By Deborah Blackwell 

Participating in Harvard University’s Commencement as a press correspondent always made me feel like I was part of something bigger. Much bigger than anything in my own, tiny, self-focused world. Funny how my world doesn’t feel tiny until I see and hear the pomp and circumstance of our country’s first-established university and one of the world’s highest-ranking educational institutions. 

That’s not to say my own son’s commencements — plural, last year bachelor’s, this year, master’s — weren’t amazing. He graduated at the top of his class, and I could not be more proud. In his early 20s, he’s done more than I have at this stage of my own game. But as I watched him in his cap and gown, walking with his peers down the center aisle, I ignored that inner baggage and felt pure present-moment joy. I was bursting with it. And, thankfully, it overshadowed the reality that this was it, he was all grown up, and out of the nest. My nest. The one I built with deep love, care, tenderness, and ease. 

Being a mother came easy for me, it was all I wanted to do in life. I knew as I watched him graduate not once, but twice, my guidance and support, my seeing him for who he truly is, and supporting his journey how he needed, not how I thought it should be, helped him get to this place. A place of honor, of grace, of achievement, and opportunity. He did it. We did it. But I knew, lurking behind that pure joy, was the gaping hole that he left me in the dust. His accomplishments, his excellence, his future, way ahead of whatever I have done in my own life. And I wondered, is excellence is in the eye of the beholder, regardless of what our position is at school, work, or in life itself? 

Watching UMass’ and Harvard’s commencements unfold — rites and rituals, acknowledgements, bittersweet sentiments, traditions and transitions — I thought about regular life. Plain, old, day-in-and-day-out life that creates our character, defines our values, shapes our dreams, dashes our hopes, and sometimes brings us to our knees. What’s happening on those days? The days, months, or years, when the ho-hum of routine or status quo prods us along without fanfare. Or the days when joy seems unreachable, and relief is our only desire. The times we pray for grace and try to coax our mind to settle from the swirl of the moment.

What’s real, what’s behind the scenes, what outward images or our perception isn’t really showing us, is shadowed by pomp and circumstance. We want to share the profound, the glorious, the remarkable, the achieved. But nothing is really as it appears. Nothing is static. And things can be either awful or great. Extremely awful or extremely great, or both, in any given moment. 

It’s almost like having a love/hate relationship with life. I love the anticipation of potential, of a future where dreams come true, and life is exactly how I want it. But I hate that sometimes the road can feel long, and defy logic, or effort, or even substance. I do my best to balance compassion with wisdom, empathy with obligation, and surrender with exhaustion. 

This waiting—waiting to get to the next phase whatever it is—is filled with never-ending hope that happiness will always prevail. And that’s whether we’re building a nest or leaving one. We all want to feel good as we transition from one phase of life to another, or even one day to the next. So, while I watched excited, eager, fortunate graduates walk into their new life on the bedrock of pomp and circumstance, I remembered, no matter how small our world seems, we are all part of something bigger — with or without a ceremonial experience at a profound institution. We are, in our own right, profound, on any given day. 

To all of us then, caps off! Well done.