Item: 1 high school diploma

There was this piece of paper with a rainbow on it that was making the rounds when I was in high school, on which was printed something called "Comes the Dawn" or sometimes "After A While."  You can find it here.  The version I saw back then was a little bit different, told in this retrospective first person voice and as a paragraph, not a poem.  Things get modified, inevitably, as they're passed around.

This was before email, but this thing still managed to get around to pretty much every girl on campus.  I think there have probably always been certain fad-type things that are perennially moving along from person to person; this is only one of them.  Email has just enhanced the ease of circulation.  What is the function of these things, though?  Even a 14-year old must know that definitive wisdom doesn't come pre-written; the answers to life's questions don't just arrive in your email box.  Because it's so formulaic, purporting to apply in some meaningful way to all people in all situations, which is impossible.

So why do these things, full of greeting-card wisdom, still spread?  Did somebody find it helpful and want to share it?  So it's sappy and simplistic, does it still express something important?  "Comes the Dawn" reads very much like the wisdom passed on from a woman who's been where you are.  It gets presented in that form, attempting to make life easier for others by sharing one's own life lessons, but that's not how it works.  Nobody wants to be part of somebody else's formula; we almost invariably choose to learn by experience.

I don't remember seeing "Comes the Dawn" again after high school, so maybe it was just something that struck a chord with girls at that age.  I remember the part about accepting one's defects with grace - realizing there may someday be a time to stop making yourself over in order to fit in would have been important for high schoolers.  The part about planting your own gardens as opposed to waiting for someone else to bring you flowers (gag) is also something I remember a lot of girls talking about, whether they put it into practice or not.

Or maybe people can't shake a desire to believe in the existence of simple truths.  I got something by email once that contained a lot of sayings along these lines:  No man is worth your tears, and the one who is won't make you cry.  Which at the time helped me, even though it's logically contradictory and I don't believe it on either count.  A person can get to a point where everything cries out, "Can we just cut short the weirdness and make everything understandable, even just for a moment?"