Childhood is one of the most inspiring times of life. Children don’t understand what responsibility is, and they don’t understand that society has to live by all those rules. But they know how it feels when someone is kind, and they know how it feels when someone is mean. When children cry, they really cry, and when they play, they play hard. I’m sure we can all attest to that.

But as we approach adulthood, lots of things drastically change. We now feel that we have an image to uphold. One of the funniest things in high school has to be the greetings we create, "Yo, what’s up, brotha? Nightmare." Yep, we’re pretty weird.

But as adults we’ll be called upon to be diplomatic, and we’re told to play it cool. How are we to respond to the changing world?

My mind continues to turn to the words of a great woman, Catherine Doherty, who said, "Lord, give me the heart of a child and the awesome courage to live it out."

Why would anyone want the heart of a child, and furthermore, why does it take such awesome courage to live it out?

It’s because a child is real; a child is honest. A child trusts his intuition, and he trusts what his heart tells him. And it is so important to never forget this child within us all.

My mother, whom I deeply love and respect, once said to me, "What other people think of you is none of your business."

But as people get older, I think it’s fair to say that they worry about what other people think of them. People get real worried about their public image. Everyone wants good relations with everyone.

The truth is that whoever we are and wherever we go, there will probably be some people who like us and some who dislike us, and we can’t control that. So what?

Can we try to fix our image so that we will fit the criteria of what everyone expects of us? If we did, who knows where we’d end up?

"Give me the heart of a child and the awesome courage to live it out."

As I was thinking about what I wanted to say tonight, I asked myself, what inspires me most? What, all through high school, did I find the most encouraging?

I came to an unexpected conclusion. I realized that it was often the little acts of kindness that inspired me most. Let’s take a moment to think how it feels to be hugged by a child or when someone says, "Hey, I believe in you," or "I love you no matter what."

I’ve come to realize that these little acts have a greater impact than any well-reasoned speech or textbook ever will. These acts contain the most powerful thing in the world, and that is love.

Philosopher G.K. Chesterton once said, "The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason." Why? Because our minds can grapple with philosophies to try to find out how we should live, but it is our hearts that will move mountains—the heart that a child has.

During our high school years, we’ve had our up times and we’ve had our down times. That’s just life. But after all that, our person is still there—our uniqueness, our individuality, our hearts.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie, Angus, but at the end he has an awesome line. After he’s been picked on all through high school, he says to one guy who always tried to knock him down, "I’m still here, buddy. You can push me down, but I’ll just get right back up." That’s courage!

Here’s what I say: if we never got pushed down, we’d never have to rise up. Heroes didn’t become great because they had an easy ride.

We all have visions of how we want the world to be. But let’s be honest. Following through with those visions won’t always be easy.

Sometimes, I’m sure, we’ll feel like giving up and just taking the easy way. But the fact that we are graduating says that we already know that there is more to life than taking the easy way. And when you think about all the loving children in the world and the time when someone said, "I believe in you," you know that there’s something worth fighting for.

In The Lord of the Rings film, when Frodo is at the end of his rope, he asks Sam, "What are we holding onto, Sam?" And Sam, the brave, responds, "That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for."

Sometimes we feel afraid about the future and we think, "Not me. I couldn’t do it."

But as a priest once said, "If not us, who? If not now, when?"

I have heard adults say that they don’t know how they got to where they are, or that they never really wanted to do what they are doing. It just happened, they say. Let’s not let life just happen. Every one of us has greatness inscribed in our hearts, and no one can tell us otherwise.

A priest once said to me, "If you could see the person God intended you to be, you would rise up and never come down again." Let’s have the courage to live this out.

And so, Jean Vanier High School, it’s about time to sign off. There are a lot of memories that we will hold dear. Some of us will remember sports teams, some of us will remember an awesome event, or some of us, an awesome class.

But, above all, I know that it is the people we’ve encountered that we’ll remember the most.

To the people who supported us, who inspired us through these formative years, I would like to say thank you. To our teachers who inspired us, our parents who taught us more than a book ever could, and to our friends who stood by us, thank you.

Take a good look around tonight because we may not see each other for a long time, and we’ll miss each other. Our friendships and experiences through high school have given us the grounding we need to go on and be great. I think everyone would agree that our individuality here in this room is what brought so much life and joy to our high school experience.

If I have never said this, I would like to say it now: I believe in every one of us. We’ve got good hearts. I will miss you all very much, but we gotta go. I look forward to our paths crossing as our futures unfold.

The author, who has just finished his first year of college, is what we at Madonna House call "a Cana kid" someone who as a child attended our family vacation-retreat. His parents have been friends of MH for many years.