My advice to graduates would be to fit comfortably and profitably into this marvelous temporal gift of life we've been given.

However, on Graduation Day, the tedious among us blow up cartoon balloons that say, "Go out there and change the world."

These seven words are a literary Rube Goldberg contraption of Kamala Harris proportions — phrases that sound contemplative but in fact are empty of purpose and meaning.

And it just seems like the worst thing to say to a child of 18.

People who think unproductive thoughts want to change the world.  Intellectually insecure presidents want to change the world.  Journalists of slender and myopic vision want to change the world.  Would-be SCOTUS assassins want to change the world.

Everybody wants to change the world. 

Each individual who desires change in the world has a singular vision of the perfect world.  One vision might demand an immediate change in race relations, while another seeks to liberate kindergarteners from the social constructs of sexual identity.  We end up with a traffic jam of ideologies that prevents America from moving forward.

Dear Graduate, becoming some chuckleheaded professor's proxy in a war against half of the biosphere is no way to gain inner peace or momentum.

Eighteen-year-olds have yet to sort out all of the noxious messages that bombard them.  I saw a short video of a kid who got thrown out of a church because he stood up and yelled, "F--- the devil!"  In his supreme passive-aggressive voice, he explained that that was what he thought the church wanted him to do: hate the devil.  He is both a shameless liar and an irrational theorist.  Every church I have ever walked into preached only love and understanding.

At any rate, I don't want to be forced to live in his immature world of ugly misrepresentation and deceitful imbalance.

I hope he finds himself unable to change the world, because it's my world, too.

Image: Stockvault.