Graduating from throes of reality

Usually this time of year, the Talkmistress offers a column of advice to graduates. This year, she was asked to get off her duff and offer that advice from behind a podium at an actual commencement ceremony. Wearing a robe with a hood and everything!

In putting my speech together, I unabashedly mined advice from former “advice to graduates” columns, with the apropos add-ons and updates.

In the aftermath of this speech — delivered May 14 at my alma mater, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock — it has occurred to me that, in a sense, we’re all graduates in this season of graduations.

With everything that has been thrown at us in the past few years, lessons to be learned have been inevitable for all but the most hardheaded and brain dead of us. Those lessons have certainly been tough and, at times, bitter enough to warrant a cap, gown and diploma and a march to “Pomp and Circumstance” … even if the celebration is merely symbolic, in our own minds; or played out for real in the comfort of our own homes, maybe even filmed for TikTok.

Think about it …

■ We have graduated to a point of possessing increased, expanded adaptability skills. We have graduated to new roles as inventors and entrepreneurs. At the very least, we’ve simultaneously “regressed” and advanced to the status once held by the mothers and grandmothers who ran the families the poorer of us were born into … those Mamas and Meemaws/Big Mamas who could literally take the three or four things in the cupboard and create gourmet-quality meals, not to mention come up with other substitutes for things the richer of us may have taken for granted. As the shortages have raged on, we’ve graduated to appreciators of what we already have.

■ In light of various dignity-robbing situations that materialized with the covid pandemic, we have graduated to the realization that dignity should be seen and cultivated, first and foremost, as a state of mind.

■ We have graduated to a much more keen appreciation of simply being outside and enjoying the sunshine; of taking walks, of picnics and dining alfresco, of fellowship-ing with associates, friends

and loved ones. At the same time, we’ve graduated to an appreciation of home, especially as a place where, yes, we can get office work done.

■ We have graduated, sadly, to a people whose innocence has been ripped from us in a sense that we can no longer assume that the big-headline disasters, tragedies and instances of man’s inhumanity to man only happen in other parts of the world — or in bigger cities or poorer neighborhoods than ours. Some of us have graduated, through roles as victims or observers, to full realization that the hardheaded and brain dead among us do exist … and that, indeed, when we don’t learn from history we are destined to repeat it.

■ We have graduated to realizing the need for a Mental Health Month.

■ We’ve graduated to a true appreciation for within-reason escapism, whether it be watching March Madness, the fashion parade at the Met Gala, the latest Marvel Comics movies or Disney’s multiple takes on “Cinderella” — or even Googling and laughing all over again at those old “Fun Things to Do at Walmart” lists (“In the auto department, practice your ‘Madonna’ look with various funnels.”) or Awkward Family Photo pictorials. (Will today’s “family in matching PJs at Christmas” photos be tomorrow’s awkward family photos? Anyway … )

■ And yes, at least some of us have graduated to sort of a resigned acceptance of Kim Kardashian.

■ We’ve graduated to the full realization that social media, no matter how frivolous its names, can be tools of great benefit and great harm equally.

■ At least some of us have graduated to a longing to witness 1) true cooperation among the members of the powers-that-be, or at least some semblance of it; 2) a show of mutual love between different groups of humans; 3) an understanding that a single ingredient would make for a dull-tasting pot of culture.

■ And at least some of us daydream about that second part of Isaiah 2:4 in the Old Testament — “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” … and depending on the situation, substitute “people,” “race,” “neighborhood” or “state” for “nation.”

■ But, we’ve also graduated to the realization that the aforementioned longings and daydreams will remain just those — longings and daydreams — until we each do our part to turn them into realities.

Just think of the diplomas we could show off then.