First Reunion Speech

Graduation has come and gone. I spoke last night at First Reunion, which was just a gathering of graduates and our families. I don't know what others thought, but I enjoyed my speech.:) Here's what I had to say last night...

I would like to share a story with you guys about a gentleman who was looking for a job. He was offered a position at the local zoo. They told him they had recently lost their gorilla. If he was willing to put on a suit and impersonate an ape he had a job. While it wasn’t terribly authentic, a job’s a job. Things were great as each day he perfected his gorilla act and became a prime attraction at the zoo. One day he got a little carried away swinging from tree to tree and he swung right into the adjacent cage, landing face to face with a giant African lion! The man reflexively screamed for help. The lion urgently whispered to him, “shut up, you idiot, or we’re both out of a job!”
This gentleman in the ape suit was simply pretending, just faking it for the general public. He was so caught up in faking it that he didn’t even realize everybody around him was also just wearing a mask, or in this case a full body costume. He was lost in the shadow he created.
I had an interesting conversation with my former roommate over Easter break. We talked about living in the shadow of our roommates. I revealed to him how no matter what I have done I always feel my roommates are one step ahead of me on the scale of creativity, of insightfulness, and of all around awesomeness. However, this is not always a negative shadow to live in. It has taken me on amazing adventures over the four years as I have discovered my true identity in Christ.
My freshman year the adventures were ridiculous and fairly limited to my floor of Ed 2. There were the crazy pranks, poker nights, and the infamous Bible study second semester on the Song of Solomon.
My sophomore year the adventures were infinite as we celebrated life throughout the year. We celebrated each home run of fruitball, each successful run on the office chair down the Beebe hill, but more importantly we celebrated community in prayer every night. Some of you stopped by that year and blessed us with your presence long enough to color a picture that was placed on our wall.
Junior year came around and things changed after spending first semester in Spain. I began to feel out of place and disconnected, as I couldn’t possibly impart to anybody the impact of that semester on my life, faith, and friendships. In a large sense this feeling of disconnectedness has not left me ever since then.
Coming back to the story of the man in the gorilla suit, that is who I have been for the past couple years of college. It’s been fun, no doubt, and I have spent time away from the general public without my suit on, but for the most part I lived in this suit. I have since learned that the greatest bit of knowledge can be summed up by the famous scholar Dr. Seuss: “Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.” I have not learned this in class, I have learned this from you guys, my classmates and friends. I’d lie if I said those outside the current senior class never made an impact, but I thought that I’d throw in a sappy line about “the great senior class.”
Every summer that I have gone home and left my closest friends I have realized how amazing you all are here at Fox, even if there is a feeling of disconnect sometimes. I don’t think that I told you how amazing you all are enough. I wish that we had all skipped a few more classes and just sat in the quad together doing crossword puzzles or something awesome like that. Now that we are graduating it’s going to just get harder to stay in contact and sit in the quad together. If any of us ever felt disconnected while either here at Fox or home during the summers how much more will we struggle with this disconnection once we’re graduated? Please don’t become disconnected from your friends and don’t hide inside a costume. I have learned while at Fox that friendship is far too valuable to let fall by the wayside.