For today's graduating students and their families this is, once again, a moment of transition, and it, too, is filled with an earned sense of achievement and with an understandable level of both excitement and anxiety as they contemplate together the next steps that today's graduates will take once beyond FitzRandolph Gates. Like it or not, such moments of transition produce a tension that reflects the losses as well as the gains that always characterize a period of change. At these moments we always feel an inescapable struggle between, on the one hand, the magnetic power of our habits and our memories that draw and bind us for good or ill to our past and, on the other hand, the ever present reality of change and transformation in our lives as new opportunities and challenges propel us forward and cause us to grow as individuals. The words of two Irish poets express these countervailing forces more beautifully than I can. Listen first to the words of C. Day Lewis on the power and glory of our traditions, our memories and our roots.
Roots are for holding on, and holding dear.
A sense of rootedness, a source held near and dear. Now attend to the verse of Derek Mahon as he reflects on the constant change that also governs our lives. Nobody steps into the same river twice. The same river is never the same Because that is the nature of water. Similarly your changing metabolism Means that you are no longer you.