Graduation Dilemma

After careful considerations and several debates with myself, I decided to attend my graduation. Protracted paranoia and extreme bitterness have badly scarred my positive outlook towards the occasion.

Jumping to other side of the coin, I realized how shallow graduation rites are. Its entirety is a dense celebration of various achievements that at first seemed to be received out of toil and hard work. But in reality, these achievements were accomplished within a lax and carefree environment. The difficulty and the rigor boasted off are but sweet decadent toppings to a rotting interior. Things desired to be and must be learned were left in irreconcilable gaps and loopholes.

I have come to view that graduation is a celebration of failures and disappointments. It is that moment when one realizes that efforts exerted were not at all commensurate to the achievement or perhaps, that it could have been tripled or quadrupled in order for the results to become more satisfactory. But in either of the two, the unrelenting fact that there is something wrong with the educational system is always persistent. Realizing the imperfectness of it, must one be overtly proud about it?

I say NO.

That line of reasoning I have imbued myself with was selfish. It discounted the fact that graduation is not supposed to be my moment to shine, but my parents’ moment to get a share of the limelight. It totally neglected that graduation is supposed to celebrate my parents’ love and pride, not just because I finish schooling, but that they have seen their pain and hard work actually materialize before their very eyes. It is a painting of an artist in a gallery exhibit, and a craft of a poet in publication, so to speak.

Graduation is not about me. It is about my parents. And in the intermediate juncture of their lives, I do not have the right to deprive them of giving such honor. And I am glad that I passed such selfish thinking and, after careful considerations and several debates with myself, I decided to attend my graduation.