Pork, commencement, and fortune cookies

I was at a barbecue the other day and asked what type of meat was on my kebab. On learning that it was not pork, I ate it. My Jewish friend was impressed that I don't eat pork, and I had to tell him that I don't do it religiously, it is just that I don't care much for pork. Occasionally, a smoked ham is excellent, or sometimes when I need protein I will throw some bacon bits on my salad. But I am usually enjoying the flavor of something other than pork, like the smoking process for example.

But yesterday after my brother's graduation, we went to Harvest Moon in New Brunswick, and I really could not resist the barbecue pulled pork sandwich. Even today as I eat the leftovers, I am marveling at the taste of it. Wow.

And now I feel bad that I have a blog entry about a pulled pork sandwich and not about the 2010 commencement of the School of Engineering. But my brother puts it succinctly: "...the student speaker quoted Miley Cyrus's twitter page, and in that moment I wanted to not be graduating with her. I then looked up to the ceiling in hopes that the stadium would collapse in an ironic engineering disaster, smiting all of us for allowing such an atrocity to occur." Well, at least that speaker will be remembered in some way.

Also interesting is the perplexing omission of the Pomp and Circumstance processional. Instead, the students walked in to the inspiring sounds of the Olympic theme song. There was no explanation however, I am wondering if perhaps one of the numerous overachievers in the student body might have been an Olympian.

It is hard to believe that I graduated four years ago. My commencement speaker was Randall Pinkett, a winner of Donald Trump's show The Apprentice. It may or may not be a cliched address, but he pointed out that commencement in most people's eyes means school is done for the summer, unless you are graduating and then it means it is done, period. But that is not what the term actually means. To commence means to begin, and commencement is about the beginning of something new in your life. In a sense, it echoed the themes I'd been learning about in jujitsu. People not learning jujitsu see a black belt and think that he must have mastered the art of jujitsu. But in jujitsu, the first degree black belts are not masters. They reach black belt and suddenly none of their techniques are good enough. They have reached the end, in the sense that they have learned the techniques, yet they are students again, because they need to begin to practice and apply them in ways appropriate to their maturity.

I think in the end it all boils down to perspective. The end and the beginning can look the same based on where you are standing. And that is something I still need to remember. That even though I have completed one form of schooling, I can never stop learning. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel that my commencement speaker was so life changing that I wake up every morning thanking my lucky stars that I heard Randall Pinkett speak. But I think that the words he spoke to my class was something my generation needs to hear- to keep on moving forward even when you think you've arrived.

And that all boils down into a single sentence that came to me by way of a fortune cookie. "No one is standing in your way anymore, it is time to move forward." It all just goes to show that graduation ceremonies would be much shorter if the planners would just eat more Chinese food.