It is a time of year for parties and picnics and celebratory events, for anticipation about the future — and for speeches.

The nine high schools of Lycoming County have held their commencement ceremonies, with the majority occurring over the past three days.

We expect the speeches to encourage the classes of 2025 to draw upon their experiences attending our region’s schools and growing up in our communities. We expect they will extoll hard work and pursuing passions to find the right career. We expect that they will remind graduating seniors that the future is truly what they will make of it.

All of these sentiments may well be predictable — because all of these sentiments are built on a solid foundation of truth.

The classes of 2025 in our nine high schools certainly have, generally speaking, an advantage in being raised in communities where it isn’t hard to find the values that can serve young men and women in their futures. Families in our communities work hard, as evident in fire companies, workplaces and churches’ volunteer activities every day. Parents make sacrifices so that their children can explore their newfound passions.

And the purpose to which their families work and thrive is so that the next generation can learn these lessons — can find their niches in our society, the pursuits that motivate them to strive and to dedicate their time and effort to improvement. Families persevere in hard times and celebrate good times so that the next generations can learn the value of perseverance and can learn the joy and fulfillment found in the happiness of loved ones and friends.

Some students, even some parents may find these speeches — and this editorial — to be rife with cliche. But often these aphorisms become cliche because they are so fundamentally true as to bear repeating.

And, young and old alike, we should not shy away from truth because it may sometimes be repetitive.