June 6, 2025: GraduationStudying: That Sunscreen Speech

[This pastweekend, my younger son and co-favorite-GuestPoster Kyle Railton graduated from high school. As I wipe awayproud Dad tears, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contextsfor this momentous occasion—leading up to a special weekend post on what’s nextfor the new grad!]

On threeparticularly stand-out moments from MarySchmich’s famous 1997 column (long falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut,and eventually turned into ahit song by none other than Baz Luhrmann):

1)     “Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimesyou’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’sonly with yourself.” I’m not sure I know a more apt phrase than “Comparison isthe thief of joy.” This is an incredibly hard piece of advice to take, and we’reall gonna fall short of it plenty no matter what. But I do believe in doing ourbest to judge ourselves against our own journey, rather than what we see ofothers’ (which is never how they would see their own in any case, of course).

2)     “Get to know your parents. You never know whenthey’ll be gone for good.” Man alive do Ifeel this one in June 2025, just a couple days after what would have been myfolks’55th wedding anniversary. I most definitely got to know my Dad,and will always be eternally grateful for all that I learned from him. But thesecond sentence of the quote is still profoundly true nonetheless—there is noway to prepare for losing a parent, you got to go there to know there (one ofmy Dad’s favorite quotes), and all we can do is our best to make the most ofevery second we have with those we love.

3)     “Wear sunscreen” (which is the speech’s firstand last piece of advice). As someone who grew up in the generation locatedsmack dab in between the prior total lack of skin health awareness and thesubsequent extremely knowledgeable sense of the sun’s dangers, I certainly agreewith this advice in specific terms. But what I also like about it is that, amidsta speech that largely emphasizes living in the present and not worrying overlymuch about the future (perspectives I mostly agree with—“Noday but today,” indeed), this deceptively simple phrase reminds us thatlife is long, and we want to make sure that our long lives are as healthy inevery sense as they can be. Graduates can feel invincible, at least in their ownskin (ie, probably not as much in the larger world in 2025), but the truth is we’vegot to take care of that skin to truly make it last.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Graduation texts or topics you’d share?