So, whatcha gonna do with the rest of your life?

We suspect you’re tired of hearing questions like that these days. We don’t blame you — particularly since experience tells us that so few of us who graduated decades ago have an answer now, never mind when the tassel has barely been flipped on the mortarboard.

Here, in the midst of the Rogue Valley’s graduation schedule, the thoughts of those graduating often travel two paths:

Down the road of twisting memories of the past 13 or so school years — the friends made, the highs and lows of academic achievement, the cherished time of holiday weeks, summer vacations and school-related extracurriculars.

Or, looking ahead on a roadless map handed out to where the rest of your young lives will take you — released from the structural security of this period of growing up and growing wise — without GPS and Siri to tell you where to turn next.

There is no app for that which lies before you.

So, with the past imperfect and the future tense, we suggest — briefly, at least — you pause to take a deep breath and consider walking in the glow of the oft-unspoken third portion of this journey.

The present.

The understanding that in this moment in time, you have achieved a goal years in the making — through those ups and downs, through the days of exhilaration and monotony — a course you were set upon barely after learning to tie your shoes.

Congratulations. Pay no attention to the plans your family might have for what until this point has been your bedroom, and just soak in that the major time-consuming force in your life has been conquered, warts and all.

Nearly 50 years ago now, Paul Simon gave us a song that begins with the lament: “When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school / it’s a wonder I can think at all.”

What Simon’s really doing at the start of “Kodachrome,” though, is employing a device you might have run across in an English class — the unreliable narrator. For, as soon as he seemingly questions the value of education, he follows it up with something else you also understand:

“I can read the writing on the wall.”

This, you have also learned — quite likely quicker and more confidently than those who graduated decades earlier.

Communication and cultural evolution have rendered upon you a greater understanding of the world at large, and all of its warts, than those of us who emerged from school in a more restrictive and structured age.

Use that writing on the wall, too, as you find your way into a society where, even on its good days, madness lies.

For today, though, it’s enough to rest momentarily on these well-earned laurels.

Look behind you and take in the journey that has brought you to this moment in time. Look ahead and see not uncertainty, but possibility.

And remember, as the saying goes … when older generations ask what you’re going to do with the rest of your life, it’s often because they’re still in need of direction.