My 30-year high school reunion is this weekend. I won’t be making the trek to Atlanta, but I did receive a questionnaire to send in. Most of the questions were fairly straightforward, until I got to the following: “What do you know now that you wish you knew 30 years ago?” After much thought, here is what I wanted to write:
“Life is much better than high school would leave you to believe. Being ‘in’ isn’t all that it is cracked up to be, and being ‘out’ is never the tragedy that it appears at the time. High school is an important time to test out who you are and might become. If you can do so without making any life-altering mistakes, that is all the better. It really does matter where you put a comma and how you use ‘its’ and ‘it’s,’ but it’s less likely that the quadratic formula or Avogadro’s number will come in handy once you are out of school. Parents are not as stupid as they seem, and, in reality, they are as interested as you are in seeing who you become. Even if faith doesn’t always make sense to you, it is invaluable to have something solid to hold on to when the rest of your world changes. High school is neither the end nor the beginning of the world, and the best news is that it ends at some point.”
I knew that the above words weren’t in line with the lighthearted comments that they were trying to compile. That questionnaire sat on my kitchen counter for over a week, as I tried to decide what to do. Finally, I completed the form and mailed it off to Atlanta.
When the booklets are handed out this weekend, my classmates will read, “Life keeps getting better and better.” Which it does. Thanks be to God.
