Chris Abel Commencement Speech

Good afternoon.  

Thank you to friends, family, fellow teachers, administrators, honored guests, members of the board….Los….and to the class of 2021…thanks for showing up.  Triple Gold Stars for the whole team….

OK.  So, I’d like to ask all of you a favor.  On the count of three, I want everyone to try – at the same time – to take a breath in – hold it briefly – and let it out.

Ready?  1-2-3

I just wanted everyone to remember and remind themselves how good that feels….without a mask.

Just about 18 months ago, our world took a massive inhale and, for the time being, it seems we have not quite let it out.

It is ceremonies such as this one and the fact that it is taking place at all that make me believe that we are now on the cusp of a great exhale….the beginning of a time we may come to call “after”….

We’ve probably all been thinking a lot about what we’ll do in this “after”….see family and friends and far away places…dance, sing…

continue to advocate for what we believe is right…... 

…..and these are all noble goals as they represent something we’d like to regain in the “after” – freedom.

But, what does this “freedom” really mean?

My father once told me that a good pair of shoes and a basic sense of direction were all I would need to find “freedom”….

He gave a lot of good advice, my dad.  

If we went over all of my mom’s advice, we’d be here for the next 3 months….or more.  So, I’d like to give a shout-out to all the moms and their good advice….

But, the truth is….I don’t know exactly what “freedom” is….

What I do know is that we have not quite entered the period of “after” and this provides a unique opportunity to contemplate life’s deepest questions about how we live, how we mourn, how we empathize and how we make meaning of our short and precarious time on this Earth.  

One day this Pandemic will be over…..and our bodies will be freed from all the restraints Quarantine Life has brought us…..but, where will our minds be?  

Because I don’t think we can simply go back to the way it was.  Too much has happened.  We have too much to contemplate before we can move forward.  And, as Marcus Garvey once said: “while others may free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind”

In that context, perhaps it is best that we are still somewhere in-between breaths.    

The reason I say this is because according to Lakota wisdom, the space between the in-breath and out-breath is sacred….this is said to be where we enter back into our natural state, where “I” falls away and we exist as “one” with the world around us.

Perhaps it is this very space that we need right now to process the many strange, shocking and distressing images filtering across our TVs and phones, making us wonder what the “after” should and will look like for all of us…..

The great Inca civilization of South America once built a sanctuary called Macchu Picchu deep in the Andes mountains, hidden from the rest of the empire.  It was so remote that it was the only city the Spaniards never found.  It was only discovered by Europeans in 1911, more than 400 years after it was built.

Macchu Picchu was a place of repose;  a place of deep thought; so far removed so as to create both a physical and mental representation of the space between the “in breath” and the “out breath.”

It was to Macchu Picchu that the great Inca kings retreated to contemplate the mysteries of life.  To free their minds first, so that their bodies could follow.

Now, I’m sure every one of us can relate to how being deprived of human contact in one form or another over the past 18 months has accentuated a loss of the emotional depth, complexity and nourishment which human relationships provide.

And I do sincerely hope the Pandemic has shown us how much more real, more urgent, more meaningful our human relationships need to be….human relations free from the mediation of technological devices….free from prejudice rooted in one form or another.

However, before we finish the exhale and begin the “after”…..take time for yourself to think about what it is you want to keep, what you want to throw away…..who do you want to become and what you want the “after” to look like…

Find the time to create your personal Macchu Picchu.  Create the space between the in-breath and out-breath to do nothing more than think.

It is there that you will find your voice, your song, your version of freedom.

The journey you are about to embark upon will always be your own.  Just be sure it leads to a place inside your own mind - your own heart - where you feel free.   

As the Czech Poet Carl Rilke once said:  “the real journey, is the journey within”  Thank you.