Graduating from high school is a coming-of-age event that often weighs heavily on everyone fortunate enough to attend. First, seniors are progressing through unfamiliar territory that, for many, involves leaving family, friends and the friendly confines of home. Associating one’s self with the school name, with pride or not, binds one to a community. Within this place, a student has learned to navigate through a system of obligations, expectations and rules established to help everyone along a path for success. Through the eyes of an 18-year-old, it’s hard to fathom that some overzealous adults, who held on so strongly to order and discipline, had the best intentions to help guide them to the next step. In one night, at graduation commencement, stone faces once thought to be frozen in a scowl beam with joyous smiles over the individual accomplishments of each student. It’s truly a bridging ceremony that celebrates the passing through the threshold, from student to peer. Second, for the adults in the room, it too is a fearful moment as much as it is one of which to be proud. It seems with the passing of each class, with the passing of each generation, there is a laundry list of problems we feel guilty over leaving for our children to pick up — global warming, a delicate economy, a stressed social-economic system, a fractured government, an agriculture struggling to sustain a global demand for food. It seems the list has grown since us parents graduated decades ago. And, in many cases, our kids know it, too. The Class of 2015 is collectively more prepared for what the world will hand them than graduates from years ago. The events of the world — good, bad or indifferent — revealed themselves though the news and the internet, Facebook and Twitter. As much as you wanted to shelter your child from the evils of the world, your kids are smart; they know what’s going on. And as they strike out to the world, they’re hitting the ground running. Some may not know what they want to do yet, but many more seem to have an idea as to what they are passionate about, and wish to go out and find it. For those graduates who still seem lost, don’t ask yourself what you want to be. That’s a question your parents were asked and led them nowhere. Instead, ask what it is you love to do and find your niche. Find your passion, and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t follow that light down a career path. You have your whole life to figure things out, so don’t sweat the details. And for you parents, just breathe.