Weekend Words – Graduation Time Redux

We’re replaying a classic this week, in honor of the class of 2012. Graduation Time was first published in April 2010, but the message is a great one for more recent graduates, too.

Graduation Time

            My daughter Grace is graduating from the University of Maryland next month. She’s graduating in 3 years (about half the time it took me to graduate from Virginia Tech) with a 3.9 GPA. Needless to say, I couldn’t be prouder of her!

Being an ex-athlete, I often get asked whether I wish I had a son instead of a daughter. The answer is an easy no for me. Having a daughter like Grace has taught me so much. She always favored the arts over sports. She’s got a great singing voice, and played saxophone in her high school jazz band and violin in the orchestra. Through attending her concerts and talking with her about the arts, I have been exposed to a whole different world from the sports-centered one I grew up in, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Having a daughter has also taught me how to get in touch with my sensitive side, and that it’s OK to tell someone that you love them. Her keen sense of humor regarding my many faults has taught me to laugh at myself. Her uncanny ability to knock me off my high horse when I get too full of myself has kept me humble. I probably would never have learned these important lessons without her in my life.

Below I have included a quote from General Douglas MacArthur. If you are lucky enough to have a son or daughter in your life, tell them you love them and how proud you are of them.

Have a great weekend,

Ro

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

Build me a son whose wishbone will not be where his backbone should be; a son who will know Thee and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge. Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail.

Build me a son whose heart will be clean, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.

And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, “I have not lived in vain.”

-General Douglas MacArthur