This is an essay I wrote for class, I liked it so its up here now! Screw you Andy for making me read that im so sad now ;-;
When wearing sunscreen
Eloise Gardiner - critical, personal, universal.
When we have a commencement speech we look out at people who we have done our best to prepare for the world. Adults who were so recently children can now stand on their own under the guidance of the mentors around them. Wear sunscreen by Mary Schmidt is both the most practical advice we could give to that kind of person and the most honest. In her speech she toggles back and forth from more practical advice, like wearing sunscreen, to flossing, to making sure to get calcium, to losing less tractile things. Like loving your parents before they are gone, or being kind to your siblings because whether they liked it or not they always had to be there for you. Because both are what college graduates need to hear. They need to be reminded to take care of themselves (particularly because college is college), but not only for that but also so they can love themselves and the people around them. The tone is determined but not unkind, it's that of a mentor. Because it's advice the people in the crowd desperately need to take.
I think about the border between adulthood and childhood a lot. In the eyes of the law, I'm still a child. I can drive. But I can't drink, or vote, or travel alone to visit people who might as well be family despite never being in a room with them before. No matter how much I'd like to cast my ballet for something I believe in or have a drink with my dad on Canada day. To stay up and sit around that terrible little metal trash can we call a fire pit and be considered aware enough to talk politics with everyone else. I dwell on “Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own” because I know if I ever use it the way I truly want to I'll never be my parents' girl again. Am I wasting the last of my childhood by wanting that? Rushing into adulthood only to regret it soon after? Or am I already an adult? Sometimes it feels that way, that being a teenager is knowing you're ready for things, but the people around you still believe that you're nothing more than the 5-year-old who wouldn't eat cabbage at a Christmas party but loves spinach. I am afraid of it. That I'm secretly just a 5-year-old, and I'm even keeping that secret from myself. This is a speech that disregards all of that. It tells me that I am here now, and wherever I am going, I will get there. Because I have to.
That wherever we are going, we will get there. There is so much we can't be told by the people around us. “Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly,” Mary Schmidt urges us, because they will make you feel ugly, but, furthermore, they will not tell you how to live a good life. They won't preach to you anything beyond the superficial way your own body should look, they won't tell you how to explain death to your children. Or what your wedding vows should be. But still she directs us that “Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of removing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling them for more than it's worth.” By this, she means that while looking back is not completely useless (by recycling) that it's still not the same as living. All Mary Schmidt is asking us to do is live. Can't we provide her with that?
