Oliver Wendell Holmes On Growth
Story★★★★May I remind you of that simple illustration that is given to us in one of the books by Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. What he suggests is this. He says that a father ought to go to the school where he has left his boy, and go in suddenly some day, and take him by the hand, lead him out of the school, and say to him, “Now, my boy, the time of your education is over, you are coming out with me, and the wider world is just opening before you.”
The boy’s heart begins to pound, his spirit to exult in the new freedom, the new prospects, and the new possibilities; then the father tells him that this moment is just like death, that death is the leaving of the old school, and passing out into the fuller life of the larger possibilities and opportunities in the life beyond. Ah! if you could believe that this life is your probation, your education, your preparation for the life that lies beyond, what a different thing some of you would be making of it to what you are making of it.
The point
Oliver Wendell Holmes uses the image of a father taking his son out of school into the wider world to illustrate death as graduation to fuller life.