By JOSHUA THOMAS

C-S-E Editor

The notion of independence is one that not only our country, but we as individuals, thrive on, and it permeates the start of every summer, with both local and national events highlighting the importance of, and the American ability to, make a go at it alone.

Just this past weekend, local graduates took their first step away from a world that’s been constant since they were small children. School serves as preparation for that step into the real, independent world, but it can never fully prepare a person for how truly freeing — and terrifying — it can be to sever a lifelong tie.

A puppet that cuts its cords and flees into the world must learn to manipulate its own limbs. That hunger for freedom is all it’s ever known, but with each step it takes alone, it comes closer to understanding that no matter how many repetitious steps it took before, every single one was practice for something more. The puppet may have the mechanisms of motion ingrained in its limbs, but these unsupported steps, however unsteady, are what it’s been waiting for.

As soon as I left high school, I learned that having that support system, and the routine that comes along with it, jarringly stripped away is the biggest motivator to once again forge something solid.

This week, we’re gearing up as a country to celebrate Independence Day. Everything we see — cupcakes, clothing, even the sky — will be decked out in our country’s signature colors — red, white and blue. One reason I think I enjoy the day so much is that it’s a very successful reminder of how I felt that day I stepped off the graduation stage into a realm of terrifying possibility. Though a working adult’s schedule is usually at least somewhat set, we remain as free to create and alter an independent path as the day we left high school.

My high school life seems so far removed from my life today. It’s a distant landscape of memory populated by some of the same, however changed, faces that I still see. It’s a strange feeling to step foot inside these local schools, to now be interviewing those teachers that had such an influence on me and my path. I’m sometimes completely unsure if I’ve traveled in a full circle, the straightest line ever, or if I’m creating a different shape altogether, looping back and doubling over the parts I liked the fist time, taking new pleasure from each situation, while also re-living those moments I didn’t enjoy the first time in a new, empowered capacity.

One thing I know for sure, is that every time I see those graduation caps fly into the air, or see an Independence Day firework explode overhead, I once again — and it’s the same every year — become suddenly, thrillingly aware that I’m in charge of my life, and it’s one that’s uniquely mine. It’s good to be reminded of that every once in a while without having the rug pulled out from under you.