Seniors, This is Your Festival

Every April in Japan, there is a festival for the blooming of the cherry blossoms called the hanami. Thousands of people travel to celebrate the beauty and the brevity of the gorgeous petals unfolding. The cherry blossom trees bloom for about ten days, and then the flowers fall off their branches and cover the ground, sometimes blowing in the wind, and sometimes staying put to create a blanket of color under the trees. 

Seniors, this time in your life is so similar to the beautiful event in Japan. You see, in any other April and May, when there isn’t a pandemic threatening our livelihood, we’d all be gathering to watch your own festival, but your year is different for a reason.

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Your senior year did not end the way you’d choose, nor did it ask you permission before it forced you to sever ties with the people and the things that you love. But under all this chaos is a kind of calm we want you to always remember.

A cherry blossom’s life is not as long as a human’s. Thank goodness we get longer than ten days to accomplish what we desire for ourselves. However, Japanese residents honor and respect the brevity of this period, and they use it as a metaphor for living.

We want you to know that during your high school years, you were as wild and beautiful as a cherry blossom.

Graduates, we saw you challenge yourselves, live above the line, and accomplish things you could have never imagined as freshmen. Your short four years with us were as brief as the blooming of these flowers, and as we watch you go away to the different institutions, internships, apprenticeships, and occupations, you’ll scatter just like the beautiful blossoms do in Japan, start a new life, and find different ways to bloom.

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Wesley Baines said it best in his article, The Symbolism of the Cherry Blossom, when he said,

The life cycle of these flowers make us question why we fail to live life to the fullest, why we don’t spend time with our loved ones, and why we do not take the time to simply pay attention to the living, breathing world around us. Cherry blossom festivals are a time to regain our perspective on life, and to make a promise not to take the good things in our lives for granted.” 

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Seniors, if you really think about it, this time of quarantine has asked us to do the same. This is your time of festival. We are all still here watching you blossom and fly.

Most of us could have never predicted this end for your senior year. We wanted you to revel in the celebration of the end of something as huge as thirteen years of education. But if you take a different perspective of this time, things might look more beautiful.

Your time of blooming forced us all to pay attention, regain perspective and stop taking the small things for granted. 

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Class of 2020, you grew as beautifully and fiercely as the cherry blossoms of Japan.

Your own kind of Sakura is happening at this moment. We know you didn’t ask to be the ones to give up so much during this incredibly important time, but the way you’re doing it with beauty, grit, and grace will last longer than ten days or ten years in our memories. You are truly gifts to this world, and we loved being front row to your blooming.