More than 350 Hermiston High School seniors received diplomas June 6 at the Toyota Center in Kennewick and we want to wish each graduate a bright future.

The sentiment around the region this time of year is always laced with the hopefulness of new beginnings for hundreds of high school graduates.

High school graduation is a special time, a period to reflect on the past but also to look toward a future where the possibilities are endless.

Certainly the 2024 corps of graduates will enter into a world and nation haunted by an array of challenges. Yet there are, as always, also plenty of opportunities.

In this election year the nation is at a crossroads of sorts and so the young men and women who will enter into college or the business world or the military have the opportunity to make real and positive change.

Positive change is needed in our nation, state and region and the young men and women who graduated, like those from Hermiston High School, offer the best chance at turning a growing tide of lies, half-truths and political factionalism.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, once said Americans often “subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations.” In short, often we as a nation “enjoy the comfort of opinions without the discomfort of thought.”

Kennedy, who died in 1963, could very well be describing modern-day America. We’ve evolved into a nation where attention is diverted away from serious challenges and instead focused on cultural problems or religious issues. We consume a steady diet of often mindless information but miss the opportunity to use our mutual deliberation to focus on real problems.

Our real problems — immigration, the ballooning federal deficit, sagging infrastructure, illegal narcotics — deserve to be approached singly and solved with answers collected from our methodical, common outlook.

We should focus on political debate when needed but not to the exclusion of solving problems.

Each graduate has the potential to be an agent of positive change and to help our great nation. That is, in the end, the real beauty of graduations.