Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: A graduation speech worth remembering

Ah, it's graduation time.

Which means it's time to ask kids what they're going to do with their lives.

And if you're a parent -- and especially if you're a parent like me with, say, four teenagers -- what you really want to know is when they're going to move out of the house and how they're going to support themselves.

This time last year, my daughter was graduating from Columbus High School, which involved a lot of ceremonies and programs and speeches.

Ron Anderson's speech at the senior dinner is the only one of those things I remember.

Anderson, who retired in January as associate artistic director of the Springer Opera House and director of its Theatre Academy, talked about his journey from being a teenager with plans to be a medical doctor to being an adult trained in stiltwalking, juggling and pantomime.

He talked to the graduates about how plans are overrated. "I understand you need to make some," he said. "It's going to comfort your parents, and it's really going to comfort the teachers at Columbus High. I get that.

"But if they think for a minute, they'll remember that they maybe made plans, but those were just mental exercises that you do while you're waiting for life to happen. So, plans are overrated. Trust your instincts. That's how my life has kind of gone."

I thought it was a wise and beautiful speech, and reminded me of my own life, the first three decades of which I spent discovering what I didn't want to do. That's when my wife suggested I pursue journalism because I liked to work under tight deadlines -- I believe she called it procrastination.

I think most of the other parents could relate to Ron's speech, too -- but in the context of our own children's lives, it kind of scared the crap out of us.

I mean, it's tough to tell your child to trust his or her instincts. It takes a lot of, well, trust.

In fact, a couple of months later, when I dropped my daughter off at the University of Georgia, I left her with these words: "If you decide to change your major to art history, call me first so I can talk you out of it."

I saw Ron last week and told him how much I enjoyed his speech and also how much it scared me as a parent.

He told me about a book he's been reading called "The Road to Character," by David Brooks. In it, Brooks explains there are two kinds of virtues: resume virtues and eulogy virtues.

The resume virtues are the skills that lead to success in the marketplace, while the eulogy virtues are the ones people remember at funerals. Most of us would say the eulogy virtues are most important, but daily we think most about resume virtues.

No question, Ron Anderson has spent his life developing eulogy virtues. About six months after giving that speech, as you probably know, he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, and since then he's just kept on learning and growing, and greeting everybody he sees with a smile and a kind word.

Everybody's days are numbered. (Hopefully that newsflash won't dampen your Memorial Day weekend.) What matters is not the big things we think we're going to do later, but the little things we're doing today, the only day we know for sure we're going to have.

Thanks, Ron, and keep up the good work.

This story was originally published May 22, 2015 at 9:57 PM with the headline "Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: A graduation speech worth remembering."