Yesterday, the daughter's graduation. A speech by the Class Valedictorian, in which youth assures age that it's completely ready for the Challenges ahead, the much-abused metaphor of life as climbing a mountain by a breathy girl that doesn't sound like she's ever even been outdoors, let alone up a mountain...
An initiation, of sorts, but not at all, not in the least.
Other formalities, introductions, boring recommendations based on other people's "life experience", the voice of experience recommending everyone follow in it's footsteps, the band plays, then the ceremonies begin, diplomas are handed out, watching the graduates cross the stage, shake hands, photo-op, continue off the stage, the mixed applause of the student body - the hoots and hollers from the crowd indicating a social acceptance that will easily be as important as any academic achievement...
It's funny, watching this, you know none of the students yet you recognize them all, churning out of the machine, the personalities, the same as at your own graduation, the same at every graduation, the bigger the class, the bigger the range, the variety, but the people, the individuals, for all their striving to be different are the same as the ones you went to school with, the class clowns, the jocks, the pretty, the handsome, the popular, the bright, the workers and the slackers...
Intermission, the band plays, then the machine resumes coughing up it's pre-approved social product, the machinery of conformity and the indoctrination into 8 and 9 hour workdays complete, averaging not even 15 seconds per student, this is our investment, here, see, this is our reward...
Then, closing ceremony, the Principal shares his own life experience, you can tell he's watched a lot of TED talks on this topic, modeled his own speech after them, only, really, he has nothing to say, no words of enlightenment whatsoever, merely an opportunity to overshare and talk about his own struggles and dreams, drawing tenuous and nonexistent parallels with the student's lives, life will be a challenge, don't give up on your dreams, dream big, there's no TED talk or load of New-Age Chicanery he hasn't bought into and he brings to it a sincerity that even the most gullible would question, "Today is the first day of the rest of your lives..." , it's gagging me and he's not stopping, the cop, she's just standing there, there's been a hostage taking, an entire auditorium, draw your gun, do something, shut this lunatic up..., stare into space, look off at the ceiling, you want to yell at them all that it's bullshit - it's all bullshit, the world's on fire, it doesn't need any more bullshit on the fire it needs a revolution, off with their heads, all of them, start with the Valedictorian, she's "nice", they're all "nice" but it has to be done, start now, quick, before they get away, ...
Finally it ends. The same as your own graduation, only the world has never inched so closely to Armageddon, to extinction, and any starry-eyed imaginings of unmanageable wealth or illustrious career will soon be overtaken by an increasingly grim reality.