The Wonderful World of Joanna Bome Kure

Good morning, Class of 2025, graduates of the Great Twenties. Yes, go on, we all deserve that applause.

Thank you for selecting me as the class valedictorian. The curtain is finally closing on the decade we thought was endless. I am not entirely sure how to feel about this. Before writing this speech, I asked the sage of our time, Google, for advice on entering my thirties, and this is the summary of the search results:

1. Live life at your pace, not based on familial, societal and even personal pressures.
2. Settle down and take stock of what you are doing.
3. Having fewer friends will start to pay off.
4. Decisions taken in the past will start to crystallise.
5. You will begin to see the reward for all the work you have put in.
6. Your degree is not a waste, even if you do not use it.

Of course, it is up to each of us to accept this advice.  But what is remarkable is that we have spent three decades on earth, a gift we must be eternally grateful for. We must be grateful, or at least learn to be grateful, because we are here despite our stumbling, falling, rising and shaky steps.

 If you are a struggling adult like me, you can probably relate to the fact that while on most days, I feel like a fifteen-year-old, my body says otherwise as it steadies itself into the body of a grown woman – continuous body aches, anyone? It is dumbfounding, to say the least. Were we not all playing Ten-Ten yesterday? And how many of us thought the world would end before we learnt to budget our income? But alas! Here we are.

We are the new aunties and uncles, struggling to eat Cerelac and Golden Morn and drink Ribena and Capri-Sun with our nieces, nephews, sons and daughters. We might be tech bros or lawyers, but we still find delight in hearing the theme songs of our favourite childhood cartoons. “Sugar, spice, and everything nice, these were the ingredients chosen to create a perfect little girl…” Where are my fellow lovers of the Powerpuff Girls? Yeah. I see you.

We sometimes find ourselves oscillating between the relative peace and innocence of our childhood and the jarring realities of adulthood and its demands. Some of us have ended up in professions quite different from what we imagined we would grow up to do, or have watched our lives not pan out as we expected. Furthermore, many have yet to explore aspects of their God-given talents and purposes. In the thirty years of our existence, we have felt the sting of failure, swarmed through the waves of doubt and questioned the purpose of our lives, and thirty years is not a long time. Ahead, we have more failures, more disappointments, and more loss. But so, too, are the joys, triumphs and utter goodness of life that we have awaiting us in the future.

Now, all the pain, disappointment and sadness of our yesteryears were not without purpose. I do not mean to sweep the heartache we have faced under the carpet in a kumbaya way, but to point out that we needed to be humbled by life, and this is what our twenties were for. My father tells me that I was fascinated by fire as a baby. He had once tried, to no avail, to stop me from touching the flame of a candle until it occurred to him that I needed to learn.  The day I touched fire, I knew it was hot and dangerous. We have touched fire and know it is hot. But fire is not a bad thing. Our ancestors, the first humans, learnt to master fire, and that mastery contributed to the survival of the human race.

We are now battle-tested. The idealism of our teens and twenties has been tempered by life’s double-edged sword. We do not see the world with rose-tinted glasses, for the world as it is, is crystal clear. We have found ourselves compromising our beliefs, disillusioned by the fact that theory is parallel to practice, and discover ourselves sometimes falling short of our standards. Without the tempering of our hard and sometimes confusing yesteryears, I doubt we would be able to solve the problems we are destined to solve.

We have been so humbled by life, shaken off our high horses, that many of us have seen the value of belief. According to the mother of one of my secondary school classmates, we tend to grow closer to God as we get older. I have since found this statement to be true. I find that I am more understanding of the spirituality of our mothers, knowing that I will have to stand in the gap for my husband and children if I do get married. But even if I do not, there is so much in the world to pray about. The world is topsy-turvy. There are so many fires to quench, so much pain and heartache that it makes more sense to carry these problems to a God who is over and above the mess. Nonetheless, the more one takes their faith seriously, the more one realises that God will use them to fix some of the problems. What were you created to fix?

The United Nations declared 1995, the year of our birth, as the year of tolerance. How has the world fared in tolerance since then? I do not know about you, but I cannot give a definitive pass mark on world tolerance. It may have been cute to sing along with Michael Jackson that it doesn’t matter if you are black or white, but we know that all around the world, race and its offspring, colourism, matter with varying degrees. Besides, the world is still up in arms over religion, tribe, and the increasingly scarce land with its resources.

Also, it is poignant that the same year declared as the year of tolerance was the same year the internet became privatised; with that came its ubiquity, and the rest is history.  In 2015, when we entered our twenties, most of us were eligible to vote and participate in socio-political discourse across social media platforms. Since then, we have tried to use the internet to bend the older generations to our will, and I think we are becoming adept at that. However, since the advent of the digital age, we have witnessed the rise of misinformation despite the abundance of educational resources. Anxiety and other mental health issues are reaching astronomical levels. Online bullying and harassment are on the increase. Cancel culture poses serious questions to our understanding of justice, and armchair activism seems to be the easier route to a more tolerable world.

Furthermore, we are fast losing our ability to respectfully debate one another as disagreement over the isms reach extreme levels, and temperance seems to be an extinct virtue. These are only a few of the problems of the internet age, but to what extent are we accomplices to the chaos of both the virtual and real world? Do we continue to fold our arms as we watch the world spin out of control?

According to the Jewish Talmud, thirty is the age at which one is worthy of leadership. For adherents of the Abrahamic faiths, our Holy Books teach that Joseph and David assumed leadership at thirty years. Christians know that Jesus started his ministry at age thirty. While these are shiny examples, can we say, in all honesty, that we are worthy of leadership? We must answer truthfully because the time has come for us to lead.

As we settle into this decade, some of us will be at the forefront of discussing these issues and providing solutions. Others will influence or craft policies, and some will work in bureaucracies that will implement solutions. Wherever you find yourself, work with the conviction that you are here to solve problems and not create more. Be open to finding a middle ground with others who disagree with you on how to make the world better. Let us also get better at collaboration and consider the legacy we want to leave for future generations, for their criticisms will be much harsher than we have doled out on others before us.

While we are just at the beginning of our thirties, we must remember that we are only ten years away from our forties. We must make our best endeavour to make sure we do not become the proverbial fool at forty who is a fool forever. The time for pointing fingers and blaming others for our misfortunes is long over. We must be willing to take personal responsibility. Remember Google’s advice to take stock of your life. To move forward, we must be willing to look back. Looking back gives us the necessary perspective to understand our present and shape the future.

Dear Class of 2025, I realise I am giving counsel to myself more than I am to you. I could go on and on, but I must restrain myself, knowing that I am also threading this path as a novice. Yet I pray for us to enter this decade with humility, patience and a willingness to move forward. To those of you celebrating your 30th on this first day of January 2025, I wish you a very happy birthday and to those of us who will, at different dates this year, happy birthday in advance!

Class of 2025, I look forward to viewing your birthday photos and the long captions attached to my Instagram feed. Once again, congratulations to us all and Happy New Year.