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It’s commencement season at educational institutions in the US — and across the world. My 18-year-old nephew is graduating from high school in California this month. It is a significant time for him. I remember how I felt during college graduation week — a mix of excitement (and terror) at getting my first apartment and starting my first real job, and deep sadness at leaving my beautiful community of friends.
Graduations are just one of many junctures when we’re challenged to navigate the next stage of our lives. There are other people in my life who are currently marking different endings and beginnings. My sister, the mother of my nephews, is already thinking about how to adjust to her eldest child moving out of the house and across the country. And the other day, I was texting with a friend who has recently retired and is now contemplating a new chapter of his life.
It has got me thinking about how our lives are full of milestone moments that can feel unfamiliar, daunting, sometimes even downright scary, and yet invite us to imagine new ways of being in the world.
The 1922 painting “Young Valedictorian” by Norman Rockwell was made when he was 28 years old and already working at The Saturday Evening Post, where he would make his name as one of America’s most renowned illustrators — yet this work was never published. It shows a young girl in a formal white dress and black patent leather Mary Jane shoes standing in the middle of a stage, with a row of adults seated behind her. She holds a rolled-up certificate in her hand and looks out at an unseen audience.
Rockwell’s use of light in this painting has been likened to Rembrandt; it seems to fall from above the central figure, shining brightest on her forehead and the large white bow that sits atop her head like a ceremonial crown. The painting captures a sense of the almost mythical weight of expectation we place on graduating students. There is a large globe standing beside the girl and a map dominates the wall, suggesting the vast world before her. In the foreground, red ribbons are visible, as if representing a threshold she is about to cross. And the clock on the wall feels symbolic to me of both a single moment and the progress of time.
Looking back at my own trajectory after graduating from college, the fits and starts I had with different jobs, trying to decide on graduate programmes and professional paths, I am struck by the memory of wanting to be certain about what I was doing, how I thought I was supposed to have it all figured out. And yet I could never have predicted my life as it is today. Most of the experiences that end up shaping us, and determining the course of our lives, come as a result of opportunity and chance rather than careful planning.
The row of adults, dressed in browns and greys in the background of Rockwell’s painting, offer a lovely contrast to the girl in gleaming white. They do not look discontented, but they do look as though they might have some words of advice to offer the child.
Life may be unpredictable but there is something to be said for having the time to dream of future possibilities and achievements. Moments like this serve as a kind of engine that revs our sense of agency. There is so much to be learnt at any age when we act boldly, with hope and ambition. The young girl may hold knowledge in her hands, but I suspect many of us would agree that wisdom is nourished by life experiences and comes from the most unexpected places.
Laurits Andersen Ring was a Danish painter whose work during the late 19th and early 20th centuries depicted the ordinary lives of people from rural communities and the landscape of his upbringing in a place called Ring (a name he added to his own) in Zealand. He was known as both a realist and symbolist painter, and his work often depicts moments when people seem to be facing a crossroads in life.
I have been drawn to many of his paintings over the years, and his 1899 work “Alone. Interior by Lamplight with a Seated Man Buried in Thought”, housed at the Ordrupgaard Museum in Denmark, led me to think of another milestone moment: that of retirement or the end of a career. The painting shows a man sitting at a wooden desk, alone in the dark. He rests his head in his hand and his elbow on the desk as he stares contemplatively out of a window and into the night. A lamp illuminates his face and we can see wrinkles on his forehead. He is an older man. Not elderly but no longer middle-aged. The shelf to his right is empty, there are no hints about his livelihood or his personal life. Everything is bare.
Obviously, I don’t think that this dark and brooding work is symbolic of retirement, but I do think it offers us a moment to reflect on what happens when we reach the end of committing ourselves fully to a certain profession, paid or unpaid. Or even just when we complete a particular job without knowing what lies ahead.
In our society, where so much of our lives is consumed by the work we do, it can be easy to find that our identities are wrapped up in our jobs. Whether our jobs end because of retirement or loss, it can feel like our lives have been emptied of the things that bore witness to how we defined ourselves. But there are details in this painting that offer a different perspective.
The brightness of the lamp suggests that there is still a way to see forward, even in the dark. The lamplight illuminates the view and also reflects the man’s face back to him in the window. He is looking at himself. Sometimes when we feel most uncertain about how to navigate the seasons of our life, the answer can be found in the willingness to face oneself in both the light and the dark. I often think that we do not allow ourselves enough patience and grace to simply sit with new seasons of our lives before rushing forward to trying to figure out the next iteration of ourselves.
I also love the detail of the delicate window covering. There is a subtle nod to tenderness, care and beauty in this little detail. Whether the figure is truly alone or not, I suspect he has an active interior life enlivened with memories as well as questions. The willingness to sit with both might be a small step towards discovering the next thing that life has to offer.
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