President John F. Kennedy once said, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present, are certain to miss the future.”
When introduced to this quote, I’ll admit, I was uncertain about what it truly meant.
“Change,” I thought, “What’s new?” I began to overlook the significance because of the chaotic and ever-changing world that we live in. In fact, change is everywhere around us. It always was and always will be. Our lives, the whole universe, exists by the grace of continuous change.
We encountered change when we watched fall turn into winter and winter into spring. We encountered change when our baby sister or brother was born. We particularly encountered change when we learned in fifth grade that we only had one recess instead of two, which quickly resulted in a class-wide uproar. We especially encountered change as we entered high school realizing that it was nothing like "High School Musical."
But what does change really mean?
When I began to prepare for my high school graduation, it took me awhile to form a true understanding of what change meant. I eventually became certain of one thing.
Change is inevitable. And that’s what I think President Kennedy was trying to get at in his initial address. As humans, we believe we have control over our own lives by creating routines. There’s a sense of normalcy and security in a world filled with it. And that’s what we seniors have been doing for the past 12 years of our life. Wake up, go to school, eat, sleep and repeat. No matter how hard we try, or how prepared we feel we may be, we’re never ready for what lies ahead. And this is because change doesn’t have a schedule. It comes and goes as it pleases.
The only way that we can prepare ourselves for the future is if we focus our energy on building the new.
While I started to develop my personal understanding of change, five words came to mind: recognition, acceptance, courage, purpose and direction.
The first word that came to mind was recognition. Before we act upon the change that we encounter throughout our life, we must be able to recognize whether change is a painful burden or a beautiful learning experience. We often think change is scary, but that’s not necessarily true. Change catches us off guard and we must recognize that the initial response is not always the end result. Finally, we must recognize that dealing with change is a process; it’s not just going to be solved in a day.
Next, comes acceptance. As humans, we must accept that we cannot prevent change. On my first day of high school, I attended Mrs. Ives’ study hall during sixth period. While she seemed just as scary as the upperclassmen at first, I quickly understood that she had many life lessons that were worth remembering. One, in particular, stood out.
At the front of her classroom hung a sign that said, “When you stumble, make it a part of the dance.”
And that quote is what I think helps define the acceptance that we must have when combating change. In order to understand the change, we must first accept ourselves and understand that change is not what defines us, but rather a part of personal growth that allows us to accept that life is constantly changing.
The third idea is courage, which works hand in hand with the others in order to understand change. Courage is defined as the ability and willingness to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation. As children, we’re taught the story of the cowardly lion in "The Wizard of Oz" who finds the courage to face the witch. We learn that even though he was afraid, the lion was still able to achieve his goal. We must have the courage to take control and travel into the unknown because one day the unknown will be our present and we will be preparing for the next big change in our lives.
Finally, comes purpose and direction, which brings upon another quote from President Kennedy. During a speech in September of 1960, President Kennedy said that “effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. For, as Socrates told us, ‘If a man does not know to what port he is sailing, no wind is favorable.’" But now as high school graduates, we know what port we are sailing- whether that be to college or to the military, and to ultimately start our lives in the real world. Most importantly, however, comes my final point.
Life is series of natural and spontaneous changes, and we should not resist them. We cannot stop the future and we cannot rewind the past. The only way to become the person you hope to be is to press play and take action.
Kennedy insists that we are certain to miss the future if we focus on the past and the present. Meaning, if we spend our time trying to fully understand the change and learning to combat it, we will miss the true idea that our parents and teachers have prepared us for these past 12 years. The point that they were getting at was that we are the change. We are the future. If we’re focusing on how to prepare ourselves for the change that lies ahead, we forget that the world we live in will eventually depend on us. And although I believe that those characteristics are needed to understand change, I also think that it takes a special kind of person, like my peers and myself, to be the change. We are the ones everyone has been waiting for, we are the change they seek.
As cliche as it might sound, the past four years of high school were not “the best four years of our lives.” They consisted of our first heartbreak and our first C, but ultimately they were where we defined who we were and who we wanted to become. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.
So as Rob Siltanen once said, “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
