Who Stole My Pomp?

Can you begin to estimate how many times “Pomp and Circumstance” has been played recently? Around mid-May, the college graduations began.  High School graduations have dominated the past couple of weekends.  I remember the great wisdom my favorite son offered us after his High School graduation.  After having attended the three previous years as a member of the band, he said the best thing about graduating was not having to play “P & C” a hundred times (especially the boring series of quarter notes that made up the trombone part).

Anyone who has read my column for more than a week or two knows that, for the most part, I observe life, chuckle and/or groan, and then columnize about it. (I think I just made up a word.  I do that a lot, too).

I don’t attend many graduations anymore.  Having attended three of my own, those of my siblings and my offspring, and a few nieces and nephews, I am pretty selective on how much P&C my backside can endure.  But when I do, it is the response of the graduates’ families, not the graduates themselves, that gets my Spidey senses tingling.  Banners, cheers, whistles, air horns, tears … I wonder how many prayers were offered that this child would not drop out before graduation.  I wonder which one is the first in his family to graduate.  I wonder which one is the baby of her family and the nest is about to be empty.

I wonder if they give much thought to what they are graduating TO.

Speeches about the future abound, but in reality, those days celebrate what they are graduating FROM.  So, you are graduating  FROM High School … what are you graduating TO?  College … what then?  Grad school … then what? 

As trite and cliché as it sounds, the old saying is true, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”  And I will let you in on a little secret.  For most of us, there’s not a lot of pomp in our real world circumstances.  As one of my nieces, a recent college graduate, often laments, big girl world is not a lot of fun.

What you graduate TO is life.  The training wheels are off.  Landlords expect to get paid.  Employers expect effectiveness and efficiency. Sometimes you have to take the job you can get until you can get the job you want.  At some point, you may be tempted to ask, “Who stole my pomp?”

Life is not about pomp.  It is about purpose.  Our lives matter so much to God that Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  That’s it.  Not a life of pomp, but a life of purpose.  You really can go out and change the world if you decide to make a difference in one life at a time.

Pomp?  You can have it.  The trombone line is boring anyway.