Words for my brother, on his graduation.

This weekend, you graduate high school. I know this day has been one that you looked forward since you knew what high school was. From here on out, the world can be structure-less. From here on out, the things that capture our days, the periods into which we can divide them, are optional. The defining element of a post-high school existence is choice – the choice of who to live with, of what to do, of which of your myriad of dreams to follow and which will be first ones to let go.

Of course, acting on these choices sometimes seems irrational. At times, our alternative might be setting up a residence alone in a drafty cardboard box. Truly, our lives are no freer. But still us out-of-high-school ‘adults’ place the idea of choice in the dusty closets of our minds, like one of those post-9/11 survival packs we were all so quick to buy. Using it would mean our world is in chaos, but we take comfort that it is there.

In truth, free will is mostly a lie. We must work at jobs to make livings, we must love the people who love us back, and we must remain in the tracks that habit digs too deep for us to leave. We remedy this deception by obsessing over changing our superficialities – our hair, our clothes, our bodies, our things. We follow invisible rubrics, strive for unmarked grades. Occasionally a mid-life crisis will go further, and we will laugh, embarrassed, at this someone who’s too cool for school.

So what am I getting at here? I am trying to give you some words on this very important day, some wisdom that I have found. It’s not an electric kettle, or a photo album or a gift certificate to Bed, Bath and Beyond. It is, apologetically, a trite bit of graduation advice, in a medium exhausted well past cliché. At 25, it is all I have to offer.

I have few clear insights from my quarter-century of life. Statistically, my presence on earth is an achievement. Global childhood mortality is at six percent. And there are the countless other mishaps and hazards along the way – the sicknesses, the car accidents, the psycho-killers, the freak hair dryer in the tub. I might not believe my 25 years have bestowed me with much wisdom, but I recognize them as a gift. To breathe is to be grateful, for all those breaths that came before.

I know our world is troubling.

There are women, children really, taken from homes to cities, where they must sit on stranger’s laps in exchange for a life. There are men with guns, pointing at other men who also have guns and neither group quite knows the reason and not one of them wants to die. There are many many millions of people who walk with holes in their heels where little bits of themselves fall out and are forgotten. And one day they awake an incomplete puzzle, jagged and pointless and with a picture that does not make sense.

You and I are people who know this. Our holes are not big enough to let this knowledge slip out, and our hearts must beat a little harder because of it. It is difficult to convince the blood to leave the cozy chamber of our right ventricles when there is a world of sex slaves and soldiers and jigsaw pieces around. For this reason, we are often tired.

There are many who will deal with the troubles by getting angry. Who believe that the choices offered are complacency or anger, and nothing more. Comply with the system or fight it. I know that this option appeals to you – you who feel, you who knows the weariness of heels without holes. Hate will set you free.

Once, I knew this anger. I hated corporations, I hated condominiums, I hated Wal-Mart, I hated Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I was angry at globalization, at war, at oppression both large-scale and small.

I was proud of my resentment. Likewise, I was proud of the deep pools of sadness that the futility of my activism brought on. I choose to change the world, finding my efforts more valid than the consumption-based changes all around me.

The thing is, I was wrong. Hate isn’t the only choice available. And it’s just as superficial as all those choices that make the angry people so red in the face. In our attempts to save the world, we have divided it – with all sides vehemently raging against the other. We have failed.

So here’s my graduation advice for you, so many silly words later. When you live this beautiful, new open life of yours, don’t be fooled. Your options are greater than you could believe. When you feel you are offered compliance with the status quo or the angry surging against it, choose neither. Choose joy.

When the sadness of the world, with all holes, has made you weary, choose joy. Fight it all with joy.

There is no other way I know to handle this life. You are here. You are breathing. You are loved. Be grateful. Have joy.

We cannot stop war by hating war. We cannot stop suffering through anger. The holes in the heels of this world will not be darned if we just keep our heads down and plod on.

To have joy is to spread joy. Like the flu or cat hair, it violates its nature to stick to one living being. So do what makes you happy, and your happiness will contaminate the world.

It will not be easy. It will be easier to hold your anger, hot and predictable in your chest. Or to build an existence surrounded by the shallow markers of pleasure and success that replace the As and Bs in the post-high school progress report. True joy does not stem from these things. And it withers in the presence of rage. It must come from you, from a true desire to change the world with its touch.

I can promise you this. The process will change you. It will make you a better person, and it will make those around you better for having known you. There will be times when the world crushes you. When you hear of a two-year-old who dies from AIDS complications. When you watch CNN. When it is cold and you are warm and you know that others, somewhere, are not.

You will be mad sometimes. You will be so mad that you want to scream at the people who appear so unconcerned. And you will want to destroy, to debase, to hate. It will be difficult, then, to turn away.

But if you make any choice, make this one. Let this be the class you continue. Let it be the curriculum that guides your days. Do what makes you happy. Remember when the world feels tight around you, that you are free, that you have a choice. Act in love. Embrace joy.

So there you are. I hope you can use these words in some way. I hope they can bring you a peace. Next time, I promise, I’ll just send a gift card to Subway.