Friday, May 23, 2008

Pomp and Happenstance

This blossomy, perfumed time of year is thick with fusty ceremonies—graduations, confirmations, weddings, end-of-the-school-year events that celebrate achievements.  I’ve been thinking about those ceremonies – the glory they stand for … and the actual strangeness of what they often feel like.

I am a teacher by trade, and each spring I urge a straggle of reluctant students to go ahead and fork over the money to participate in the graduation ceremony – to mark publicly those years of hard work. Sure, you have to wear some silly get-up and listen to pompous music and hackneyed speeches that likely recycle the golden theme of commencement not as an ending, but a beginning.  Nevertheless, I want these students to pause, to celebrate their achievements. It should be a profound moment of: “Ta-da!”

So: why do such hyped ceremonies often feel like a great big nuthin’?

Thinking back to my own graduation, what struck me most was the disorienting weirdness.  I wasn’t sure just what I’d achieved, or how I’d been transformed.  I did know that moving my tassel three inches to the left didn’t shake me to my core.  The whole thing wasn’t pomp and circumstancy; it just seemed … happenstancy.

Now, maybe you’re the lucky one who beamed through your graduation, feeling it in your bones; or maybe you wept photogenically through a wedding ceremony, sensing the world about to turn on a new axis.  But for many of us, those Big Meaningful ceremonies are often hollow, estranging.  The high-pressure “what’s next?” of those transitional moments often feels more like the bottom’s just fallen out than a reason to party.

After all, when are big changes ever comfortable?  When our daughters were toddlers, I often heard parents apologize for their screaming offspring at the doors of pre-schools or gates of playgrounds, saying, “Oh, well, little Aiden (or Emma or Conner) has trouble with transitions.” No kidding? Well, who doesn’t?  Most of us prefer the familiar, when we’re in a groove, know what we’re doing, and we’re doing it well.  Most ceremonies, conversely, mark the end of the familiar, and the start of being tossed into a whole new deep end.  Yippee.

We’re no different from other animals. Think of the transition of caterpillar to butterfly, just at the graduation moment when it bursts out of its chrysalis, expecting a diploma.  It should be a glorious, celebratory moment—but if you’ve ever really watched it happen – with the butterfly dangling upside-down, unfolding stickily,—it’s a reminder of how ungainly and disorienting it really is to make big changes—far more bruises and backsliding than pomp and circumstance.

Truly, the moments in our lives that really deserve a brass band and velvet robes and a basso profundo voice saying “Something BIG has happened here!” are most often happenstance, unexpected. Maybe you’ve had the experience of reading a novel or seeing a film that shifts you, profoundly, to another axis – that peoples your interior with ideas or characters that become guides – or cautionary figures – for the rest of your life.  Or maybe you’ve had a conversation with someone that suddenly made your world slide sideways as you questioned your faith – or gained a new sense of it.  Those are moments that warrant pomp and circumstance, but they often pass quietly, despite their transformative legacy.

Now, I know ceremonies are – well, just ceremonial.  They stand for something else, and so the going-through-the-motions is a public way of signaling a more private transition.  The turning of the tassel doesn’t transform a person, any more than a marriage ceremony makes a couple more of a couple.  My partner and I just observed a substantial anniversary, and we refer to the date, quite irreverently, as our “bananaversary,” as a reminder that what marks our connection is not commemorating a ceremony, but the small, happenstance revelations we’ve had that change our orientation to the world.

When you see graduates or freshly marrieds in the coming weeks, then, rather than clapping them on the shoulder with a hearty “Congratulations – and, what’s next?” the best response might be a more tender check-in – a “So – how are you doing?” knowing they might be stumbling, struggling to find fresh footing.  The real moments of celebration – quieter, but more profound—are likely still to come.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on May 23, 2008
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