The powerful play goes on

It is graduation time again. Even though I have now been away from Brainerd for almost two years, I feel a bit of a special connection to the current graduating class. This group, when they were sophomores, was the last group of students I taught at BHS. And even though I left after teaching them, my leaving had absolutely nothing to do with them. In fact, my awesome final year at Brainerd, especially with the great students I had the pleasure to work with, was the main cause of any hesitance about leaving.

So to those of you who read my blog and are graduating tomorrow, congratulations. And as I said last year around this time, walk unafraid.

When I graduated from high school, a respected family friend gave me a copy of Leaves of Grass, with this poem highlighted, and it has always stuck with me:

Oh Me! O Life
Walt Whitman

O Me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here-that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

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And by the way, tomorrow (the 31st) is Mr. Devine's 40th birthday, so if you see him, give him a nod.