Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.” -Mary Oliver
Class of 2026, we are, in graduating, announcing our place in the family of things. In doing so, I would like to outline those shared despairs, and thus reveal those mountains, those rivers, that which the world itself offers to our imagination.
Do you all realize how little we talk about COVID?
The world itself descended into a unified isolation, and the world to all of us, as 12-year-olds, became significantly more off-kilter. What is unique about our experience is that 6th grade is not exactly known for its certainty anyway- as we blushed over our braces, as we rumored over crushes, we were crashed into the ambiguity of a global pandemic.
In this, we missed out of a middle school experience, the awkward, and the beautiful. The niche interests uniting new friends, and the health video we all really should have watched in 7th grade.
When we returned to the world, rather than the adults around us viewing life for its precious rose-hued conventions, we became surrounded by political divide, by war. We went from the soft silence of our homes to the screaming cacophony of the realization that even adults, those we were so quickly becoming, become angry when scared.
Every single person on the globe came to know loneliness. And yet. And yet we remain divided.
From other generations, we know division has always existed, will always exist, and thrives in existence.
That doesn’t invalidate our experience. What is different, however, is this global hardship has never quite broadcasted as it is now.
Never quite politicized as it is now. And all the while as we were experiencing the catastrophized mechanics of civil war, we were learning the Quadratic Formula song. (A special shout-out here to Slope Man, for those who knew him, he was bold enough to speak of the undefined.)
We operated in an age of technological innovation where we could depend on Heimler’s History, and simultaneously notice how it is repeating itself. And we learned all that from one Instagram reel.
That is to say, we are resilient. And we are resilient because we have experienced, and from experience we have made progress. Despite the overwhelm of the globe in your pocket, you have invested in the reality of community.
Maybe that doesn’t make sense. Let me dial it in a bit. We all have one thing in common.
No one else outside of this school, outside of these seats, outside of our gowns, can say they attended Liberty High School in Wentzville Missouri with these classmates,. No one else has shared these years with these teachers, having accomplished what we have.
It sounds generic right now, I am sure, so I’d like to highlight a few examples.
This year, in these seniors’ last marching competition, our band won its first-ever first-place win.
“Our band has grown so much in my time here. I see myself in some of the younger members,” percussionist Raven Steinbruegge said.
Our theater program started its journey in the Saint Louis High School Musical Theater Awards our freshman year, and has every year since been nominated for best musical, and won numerous awards.
“It’s beyond the awards,” actor Tyler Bugg (12) said. “We just keep raising the standard for performance.”
The Liberty Belles have achieved synchronized heights, winning four championships.
Our hockey team has stretched into greater awareness amongst our school, gaining publicity through social media, and a reputation through wins.
Key Club has raised money for Alzheimer’s, for Pitts-Hopkins Syndrome.
DECA, HOSA, FBLA, have all brought home medals and wisdom, equipping them with the tools to project them into their respective professional tracks.
There are innumerable accomplishments which cannot be listed in the time confinements of this speech, but each and every one are an unspoken but undeniable testament to the momentum of a unified goal, of a unified experience.
One of my favorite words I have come across in my high school career is the word “microcosm.” A microcosm is a small-scaled example of a larger picture. (Like a Lego version of the Death Star.)
I think it could benefit us to view our highschool experience likewise as a microcosm of the world, expanding and dissecting and loving in each game, in each fundraiser.
We have experienced the worst-case scenario on a global scale. Simultaneously, we have experienced the moments of humanity that make catastrophe worth pulling through. Warmth that justifies the ash.
And in all this happening, we forget. We forget the power we wield when we lay down the weaponry of argument.
We can choose to leave apathy behind. We can be aware and impassioned without being sensationalized and polarized.
We know this because, such as in the achievements before discussed, we have all worked toward a unified goal in our time here.
Whether it was winning a game, or helping your friend through a breakup with the guy you tried to warn her about. Both require patience, dedication, and varying levels of discipline.
We will never take a class here again.
In the same class you have had times you zoned out, times you were reprimanded for talking to a friend.
At other points you learned something that made you stop. And think. Even for a minute.
You had a project you were surprised to enjoy, and another you were surprised you didn’t.
There were times of depth and times of clarity and times you would rather sleep than recite the Krebs Cycle again.
Life is a cycle of ebbs and flows.
Life is not always serious nor deep, so neither are we. We are never always aware, or always searching, and so we don’t. But let us give ourselves grace to express and experience the full spectrum of existence.
We will never be high schoolers again.
I can say I have genuinely enjoyed my time with everyone here. Everyone I have spoken with has had a drive or an aspiration. We are athletes. We are artists. We are innovators.
Every teacher I have had has, in some way, influenced me in a way no one else could. They are mentors. They are guardians. They are educators.
I hope you can say the same, and if you cannot, you are as valid as anyone else.
Everytime we recognize that everyone around us has that equal potential, everyone comes a bit closer to fulfilling it.
Too often we thank the sun for the crops it births, and neglect the gardeners. Let us thank each other. Appreciate those moments too small to be uttered, and too meaningful to be forgotten.
I don’t really want to reiterate to “Follow your dreams”, to “hang in there.” To “spread your wings, and fly, Liberty Eagles!”
Because oftentimes the world gives us reason to believe we will fall if we are not always grounded.
But who are we if not inventors of the present, architects of the future, and fabricators of cliches to come?
Every moment of kindness we take is a moment of betterment, every time we think outside of ourselves, outside of our phones, and listen to those in front of you, we build of world of empathy, and a world of greater efficacy.
A world that we would have been proud to have grown up in. A world where we can be a family, in the family of things.
I want to make an allusion now to the poem at the beginning of this, to suggest us not as Eagles but wild geese, to respect the comfort in our individuality, and the security in the flock.
But because there is no real fun in acting above the tacky, nor are there bonus points for thematically wrapping up with another Mary Oliver quote, I write to all you wonderful people, one last time:
“Spread your wings and fly, Liberty Eagles!”
