Unsurprisingly, I anticipate the end of the semester with mixed emotions. This time of the year always brings fatigue, a frazzled emotional state, and the eagerness for rest. As a graduating senior, I look forward to starting a new chapter in my life as I leave with my bachelor’s degree. Yet my readiness for the summer is tempered by sadness at departing Holy Cross permanently. Alas, such is the way of life’s great changes. I doubt I am the only member of the graduating class to feel this way.
Closing out my brief but vivid tenure at the Fenwick Review, I wanted to take the opportunity to share some thoughts I’d recently had on the nature of graduation. I will not attempt to erase the melancholic aspects of transition. Not only is that feat beyond my writing ability, I don’t think it would even be healthy. Yet as someone who believes there is no human experience which cannot be enriched by philosophical consideration, I hope that my reflection will, without negating the emotional reality of graduation, offer some consolation to those who share my conflicted feelings and some entertainment to those who don’t.
Over the last semester, I have increasingly been confronted by a novel emotion. It should not be confused with pride in others, but like pride, it’s connected to times I’ve seen my friends, acquaintances, and unknown peers come into their own. These last months have been especially rich in opportunities for Holy Cross students to show off their talents. As I write this, the Fenwick Scholar presentation and academic conference are a few days away, and seniors in the honors program are completing their theses. Music majors have been giving their end of the year recitals over the last few weeks. We had one theatrical production last month and are in the middle of another now. The dance ensemble performed for a full theater on April 12th. Battle of the Bands was held on the 20th. And in general, I witness my friends take on new responsibilities as they prepare for new jobs, new internships, or whatever comes after undergraduate education in the case of other ’24 students. These are the times I’ve recently seen my peers flourish as individuals. Perhaps you have your own examples from sports, or service work, or something else.
I have said that the emotion connected to these experiences is not mere pride. Pride in others is a familiar emotion that I’ve had throughout my life. This emotion is newer, and it relates to the fact that the people in question are now burgeoning adults obtaining independence in the world — and, for the first time, substantially affecting the world with their actions. I think it is easiest to explain the feeling with a quotation:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.”— C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Lewis was ultimately referring to human status after death with his descriptions of worship-worthy or horrifying creatures. Yet, as his final sentence indicates, humans are in the process of transforming themselves into these during their lifetimes. In Catholic thought, the process of becoming a saint is usually associated with moral practices, and indeed, I would agree that whether one acts rightly is the most important part of a person’s identity. But idiosyncrasies in personality and talent are also major parts of our ultimate identities. We remember saints not just because of their moral examples, but because of the unique flavors their personalities and lifestyles gave to the meaning of sainthood. I often cite the example of Joan of Arc, whose biography proved so compelling that she inspired Mark Twain, a man famously hostile to organized Christianity, to write a reverent fictionalization of her life.
My emotional response to the recent actions of my peers is, I think, a type of awe. Like it or not, we are all, right now, in the process of shaping our immortal forms — either giving ourselves more dimensions and growing closer to being fully formed human beings, or turning into one-dimensional self-parodies as we give up in the struggle. When I see other students growing in their talents, using them to liven the world, and becoming truly unique in the degree and/or application of their abilities, I have a glimpse of the divine figures they have the potential to become. It is a wondrous thing and a privilege to be able to see other humans in this process. These moments are some of what I treasure most from my time at Holy Cross.
Graduation can be a melancholic time as seniors leave their friends to join other communities. I will not dispute that. But the view of human life as a metamorphic process contextualizes the transition somewhat. It is by setting out that we are able to complete what we have begun at college, coming fully into our own and finishing the process of turning ourselves into masterworks of creation. Thus, while we acknowledge the sadness of this time, let us also see it as a time for amazement. This commencement may prove to be the genesis of, in Lewis’s words, “gods and goddesses.”