Madison Central High School has an electronic sign at the entrance to their parking lot. Every morning, as I head to the football field to workout, it has a countdown until graduation. This morning, it read four.
Four.
It seems like just last week it read 300.
In four days, students will walk across the stage and receive a piece of paper that shows where they’ve been — not where they are a going. A diploma is not a map after all.
Many students will go to college. Others will join the military. Those kids will continue to live a world with structure.
When I graduated, I went to college. Five more years flew by and I once again received a piece of paper that told where I had been. But as I shook the last hand, things got tricky. That’s when the paved road ended and the trail got harder to follow. Life became a series of mistakes, stumbles and falls. All structure left my life and the path got blurry.
Twenty-five years later, the path isn’t any clearer.
I still run into obstacles. Those require me to stop and learn how to get past them (walls don’t stop people with dreams, they motivate them). I still fail — failure is the greatest classroom in the world if you allow it to be. I still am trying to find my way. I’ve learned that moving forward sometimes requires a step back. And there is no more dangerous place than a comfort zone. Hard work plus attitude is a performance enhancer.
I don’t have a map. Wish I did some days. But my dream continues to be my GPS. It has gotten me this far.
Tomorrow morning the sign will read three. Then two. Then one. And the it will be the big day.
I wish the Class of 2016 all the luck in the world. I hope that they realize that when they do fail, that the story isn’t how they failed, but how they got back up.
That’s how you keep moving forward when there is no map. And that’s truly the secret to success.