{"id":276648,"date":"2025-06-06T07:17:04","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T07:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-june-6-2025-graduationstudying-that-sunscreen-speech\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T07:17:04","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T07:17:04","slug":"americanstudies-june-6-2025-graduationstudying-that-sunscreen-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=276648","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: June 6, 2025: GraduationStudying: That Sunscreen Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[This past
\nweekend, my younger son and co<\/a>-favorite-Guest
\nPoster Kyle Railton<\/a> graduated from high school. As I wipe away
\nproud Dad tears, this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contexts
\nfor this momentous occasion\u2014leading up to a special weekend post on what\u2019s next
\nfor the new grad!]<\/p>\n

On three
\nparticularly stand-out moments from Mary
\nSchmich\u2019s famous 1997 column<\/a> (long falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut<\/a>,
\nand eventually turned into a
\nhit song<\/a> by none other than Baz Luhrmann):<\/span><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201cDon\u2019t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes
\nyou\u2019re ahead, sometimes you\u2019re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it\u2019s
\nonly with yourself.\u201d I\u2019m not sure I know a more apt phrase than \u201cComparison is
\nthe thief of joy.\u201d This is an incredibly hard piece of advice to take, and we\u2019re
\nall gonna fall short of it plenty no matter what. But I do believe in doing our
\nbest to judge ourselves against our own journey, rather than what we see of
\nothers\u2019 (which is never how they would see their own in any case, of course). <\/span><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201cGet to know your parents. You never know when
\nthey\u2019ll be gone for good.\u201d Man alive do I
\nfeel this one<\/a> in June 2025, just a couple days after what would have been my
\nfolks\u2019
\n55th<\/sup> wedding anniversary<\/a>. I most definitely got to know my Dad,
\nand will always be eternally grateful for all that I learned from him. But the
\nsecond sentence of the quote is still profoundly true nonetheless\u2014there is no
\nway to prepare for losing a parent, you got to go there to know there (one of
\nmy Dad\u2019s favorite quotes), and all we can do is our best to make the most of
\nevery second we have with those we love.<\/span><\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201cWear sunscreen\u201d (which is the speech\u2019s first
\nand last piece of advice). As someone who grew up in the generation located
\nsmack dab in between the prior total lack of skin health awareness and the
\nsubsequent extremely knowledgeable sense of the sun\u2019s dangers, I certainly agree
\nwith this advice in specific terms. But what I also like about it is that, amidst
\na speech that largely emphasizes living in the present and not worrying overly
\nmuch about the future (perspectives I mostly agree with\u2014\u201cNo
\nday but today<\/a>,\u201d indeed), this deceptively simple phrase reminds us that
\nlife is long, and we want to make sure that our long lives are as healthy in
\nevery sense as they can be. Graduates can feel invincible, at least in their own
\nskin (ie, probably not as much in the larger world in 2025), but the truth is we\u2019ve
\ngot to take care of that skin to truly make it last. <\/span><\/p>\n

Special
\npost this weekend,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think? Graduation texts or topics you\u2019d share? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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