Where Am I Going?

Do we ask ourselves this question every morning? Where am I going? Is it a job that seems to lack necessity, except that it pays the rent, puts food on the table and provides somewhere to go to kill the time? Is it a relationship that has grown stale, or is going nowhere? Each and every morning, does it seem that we take our first step onto a bridge to nowhere? Some live their life like that day after day, after day. What a waste of a life.

I have been very lucky. Or very smart. I have had a vocation and a few careers in my lifetime so far. I have always enjoyed my careers, whether it was being assistant curator of a Russian art museum, a director of planning for a YMCA, a director of marketing and advertising for a credit union or a lobbyist for human rights in Eastern Europe. But my vocation, my first love and the largest part of my working life, forty years, have been that of a teacher, an educator, a caretaker of young minds. It is to this vocation that I have dedicated the vast majority of my time, my efforts, my life and my love. And it has returned the favor. I have been well rewarded.

When I was a second year teacher of twenty-three years old, a mother introduced her younger child to me at a church function. I spoke to him for a while, then tousled his blond hair and told him I'd see him in the classroom in a few years. As I walked away, I heard her say to the boy, "You've been touched by a teacher. You will be smart." I never met him in my classroom, but have tried to live up to the expectations of that mother for forty years with every child I've taught. I haven't always liked them all, but I have loved every one of them and did all that I could to guide them to successful lives.

But now, as I prepare to leave this vocation that has been so good to me in my life, as I prepare to put my foot on the bridge that lies before me over the stream of change, I wonder where it will lead me. Certainly not to nowhere. I will not allow that. But to where? And what will I see when I get there? My guess is that we all cross that bridge each day. As far as what I will see, and where it will take me, I think is up to me.