by Ethan Meyers
Good evening everyone…
This past April I was in the French Riviera. There was an enormous hill on the far side of Nice, blanketed with trees and shrubs. Now it may come as a surprise to you, but great panoramic views of the Mediterranean aren’t something that I have access to every day. Needless to say, I wanted to go up the hill and, regrettably, Sam Merwin was the only person I could find to join me (or is it Sam Myers?). The walk was great, and the view was incredible. The whole city was visible through the foliage, and the sea appeared to be attached to the sky. It seemed like a very unique experience,
and I was feeling that wonderful sense of adventure as we continued upward along an overgrown path. We finally reached the top, where we found a kiosk, a playground, and about two hundred other people. There was a road that led up the other side.
Tonight, as a few of you may know, we’re graduating high school. We aren’t the first people to have this experience. We’re not even the only ones who are experiencing it at this very moment. The first eighteen years of our lives have been planned out for us. I could’ve told you five years ago that I would be here, and I could’ve even told you why. But I can’t tell you what I’ll be doing five years from now because now it’s up to me; it’s not something scripted by anyone else. I hope that nobody can tell you what they’ll be doing in five years because that seems to me like the most boring thing in the world. We may be done with high school, but we haven’t made ourselves yet. From this point forward, our past experiences are nothing but our tools. They can’t bring us excitement, and we can’t change them; all we can do is use them. None of us, especially not I, have succeeded. We don’t even know what success is. The only thing I can promise is that what we found in those walls will help us achieve every bit of success that we find in the future.
When you finally reach the top, you might find people already there just as I did, but that’s not important. How you get there is. Take the path, not the road. It’s the small stops on the way up the hill that make the trip worth it. Those moments, when you turn the corner only to be stopped by something you didn’t expect, add up because, when you finally reach a pinnacle only to share it, it’s the sum of those experiences that really makes the effort worthwhile. Sure goals are important; no journey would be made in the first place without one. But goals still aren’t experiences; goals aren’t what we learn from. My final request to my classmates is quite simple – don’t stop. If there is one thing I could wish upon everyone, I would wish for everyone to find something that they enjoy doing more than anything that they’ve done up to this point in life. Unfortunately, I don’t have any wishes, at least none that I know about, so you’re going to have to find these things for yourselves. And one more thing – it’s been emotional. Thank you.