The Same, only Different

Graduation address provides an opportunity to reflect on my school days

I was asked to give the graduation address for the Hutchinson Midtown students, which felt like a great privilege to me. I was incredibly grateful for the opportunity.

It’s a special thing to be able to share in and celebrate in our community life - and more so to share in the development of children on the cusp of adult life.

The mission of MidTown Center is to provide real-world, relevant learning in a safe, smaller setting that is conducive for all students to achieve.

That’s extra special for me, since, admittedly, I wasn’t always the most focused, determined, or typical student when I was young.

Here’s the message I shared with the graduates, their family and friends, and the Midtown and USD 308 staff.

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher asked the class to draw a picture of a tornado.

Before I go on, can we just acknowledge for a moment how special it is to live in a place where you can ask just about any 5 or 6 year old to draw a picture of one of mother nature’s most devastating forces - and it’s likely that they’ll know how without explanation.

So I was asked to draw a tornado. That was it.

Nothing about the background, or the size, or anything else. One simple instruction - draw a tornado. The rest was up to me to decide.

Or so I thought.

I quickly went to work, drawing my tornado, then put down my crayon and proudly held up my drawing, expecting that my teacher would offer glowing praise for my exceptional artistic ability, creativity, and hard work.

She looked down at me and said: “You did it wrong.”

I looked across the room and saw every other student holding up their interpretation of a Kansas tornado.

To a person, they had drawn their tornados from a side view perspective - with the wide part of the funnel at the top, gradually shrinking toward the small part of the funnel touching the ground.

Not me, though.

For some reason, I drew mine as if I was inside the tornado, looking down. Mine was not a funnel from the side, but a funnel with wide circles leading into smaller and smaller circles.

Immediately my face turned red with embarrassment. I felt really dumb and weird and different from everyone else.

I was confused about how I could misunderstand the assignment so badly, and how I could fail to understand what everyone else in my class clearly had no trouble comprehending.

It took some time, experience, and the help of a number of people throughout my life to see the truth of that early memory.

Sure, my drawing didn’t meet the unspoken expectations of my teacher, or the established norms of my classmates.

But I was not wrong.

My colorful crayon drawing wasn’t wrong.

My interpretation of how to draw a tornado wasn’t wrong.

It was simply a different perspective. The same thing, presented in a completely different way.

Something different isn’t wrong, or a threat, though it’s not uncommon to be labeled as such.

Difference, when embraced, can help protect us from the chaos of the world.

It can offer us advance warning of dangers we might not otherwise be able to see or understand.

It can show us solutions to complex problems that evade conventional thinking.

Difference, welcomed, nurtured, and cultivated, is essential to building communities that are physically, economically, politically, and socially resilient.

We know this is true in nearly every aspect of our lives.

When you all are a little older and start saving for retirement, you’ll be told how important it is to diversify your stock portfolio. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket.

Community leaders and planners often talk about the need to build different types of economic development opportunities to provide a stable workforce for residents.

Economists talk about how a multi-faceted economy that creates wealth from agriculture, heavy industry, technology, commerce and retail - builds a stronger economy that can better withstand downturns.

We see this perhaps most clearly when we look to nature.

Healthy, diverse ecosystems allow the opportunity for more life at every level of the food chain to flourish. An ecosystem that favors the predator too much, or eliminates diversity in plant and animal life, faces its eventual, but certain, collapse.

Yet, in the human systems we’ve developed there are countless examples where sameness is rewarded and encouraged, while differences are discouraged, or even punished.

It’s baked into our culture and we hear it all the time.

Stay in your lane

Fall in line

Get with the program

Don’t rock the boat

Or, you did it wrong

And sometimes we can feel it in judgemental looks, rolling eyes, and lingering stares of others.

Being the same might be an easier path, but it is not necessarily a healthier one.

And it does not build strong communities capable of adapting and adjusting to modern challenges.

Tonight, I look out and see in each of you a spark of uniqueness, a spirit of individuality that is wholly yours.

You, your perspectives, your views and ideas, your energy and talents, are an essential part of building and enriching our future world.

I also see in this room the people who saw and recognized all of that first. Your family and friends, your teachers, counselors, your principal - all people who had their own choices to make in their lives about where to spend their talents and effort.

And they chose you.

People who really worked to see you for who you are, and made the active, ongoing, decision to accept you, support you, nudge you, hold you accountable, and to walk alongside you - not just when it was easy, but when it was hard.

We are here today to celebrate the achievement of graduation. To commemorate the work you’ve put into moving your life forward, to its next natural phase.

It’s also an opportunity for all of us to acknowledge the people in our lives who helped construct a community in which we could thrive.

To take a moment to appreciate the strength and power of a community that embraces and supports all of us, our experiences and perspectives - and the people who gave a part of themselves as an investment in our shared future.

We can also use this moment to ask what we owe to them, and what you owe tomorrow’s version of yourself.

What role do we owe in the lives of others in our community?

What effort are we willing to expend to build the life we might imagine for ourselves?

Do we have a moral obligation to use our experiences and perspectives to light a path for those around us, and to help those who will follow behind us?

The answer to those questions is complex, nuanced, and entirely yours to make.

But you don’t ever need to feel alone in that decision.

You are stepping away from the structures and systems that have shaped and guided most of your young lives. And you’ll soon emerge into new systems and new structures, with new people, new rules, new expectations, and new norms.

That can be exhilarating, liberating, overwhelming, confusing, and terrifying all at once.

I know that it was for me, when I was sitting where you are right now - unsure of how to navigate what seemed like a pivotal moment in life.

But I’m going to give you for free the hack that took far too many years of my life to figure out.

The more I gave and invested in building and fostering my community, the richer my life grew.

I felt safer in the world around me.

I felt supported in difficult times.

I had fun.

I made mistakes. A lot of them.

But I had people who helped me recover.

I made enemies.

But I also made friends who had my back.

I found people who loved me.

And I found people to love.

I found a sense of belonging.

And I have tried to use that to help others feel like they belonged, too.

Together, it all helped me find purpose and meaning in my everyday life.

And I really hope you’ll hear it with your whole heart when I tell you there’s a richness in community, connection, meaning, and purpose that can’t be found in wealth, or fame, or any of the traditional measures of success.

The people here today know that.

They felt that sense of meaning and purpose and community when they made the choice to invest themselves in you.

That’s part of why we’re all so very happy to celebrate this achievement today.

But most of all, we’re excited to watch all the future ways you’ll invest in yourselves, too.

Congratulations and Good Luck in All you do.

Post ceremony, with two of my favorites - USD 308 Board Member Lindsey Hatfield and Midtown Principal Melissa Evans