When the fresh earth scent of blossoms renews our spirits in this season and hope pushes sprouts of every kind into sunlight I used to feel a regret.  Not for spring but for the passage it represents.  It lingered, a nagging loss in the back of my mind where such things lodge and gnaw.  Accompanying the season is a tune, Sir Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. I have been haunted, like Marley’s ghost, never to have marched in solemn, somewhat victorious steps in medieval robes and colors. I missed the costume party. In high school I matriculated from Lycée Royal de Verviers as an exchange student. I picked up my graduation certificate at the school office.

After a brief attendance at New College (the now beleaguered target of those inent on bending all thought to one will) I left to become self-realized in India.  

Humans are skilled at grasping these regrets and weaponizing them into colossal personal failures. It is perhaps the power of Elgar’s martial music that embedded itself in my brain with the message of disappointment.  Its title is taken from the Bard’s Othello returning victorious from battle.  “Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war.”  Oh my.

So.  Lifelong learner that I am, after all these years it’s possible to celebrate with euphoric students and parents who joyously revel in the pomp of completion and who can overlook the circumstance sof the future.  Aging has its advantages.