As the dust settles from all the celebrations and festivities, graduates all over Snohomish County are busy preparing for their next adventure. Some are looking for work or preparing to start college; others are searching for life experiences that will take them one step closer to the future of their dreams.
Either way, the reality of this is that many of our best and brightest will be leaving the people and places that have nurtured them for the first 18 years of their lives. They will be leaving home.
And this is how it should be. Leaving the nest, spreading our wings, experiencing the world first-hand — this is how we broaden our perspectives and come to understand the world and our place in it. This is how we grow up.
But as our young people get ready to disperse, let’s remind them that they are taking with them a valuable treasure that is easy to take for granted but not easy to replace: roots.
Roots are the often invisible and seemingly mundane connections to what we eventually recognize as the very source of our lives. They are the networks of friends and family and acquaintances that form the human web that supports us. Roots are the familiar people and places we may or may not acknowledge, but that nonetheless serve as the unconscious backdrop that allows us to feel secure and at home in the world.
Strong roots make for strong communities and for rich, meaningful lives. But no one can give them to us. Roots can only be grown slowly, patiently, in the soil of our commitment to particular people in particular places over substantial periods of time. And you just can’t rush something for which time itself is the essential ingredient.
So, to our recent graduates: Grab life by the horns and live the adventures that are calling to you. But when the dust begins to settle once again, I hope you’ll consider following those stretched roots right back here to good ol’ Snohomish County. We need you here at home, and it just might be that you need us, too.
Jim Strickland of Everett is a teacher in the Marysville School District.
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