Every day is a commencement

Every year in late May and early June, the reporters at my newspaper are tasked with covering every high school and college graduation in our region. It amounts to dozens of ceremonies, hundreds of graduates and thousands of proud friends and family members each year. I just returned from my assigned graduation, quite possibly thankful for the first time to have reached my mid-30s.

I often lament the days when it seemed the entire world was at my fingertips, when I felt invincible in mind and body. I was the girl who could do anything she set her mind to. I haven't felt that way in awhile.

I've been struggling this week -- for the past several weeks really -- with a good deal of pain in my lower back and hip. I went to see a chiropractor and was told I'm "wearing out" my spine. The x-ray showed my spine zig-zagging at unnatural angles where it should be neatly curved, and I discovered I'm putting twice as much weight on my left leg as my right, which is probably what's causing the excruciating pain in my hip. I walked out of the chiropractor's office on Monday feeling glum and fatalistic, like I could see the remaining span of my life in front of me and that it's all downhill from here. I could see a future of arthritis, hip replacements, a walker, maybe a wheelchair. I felt old.

I felt old again today, but in a different sort of way. I listened to these young men and women give their commencement speeches -- filled with cliched metaphors about baby birds and fledgling graduates -- and I felt grateful that I'm no longer one of them. I was grateful to have acquired what wisdom and knowledge I have at what I'm sure these bright-eyed teenagers would view as my ripe old age, to have traded my wide-eyed innocence and complete self-assurance for a more nuanced, complex worldview.

I see things now in a way I couldn't at 18, and realizing that has re-opened the door to the future I thought had closed this past week. I remembered that I will continue to learn and evolve and see the world in new and different ways each day that I draw breath.