A Day which lasted a Lifetime

It is graduation season, a time for students and their parents to celebrate hard work and accomplishment and with that theme in mind this story of my own high school graduation and what it meant for me has lasted a lifetime.

Thirty-nine years ago this week, I graduated from high school in a small East Texas town. Our high school, grades 9-12 had less than 400 students combined and my graduating class was 88 total. To say I knew everyone is school would be to say it was a small community.

On my graduation day I was not joyous as most of my friends were, because as usual there was some crisis in the family. Every time I see this picture of my dad and I standing in our living room of the modest shot gun house we lived in on graduation night I see the uneasiness in my face,while my dad was as photogenic as ever - and a proud father. The build up to this day was a long time coming and a hard fought battle for me. While school was never overly difficult, I did not excel as I should have. I was in school clubs, competed both in academic competitions, and athletically as well, so I was participatory and I never failed a class or grade, but never achieved constant A and B grade status either. And there were reasons for it, some I blamed myself for, and others on just how difficult life had been for us. But I had made it, something my mom or dad did not achieve as neither of them graduated from high school, and had worked hard all their life to provide for us...many times barely getting by, and I don't use that example lightly.

Graduation night is a time of celebration and preparation for the next level of education and to prepare for a career. Unfortunately for me that was not going to be an option, so graduation night provided me the escape I had longed for to run from my youth. I knew that I could not stay there if I wanted to overcome all of the tough times we had endured. It was too much to assume that things would get better. At least that is how I viewed things as an 18 year old.

So I took the risk and left, never to return home...a home and family that was finally broken a part less than a year later. Was it intuition on my part or just the desire to get away, I think it was a little of both. My graduation day and the difficulty of getting to that day was the reason I never wanted to look back - the motivation and drive I had then has never left me and the reason that day has lasted a lifetime.

For so many years I didn't talk about what factors drove me so hard, to be successful and have my own strong and tight family. Now I can do so with confidence, but not arrogance and hopefully a bit of humbleness. Because what I come to realize some years ago is this, what I experienced in my youth prepared me as an adult. Tough times can do one of two things, it can make you determined to break away and build a better life or succumb to tough times and let the cycle start all over. The latter made no sense to me and the former has been my laser focused mission.

So today, I celebrate all those who will be graduating in 2021...you all have a destiny no matter where you started from in life. Own your destiny.

Have a great day