Grads…Live Long and Prosper!

That funky hat and robe tells me…you’ve made it to one of life’s first milestones, congratulations! No one will ever ask me to be a commencement speaker so here are some thoughts via my own blog.  Hey, you get what you pay for.

I’m primarily talking to (and about) high school kids, however a college grad might get a good eye roll out of this too.  1979…that’s when I graduated.  We didn’t think so then, but it really was the stone-age.  If you had a Texas Instrument calculator, man you were state-of-the-art!   We were rewinding cassettes with a pencil!  Some of us still had 8 track tape players. The Walkman wasn’t even invented yet. I’m talkin PRE-boombox!  Oh but we had good music…it was “far out”, “out of sight”, “off the hook”!

No Google!  One had to look it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica or use the Dewey Decimal System (Google it) at the library (SHHHHH!).  And it took hours…not seconds.  We shifted gears with manual transmission, rolled down a car window with a crank, we wrote in cursive, we typed on paper (the trees should have grown back by now) and made carbon copies that smelled like…well like nothing else.

We wore bell bottoms, Levi’s, hip huggers (I didn’t), and hot pants (not me).  Our hair was long, shaggy or flipped like Farrah Fawcett (Google that too).  Our stars were Spock, Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch, Olivia Newton John, Richard Pryor, Waylon Jennings, Steven Tyler, Hank Aaron, Dr. J and Joe Namath…amongst others.

AND…we too thought the generations before us were out of touch, old fashioned and just plain ignorant.  There was a saying back then (not sure it exists now) “respect your elders”.  It meant by virtue of their experience, your elders deserve respect.  You’re right, not everyone has earned respect, but generally, much wisdom is gained by experience.  Do you really need to make the same mistakes they did?

My advice?  Sit down with as many “elders” as you can and absorb as much wisdom as they will share. They’ve witnessed a lot and been there, done that.  And while you’re at it, do us a favor…show us how to download an app, send a pdf, share a URL link, find a password, change the settings, etc, etc, etc!  Thank you, good luck and GOD BLESS!