Circumstance

Last night, I attended my school's GED graduation ceremony.  Our offices are in the same building as the ABE/GED program, and since many of the graduates will go on to enroll here and qualify for the services my program provides, I was there to recruit and congratulate the graduates.

If you're ever feeling down about the state of the world, go to a GED graduation ceremony.  There you will see a lot of people who have been knocked around and who have made bad decisions or had bad decisions thrust upon them.  If the program is like the one here, and the people on staff work as hard as the ones here do, then maybe you will also have a group of young men and women from a prison camp who have come out in uniform and who stand in straight rows with grins on their faces, who can barely zip their gowns because their hands are shaking with excitement and nerves.  You might see families gathered near -- families who have not had much to celebrate in the past few years -- and see the evidence of pride. 

I actually couldn't watch the ceremony because the theater was full.  Standing room only and the room for standing was out in the temperature un-controlled art gallery that serves as a foyer.  Out in the hallway, I could only hear the applause.

At the reception afterward, I congratulated and recruited.  And thought how lucky I was and how proud I was of these people whom I'd never seen before, but for whom I wanted the very best out of life.