Graduation

This time of year, there are always a lot of cap and gown photos floating around. Understandably, folks get excited when their kids graduate and move on to the next phase of life.

Although it's been more years than I care to admit, I still remember my high school graduation. It wasn't such a formal affair back then, and my classmates and I walked across a "stage" that was little more than a semi-truck trailer parked in the middle of the football field. We baked in the sun, threw our caps in the air, and then headed to Myrtle Beach.

The captions I see from parents and teachers on Facebook today echo those I heard on that football field all those years ago, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

How true.

Finishing high school marks the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. Whether bound for college, the workforce, the military, or some other walk of life, the sun sets upon childhood, and a new life begins.

The sky is the limit, and anything is possible.

Several years ago, I awoke one day to find myself fat, out of shape, burnt out at work, and generally dissatisfied with my life. Marriage was a struggle, raising kids seemed impossible, and life seemed to have little meaning.

To combat those feelings, I drank too much and neglected too many responsibilities. Although I would not have described it as such at the time, looking back, I can see that I was miserable.

In his book Outwitting the Devil, Napoleon Hill talks about the habit of drifting. That is, moving through life with no definite purpose and falling into a pattern of laziness and procrastination that results in a life lacking enthusiasm.

I was drifting, and like other drifters, I blamed my problems on external sources.

I lacked the initiative to do even things that I badly wanted to do.

I expected more than I gave, and I was quick to point out problems without offering solutions.

It's no wonder I was miserable.

Eventually, there came the point when enough was enough, and on that day, I exercised for the first time in a long time. That proved to be the first domino, and over the following months, I stopped drinking and eating so much junk and started feeding my body what it needed.

From there, I found the previously lacking initiative to get started on some things I'd been putting off for too long and made some changes at work to eliminate the burnout. As each domino fell, the next fell faster, and it wasn't long before I was living an entirely new life.

I felt the sky was the limit and that anything was possible, and I feel the same this morning.

Today might be the first day of the rest of our graduate's lives, but it's the first day of the rest of our lives, too.