Graduates: The end is what counts in life

My college reunion is coming up again. I am wondering if I should attend it and apologize. Not that anyone remembers me, since I didn’t bother to get to know people, really. But it just so happens that’s what I want to apologize about—not taking a risk to know people. If you sinned against people and they don’t know it, do you have to ask forgiveness? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

I will look for my freshman roommate first, if she’s even present. She got ditched by her high school sweetheart and dropped out at the end of first semester, and I didn’t even follow up. I would apologize to Liz for hanging around with her even though I didn’t like her. (It was for safety—everything was about safety then.) But she’s dead now, so it’s too late. Regular readers of my column may remember that a couple of years ago I made a separate peace with Mary Jo via correspondence, not at a reunion.

I can’t apologize to Dennis, either, unless I go to the Class of 1972 reunion (mine is ’73), since he was a year ahead of me, and I won’t do that, of course. It was really shabby of me to drop him for his best friend, and dearly did I pay for it in the end.

The end is what counts in life, I’m finding out. “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning” (Ecclesiastes 7:8). No one ever looks back on his seven score allotment and says, “Man, I wish I had chosen to sin back there!” Or, “I wish I had been immoral.” “Or I wish I had been a jerk to my parents.” Everyone looks back on his life and says, “Man, I wish I had done the right thing back there. I wish I had been kind. I wish I had been courageous. I wish I had been unselfish.” Just so you know, young reader.

If I could remember the name of the Catholic Church where I was a youth group leader (as a secret agnostic), I would apologize to the kids for doing nothing but play my Jesus Christ Superstar record every Wednesday. But “the kids” are now pushing 60. And honestly, it was that album that started me thinking about Jesus as a real human man and not a haloed hologram. So I hope it had the same effect on one or two of them.

My daughter said that in the final months of her senior year in high school, an Asian student in art class whom she had never spoken to broke down crying on her shoulder. She had a 4.0 GPA and was tapped to be valedictorian, but she didn’t want to do it. She had burned the midnight oil to fulfill her parents’ Harvard dreams and had never bothered to get to know anyone at school. (Which is like me, except the Harvard part.) The girl got her wish and they handed the ceremonial speaking honor to the student council president, a party animal who had nothing inspirational to say.

Around this time of year I always listen to Aaron Sorkin’s 2012 commencement address at Syracuse University. One of his stories goes like this:

“Two newborn babies are lying side by side in the hospital nursery and they glance at each other. Ninety years later, through a remarkable coincidence the two are back in the same hospital, lying side by side in the same hospital room. They look at each other and one of them says, ‘So what’d you think?’”

That is the truth. Life is short. And it’s not a dress rehearsal—it’s the real thing. “An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28-29).

These are the words of Jesus, and I always take the words of Jesus at face value. So “do good,” young graduate, and aim for the resurrection of life. Let today be the beginning of a new walk with God.