Commencement Address 2026

 

To our newly minted alumni: before I give the Charge to the Class of 2026, let’s take a moment to thank the many people who helped bring you to this day. While this diploma represents your hard work, none of us arrives here alone. First, let me say a quick word about the setting of our commencement ceremony, which, in my completely unbiased opinion, is not only the most beautiful graduation setting in Connecticut, but quite possibly in the entire Western Hemisphere. Honestly, if you dropped a drone over this Senior Green right now with its towering oak trees, the century-old school buildings, the perfect May light, people would assume this was either a movie set, a luxury college brochure, or the location of a royal wedding!

 

Second, thank you to our Buildings & Grounds team, Sherri Malinoski, Paul Merchant, and the many members of our community who worked tirelessly to make this beautiful ceremony possible on our Senior Green. Please join me in thanking them. Next, to the parents, grandparents, families, and loved ones: thank you for your sacrifices, support, encouragement, and trust. Seniors, these are the people who believed in you every step of the way. Please join me in thanking your families. We also thank the Board of Trustees for their stewardship and commitment to Kingswood Oxford and its students. Please join me in thanking the Board.

 

And finally, faculty, please rise. Seniors, this remarkable group of teachers, advisors, coaches, and mentors helped

shape who you are today. Please join me in thanking the faculty of Kingswood Oxford School.

 

Charge to the Class of 2026

 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wanted my final charge to you to be. Then, one evening, while driving home, I was listening to a Spotify mix and a song came on by one of my favorite artists, Bruce Springsteen (whom I’ve seen three times in concert). The song was Thunder Road and it’s one of my favorite tunes, so naturally, as I drove down Kingswood Rd returning home from Hall’s Market, I cranked the volume up, rolled down the window, and sang my heart out. As I pulled into our driveway, fully committed to the moment, I found myself belting out the lyrics: “Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair…”At which point I looked over and saw Tadhg staring at me with a mixture of horror, embarrassment, and the deep disappointment that only a teenage son can feel toward his father. But I didn’t care, because I’d found my charge to the class of 2026.

 

The song opens with this almost haunting harmonica and soft piano – instantly recognizable, almost cinematic, and then Springsteen delivers one of the great opening lines in rock history:

 

“The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways

Like a vision, she dances across the porch as the radio plays…”

 

It’s such a brilliant and poetic opening because in just a few words, you can immediately see the scene: a summer night, a porch, a young woman hesitating between safety and possibility, and a young man standing below pleading with her not to “run back inside.” Springsteen once said the song is about “invitation” – an invitation to leave behind fear and step into possibility. There’s Mary, standing on the porch, caught between fear and possibility, and he tells her: “The door’s open, but the ride ain’t free.”

 

I’ve always loved that line because it captures something true about adulthood that no algorithm, no social media influencer, or self-help video can fully teach you. Freedom is real. But freedom costs something. And today, as you prepare to leave Kingswood Oxford, I want to offer you a simple charge: Get in the car! Not literally. Though honestly, sometimes literally. I mean: Leave the porch. Risk something. Put down the phone. Step fully into your life. Because one of the great dangers facing you today is not failure. It’s inertia. It’s the slow drift into becoming a spectator in your own life. Of staying on the porch.

 

You are graduating at a strange moment in history. Never before have human beings had more ways to avoid discomfort, avoid silence, avoid boredom, avoid rejection, avoid awkwardness, avoid uncertainty. Young adults today spend far less time face-to-face with friends than they did just fifteen years ago. Americans ages 18 to 29 now spend less than half as much time with friends in person as young adults did in 2010. At the same time, young people are spending record amounts of time alone. You can sit alone in a dorm room and still feel connected to hundreds of people. You can scroll endlessly through other people’s lives without fully inhabiting your own. You can curate an identity online while slowly becoming disconnected from the messy, beautiful work of becoming a real person. We are becoming experts at connecting on screens while losing practice at connecting in real life.

 

But here’s the problem: A meaningful life almost always requires risk. The risk of introducing yourself. The risk of looking foolish. The risk of being wrong. The risk of sitting across from someone who disagrees with you. The risk of falling in love. The risk of getting your heart broken. In Thunder Road, Springsteen describes a town filled with the ghosts of people whose dreams slowly hardened into regret. People who waited. People who hesitated. People who kept telling themselves they would start living later. And eventually, “later” became never.

 

That is the deeper warning of the song. Not that life is hard, but that dreams fail. And that fear can quietly shrink your world if you allow it to. And so today, I want to encourage you to resist a temptation that is increasingly common in modern life: the temptation to stay emotionally parked. To remain safe, detached, protected. To consume life rather than participate in it. To stay on the porch. Our phones and our technology are extraordinary tools. They will shape the future in remarkable ways. But they cannot live your life for you.

 

It cannot make your friends.

It cannot build your character.

It cannot teach you how to sit with another human being in pain.

It cannot give you wisdom.

It cannot substitute for experience.

 

Only relationships can do that. And so when you get to college this fall, get out of your room. Leave the door open.

 

Go eat out with friends.

Join a club.

Talk to that kid sitting alone.

Take the class that intimidates you.

Be fully present wherever your feet are.

Get in the car.

 

Springsteen’s narrator never promises Mary certainty. In fact, he promises almost the opposite. He says, “I’m no hero…the ride ain’t free.” But he offers something better than certainty. Possibility. And that may be the most important lesson of all. You do not need to have your entire life figured out right now. You do not need certainty to move forward. You just need enough courage to begin. Some of you are heading to colleges where you know nobody. Some of you are terrified. Some of you are excited. Most of you are both. Good. That means you’re ready. It means you’re alive to the possibilities ahead.

 

The goal of life is not to eliminate uncertainty. The goal is to become the kind of person who can walk into uncertainty with curiosity, resilience, humility, and hope. And if you can do that, if you can remain open to people, open to ideas, open to growth, open to wonder…you will avoid the fate that Springsteen feared most: Not losing, but never really living.

 

So Class of 2026:

Roll down the window.

Let the wind blow back your hair.

Take the long walk from the porch to the front seat.

The door is open.

Get in the car.

And go live a great story.