High School Graduation and the Importance of “What’s Next”
On Friday June 3rd our daughter Christina graduates from high school. So this morning I drove her up to Northern Michigan Christian School for graduation practice.
Along the way we talked about how she and her classmates were feeling about graduation. Christina expressed, as she has for months, that she’s ready to graduate and move on and start the next phase of her life.
Yet she didn’t think this was true of all her friends. Some didn’t appear ready to move on. Then she said she thought many people she’s known over the years have graduated but never really “left high school.”
So I asked her “what’s the difference between you and these people?”
She didn’t know for sure so I followed up with “so why are you ready to move on?”
She replied “because I can’t wait to go to Butler and meet new people and take my dance career to the next level.”
“What about the people who’ve seemed to have never ‘left high school,’ what were they looking forward too?” I responded.
She answered “I don’t think they were looking forward to anything except maybe just being done with high school.”
“That’s right” I replied “they probably didn’t see their life moving to a more exciting or better place. They even may have come to believe that their best days are behind them.”
Then I shared with Christina that life is full of change, like graduation, and there’s no way to avoid it. So the best way to confront change, as she’s doing, is to have a vision of “what’s next”, a place to be moving toward.
So we when discover “what’s next” in our life and help others to do the same, be it those we lead or just love, change becomes not just an ending but also a bright new beginning with an exciting future.