Dear (omit: fellow) graduates,

How do you make a graduation march look cinematic?  That long arduous function that ushers in a new generation through a new threshold of social expectations.  What an irreplacable joy it is to have the discipline and diligence indeed to have come this far! Congratulations to all my friends whose paths I’ve crossed and are now crossing a path still ahead of me.  Bid your farewells to the academe, by all means do so, you truly deserve that goodbye!  I commend your determination and above all your courage.  If anything, the university life is but a riddle to the Life that often eludes our temporal meander in this world.  And let me tell you something about the world: it is teeming with opportunities, strife, crooks, unemployment, interesting colleagues, friends, traitors, money, happiness, struggles, creativity(!), companies, countries, dinner parties, society, love, hate, poverty(!), TAXES, obligations, governance, subordination, family, documentation, promotions, post-graduate, independence, boredom, youth, etcetera etcetera etcetera…  Take it from someone who took on the world before taking on herself.  We all have our answers to own one day with a strong heart and mind, charateristics of heroes and heorines.  And that my friends, is truly cinematic.

My deepest gratitude to all my teachers who showed no tolerance for my indolence and for that, evicted me from across disciplines to teach me a more important lesson.  I may not be your most studious student but I have learned indeed!  Thank you to the tertiary institution for its stubborness and legitimization of my rebellion, and having such a dry sense of humor: it has the last laugh, for now.  Thank you to my parents for worrying (sometimes, needlessly) for my future.  Mothers and fathers wish their children to grow up strong for they have the wisdom of the damage caused by powerlessness.  It may seem like an obvious choice, but we must learn to accept strength instead of weakness.  And tread our own path with fearlessness and zeal!

To those who are left behind, such as myself I have something to say to you: What now?  NOW, that we have the upperhand.  They just don’t know it!  All the choices we’ve made and the mistakes many people have said we’ve made, to them we say: So what!  I know, I know.  But know that there is no reason to feel defeatist when we’re really the ubermench!  This simply means that we are not easily defined by society instead we let society be defined by us.  We are a huge chunk on the neighborhood which gives us the leverage of the minority.  History has taught us that the minorities are the activists and the activists are the agents of change.  As most people proceed through life comfortably and are unaware of the dangers, we have already become masters of our own discomfort and have skillfully laid out our options.  We are the troubleshooters with a unique point of view.

Finally, thank you to the universe!  I have graduated from that social and psychological torture called a “god” and I thank the masters Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beuvoir, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Ayn Rand, Robert Green Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, Jean Meslier, Michel Onfray, the Zeitgeist and many other freethinkers I have met in this young life and have inspired my post-christian secularity.  To take care of humanity is a soulful task yet an immense responsibility that we do entirely alone.  No earth, no heavenly consultation, no tradition is the sole basis of our personal, ethical, biological, artistic, intellectual evolution.  Borrowing the thought of this important adage, the Captain of my ship, master of my soul: is The “I“.

March, you graduates.  I offer you a line from the song written by a great man by the name of John Lennon.  The last song he ever recorded moments before he was gunned down is a very apt anthem of  a struggle for existential pinnacle.  And thus, the master spoke:

Walking on thin ice,
I’m paying the price
For throwing the dice in the air.
Why must we learn it the hard way
And play the game of life with your heart?

Cheers and good luck to you all.

Yoko Ono feat. Spiritualized – Walking on thin ice [Download] [Lyrics]