Warning – Stern, frank and adult language follows, if that bothers you, don’t read this it can’t help you anyway.

So now you are sad because you won’t walk down the isle to special music right?  Don’t be!  I only went to my own graduation because I believed the lie that I would not get my diploma if I didn’t go.  I remember almost nothing about the ceremony, certainly none of the pretty words.

I don’t remember who got “honors”, can’t tell you who was valedictorian or the salutatorian or any bullshit they said in the speech they worked on for hours of their life, no one else can either.  I can’t even remember my principle’s name, don’t care to look it up.  On top of this I have an almost eidetic memory for things that interest me or that I care about.

In my opinion a High School graduation ceremony can be summed up as “excessive glorification of the most mundane accomplishment you will ever achieve”. Millions do it every year, many with IQs that are sub 85, For what its worth 75 is the cut off for “retarded”.  Oh, did I trigger you, did our education system condition that triggered response to a perfectly valid word inside your tender young mind?  If so get buckle up buttercup the ride gets rougher from here.

High School graduation is a bullshit ceremony, grandiose words that do not apply to the people they are spoken to.  Worse those words are known to be lies by those who speak them.  They are also known to be lies by the parents who want to believe for their special Sally or Sammy they do matter this time, even though they never mattered to them or anyone they know.  If you go to college next it was a step on a path, if you go to the military or tech school the same, if you right away start a business it was the same. Just some shit you had to do to check a box for society.  Nothing more, don’t pretend that it was, you won’t gain anything by doing so.

At this point due to CoVid almost everyone has experienced home schooling.  So parents and students should now realize that our children spend 9 hours or more a day dedicated to school but only about 3 of them are dedicated to actual education. The other 6 are for transportation and social programming and this is by design. My grand son is knocking out 2 days of work at a time some days in 4-5 hours and spending the entire next day self learning things he cares about, playing and exploring on our property and working on his athletic ability.  I ask why the hell that should ever go back to the warped belief we call normal when the pandemic is over?  I have no good answer to that question, no one else seems to either.  His education has not suffered it has expanded and his life has improved.  He is certainly happier this way.

Here is my message to new graduates depressed about the lack of a formal ceremony.  Good job you got out of the system without hanging yourself in the bathroom!  You ticked the box, dealt with the bullshit.  Be grateful the final lines of mental programming in your indoctrination were skipped.  If they do it “virtually” don’t bother waiting to hear your name called, no one gives a fuck except you and your family.  Say your own name if it makes you feel good but you are better off having a taco night with people you really love, then skyping into this bullshit.

Get on with deprogramming yourself. The 13 years you just spent being controlled and preparing for the world, was nonsense.  Want to know what it actually prepared you for?  Not one fucking thing as to the reality you are about to face. Those “popular kids” are in the same boat as you now, no one gives a fuck about them either. They never mattered, don’t pretend they did.  The assignment you didn’t do three years ago, doesn’t matter.  Your permanent record is a lie, it is currently in a satchel being carried by a sasquatch, riding a unicorn, over a rainbow to the neighborhood of make believe.

If you are going to college use Excel, build a spreadsheet and run the damn numbers on your chosen career.  If the numbers do not work, change your major or don’t go, do something else. Welders even in this downturn are making 80K a year with a certification and 6-12 months experience. Electrician and plumbing programs start over 20 an hour with benefits and ladies you too can connect pipe and wire or learn to stick metal together.

An electrician just did work for me this weekend.  When he did so he pocketed an extra 600 bucks this weekend in “side money” because he can play with wires and not kill himself and I can’t, but I have money to pay for what I want. While others are laid off and can’t pay their bills, he is making an extra 2500 a month in side jobs, all cash by the way. All while he also has a full time J-O-B at 35 an hour with benefits on top of it.  These are just a few examples there are literally 10s of thousands of ways to earn a damn good living, so find one you will enjoy.  Your mom or dad who winces while reading this, secretly wishes someone had been this honest with them, when they were your age.  If you are a mom or dad, can you find the courage to be honest with your kids now and tell them this is all true?  Can you be that brave and trust your child with the truth?

Graduates, you want to have something valuable, may be even more valuable than many degrees?  Well, build a real social media presence on something fucking useful.  Build something no one can ever take from you, a reputation and a network. Stop the stupid shit, do something meaningful about something you are passionate about.  Build on that and you will find others that respect you for it vs. mocking you for being stupid while giving you “loves”. Real love can never come from a screen no matter how big they make that heart emoji. No amount of followers will ever validate you, but if you do it right they can fill your bank account.

If you don’t know what you are passionate about find out, do shit, anything, everything and when you find you are doing something you could just keep doing put it on your list.  Then challenge your mind by asking your mental computer to answer this question, “how can I do this thing and make it part of my life in a way that is profitable”.  Do that and you just might get an answer, you will likely get many and that will give you choices.  The current education system teaches laziness, there is an answer someone already found for you, you get a star for memorizing and regurgitating it.  As I said this has prepared you for exactly nothing in the real world.

Look at the people who tell you that 100K in debt for a degree you don’t even understand the point of is the only way to be happy in life.  Are those fuckers really happy?  Are they?  Are they really?  Ask them if they still owe money on their degrees, what age can they retire comfortably at, how much do they owe Visa and MasterCard.  Then ask them the big question.  How much shit do they own and do mostly for the sake of pleasing or impressing others?

Then go find some really happy people. You will find some have degrees, hell some have PhDs, some dig ditches, some wire buildings, some podcast for a living (yes this is a thing), some install kitchens, some grow food, some study animals, they are as diverse as the stars in the sky.  Yet they have one commonality.

At some point along the way they realized what others said they needed to do was by its very nature a lie. No one can know what you should do any more than they can see a sunset for you or marvel at the stars on your behalf. The happy people in this world all got to a point somewhere and said “fuck it, I am living my life like it is the only life I have, because it is”.

They became a word which has been bastardized to condition you to obey, selfish. Selfish in the best way possible.  To be truly selfish is not a bad thing, all truly happy people are selfish, all the people who really changed the world were also selfish.  Again in the best way possible.

You have been told that to do what you want and take what you want at others expense is being selfish. That is not selfish, it is being an asshole.  When I say to be selfish that is not what I mean.

Rather what I want you to do is what is right for you and best for you.  To walk your own path, chose what you actually want because the people telling you otherwise do not have to live with your choices.  This is what I mean when I say to be selfish.  All truly happy people are selfish in this way.  I know this is counter to your conditioning so choose a different word for it for now if that helps you accept it.  It is that important!  Until you learn to act in your own self interest and not apologize for it, you will never be truly happy.  In fact, until you do so,day to day, week by week and year by year you will actively build more misery into your life.

What I am describing is putting yourself first, and you should, starting now.  One day may be you will have a spouse, or kids of your own. Don’t worry this won’t hurt such relationships it will strengthen them. You will sacrifice for them because it will be what you WANT to do, not what some person with some title says you should do.  Up until now you have made most choices based on what you were told, you can’t actually become a grown ass man or woman and continue to do so.  That is why many of the adults around you seem like children, in many ways they still are.  They are still doing what others say they should instead of what they really want to be doing.  They say it is because of responsibilities, but it is really an excuse for their own failure to truly chase their dreams. In the words of Richard Bach, “the best way to avoid responsibilities is to say, I’ve got responsibilities”.

Live this way and you will be in charge of your life. Only then can you truly be the spouse your partner deserves or the mother or father your sons or daughters deserve.

Graduation Ceremonies mean nothing, they never did, they never will.  How you live your life is everything. The system just controlled you for 13 years. Never let that happen again. If you go to college, know why and you use it, don’t let it use you. If you take a job, work like crazy and when you can’t learn anything more, move to something better.  The world of working for 40 years and getting a golden watch has been dead for 50 years now.  The people selling you on it have never even been a part of it themselves.  Ignore it, ignore them, build your life, your way, start now.

I won’t give you flowery bullshit about what is in store for you, life is a fuckin bitch unless you take command of it and I can’t tell you that you will. How would I know that? Look around a huge percentage of adults are miserable, in debt, on meds for depression.  Many of them fat, sick, tired and hope for a someday they know is never coming.  They use someday as an excuse for the lack of action today.  Your journey to 40 seems like forever right now, it isn’t it will happen in the blink of an eye.  Every second you spend thinking about someday instead of making today that day is a piece of your life wasted.  This waste of the gift that is life is the true sin of our modern society and we have found ways to label it as virtuous.

In another 10-20 years many from your generation will take the place of many very sad adults telling you what you should do right now. The next miserable, fat, in debt, 30 year old who is addicted to booze and hates their job could be you. I am not going to lie to you about that.  For 13 years people lied to you, it was comforting but like I said earlier, now the real world is here, it does not give the square root of fuck all about your feeling or your comfort.

So I can’t tell you that mundane living or misery is not your future, it will be for most of you. I can say it does not have to be, design your life or society will design it for you. Take control or be controlled. The choice is yours but fret not at the fact that you won’t sit in a gym or on a field or in some hall and listen to lies for hours only for 15 seconds of hearing your name amid false applause.

It doesn’t matter, it was never going to matter, see to what matters, that starts now.