There were a couple of months when I was approaching graduation

Hear now the quiet wisdom in the words of Maggie Rogers, whose reflection carries both tenderness and truth: “There were a couple of months when I was approaching graduation where I started to think of graduating from college as the afterlife. Because it's this kind of crazy thing that you always know you're going to finish school inevitably, but nobody ever really tells you what happens afterwards.” In these simple lines, she gives voice to a feeling known to all who stand at the edge of great transition — the strange mixture of hope, fear, and wonder that fills the soul when one chapter closes and another begins, unseen.

The meaning of her words reaches far beyond the halls of academia. For every graduation is both an ending and a rebirth, a death of the known and the birth of possibility. The ancients would have called it a rite of passage, a sacred threshold where one world dissolves and another is born. Maggie Rogers likens this moment to the afterlife, not in jest but in reverence — for it is a time when the self must shed what it once was and step into the unknown. In youth, life feels structured, the path clear — school, exams, seasons of learning. But after the final ceremony, when the music fades and the robes are folded away, one faces the vast, unmarked expanse of existence. There are no syllabi for living, no professors for purpose, no guarantees for meaning.

The origin of this thought lies in her own experience — that of a young artist standing between certainty and creation. Rogers, known for her music that blends soul and sincerity, felt what many feel but seldom name: the quiet terror of freedom. For when we leave the systems that have shaped us, we are no longer guided by the rules of others but by the call of our own hearts. To some, this freedom feels like flight; to others, like falling. Thus, she compares it to an afterlife, a realm where the old self dies and a new one must learn to breathe.

History too echoes this truth. When Siddhartha Gautama, the prince who would become the Buddha, left the palace of his father, he stepped beyond all that was known to him — the comfort, the structure, the certainty of his life. He too entered a kind of afterlife, walking among the suffering and the silence of the world to discover a new truth. What Rogers felt upon graduation — that strange emptiness beyond completion — is the same space Siddhartha entered when he left the palace gates. It is the threshold of transformation.

To think of graduation as an afterlife is to acknowledge that endings are not to be feared, but honored. We spend so long preparing for the moment we “arrive” — the degree, the ceremony, the applause — that we forget it is only the beginning of the truer work: to live, to create, to fail, to learn anew. The world after graduation is vast and uncertain precisely because it belongs entirely to you. No one tells you what happens afterward because no one can. The next path is not assigned — it must be authored.

There is both beauty and sorrow in this. For every ending carries a mourning — the loss of structure, of youth, of belonging. Yet in that emptiness lies the fertile ground of becoming. As Rogers discovered, what feels like afterlife is in truth real life — unfiltered, unscripted, alive with potential. The fear of not knowing is the first sign of awakening. It is the same fear that drove explorers across the seas, poets into solitude, and inventors into the dark corners of imagination.

So, O listener, take this lesson into your heart: do not dread the end of one life, for it is always the beginning of another. When you stand upon the brink of change — whether leaving school, a job, a place, or a season of love — do not seek to know the whole road ahead. It is enough to take the first step with courage. The world beyond the gates of graduation is no afterlife of endings, but the eternal life of becoming.

Walk forward, then, as Maggie Rogers did — uncertain, yet brave. Let your unknowing be the birthplace of your wisdom. Let your freedom frighten and free you all at once. For though no one may tell you what happens next, you will find, through living, the only answer worth knowing: that life itself is the greatest education of all.