going to seem to the world like everybody else is just in my way.
And who are all these people in my way, anyway? Look at how
repulsive they are. How non-human they look in the checkout line.
Listen to how annoying they are for talking so loud on their cell
phones in the middle of the line. Look at how deeply and
personally unfair this is for me.
If I choose to think this way in a store or on the highway, fine.
Many of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and
automatic that it's no longer a choice. Again, this is how we have
been culturally hardwired in America. It's the automatic way that I
Commencement 2014
experience the mundane, frustrating parts of adult life when I'm
operating in the egotistic. In this mindset, it's easy to see that my
immediate needs and feelings should determine the world's
priorities.
The thing is, of course, there are totally different ways to think
about the aforementioned situations. Let's change our perspective
for a moment. In this traffic, all of the vehicles that are idling in my
way, is it not impossible that some of these people have been in
terrible accidents in the past? Now, driving is so terrifying that the
only way they can feel safe is to drive a tank-like SUV.
Or that F-150 that just cut me off. Could it be driven by a father
whose only child is in cardiac arrest in the seat next to him? The
man is frantically trying to get to Lancaster General Hospital
before it's too late. You see, he's in a bigger, more legitimate
hurry. And, I am actually in his way.
Or I can choose to consider the likelihood that everyone else in
the grocery store's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as
I am. In fact, by the looks of them, some of these people probably
have harder, and more tedious lives than I do.
Commencement 2014
Please don't think that I'm trying to tell you how to live, or how to
think. Life's hard! It takes resolve and effort. If you're anything like
me, some days you won't be able to change your perspective, or
you just won't feel like it.
However, most days, if you're aware enough to make a concerted
choice, you can choose to look differently at that lady in the
checkout line. You know the one I'm talking about.. . the one who
just screamed obscenities at her child. Yeah, that's her.. . the one
who has needle tracks all over her arm.. .a sure sign that she's a
heroin addict. But you know what? Maybe she's not usually like
this. Maybe she's been up the last five nights holding the hand of
a husband who's dying of brain cancer and the illicit drugs have
become the only thing that can make her feel as good as she did
when her husband was in the prime of his life just a few months
ago. Or maybe this lady is the low-wage waitress at the local
diner who anonymously paid your family's dinner bill the previous
weekend.
Commencement 2014
Of course, none of this is likely, but is it really impossible? It just
depends on what you choose to consider. If you're absolutely
certain that you know what reality is, and you're operating on your
hardwired setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider
possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable.
However, if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will
know there are other perspectives. It will actually be within your
power to experience a crowded, purgatory-like situation as not
only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made
the universe: love, fellowship, and the spiritual oneness of all
things at their core.
Not that all of these things are necessarily true. In fact, the only
thing that is true is that you get to choose your perspective as
you're going through life's journey. This, I contend, is the freedom
and beauty of a real education; an education that I believe you
received while attending Garden Spot High School. I trust you
learned how to be well-adjusted. How to decipher what has
meaning and what does not.
Commencement 2014
That, Class of 2014, is real freedom. That, Class of 2014, is being
educated. My sincere hope is that we taught you how to use the
gray cells between your ears; not what to think, but how to think.
The alternative is unconsciousness, the rat race, the constant
gnawing sense of a life that could have been.. . in other words, the
alternative is a slow and painful death.
I know this probably doesn't sound like the inspirational, sunshine
and lollipop commencement speech you were all expecting. For
that I sincerely apologize. What it is, however, is life; free of all the
Hollywood nonsense that we are spoon-fed on a daily basis. You
are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish.
Just please, please do not dismiss it as a holier than thou Mr.
Sanger sermon. None of this is about morality, dogma, or
questions of life after death. Truth lies in the life we choose to live
before death. In part, it's about the value of your high school
education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and
everything to do with a simple awareness; an awareness of what
is so real and essential, so hiding in simplicity and in plain sight,
around us all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves
over and over - this is water - this is water - this is water.
Commencement 2014
Class of 2014, it is unequivocally difficult to take on a different
perspective in the midst of the commotion that we call life. To be
so alert, so alive and in tune with the world around us. But I want
to tell you that what you get out of life depends on your
perspective. I am convinced that you can achieve anything in
life.. .anything. But you, Class of 2014, need to choose to do it!,
And when you choose to entertain a different perspective, you
may soon find the quotes you come across in the news such as,
"opportunity is nowhere" actually reads, "opportunity is now here",
and it commences tonight.
Congratulations Class of 201 4. 1 will miss you dearly.. . God bless!
At this time I would like to present the officers of the Class of 2014
with their diplomas so they, in turn, can introduce their peers.
[PAUSE for Officers to line up]
President - Holly Nicole Schnader (CO-VALEDICTORIAN)
Vice President - Erin Elizabeth Shopf
Secretary - Katelyn Rae Snader
Treasurer - Hailey Trumayn Fricke