a step into tomorrow

Tonight, as I returned my black academic robe after the graduation ceremony, posed for a ton of pictures with different students, parents and teachers like a loved celebrity, and walked to the parking lot, my full-time career as a teacher was at an end. Over these last few weeks, that career has been recognized by, as older writers would say, "all and sundry." It has been a truly heartening ending. And yet, I was looking for more. I was searching for closure.

We spend all of our adult life in a profession; and, one day, that profession comes to an end, not involuntarily, but quite voluntarily. We make the decision, not because we can't continue, but because we know that our time in front of the classroom needs be over. Not because we can no longer perform, but because we no longer choose to perform. Not because we don't love this profession that has occupied our entire adult life, but because we love it too much to stay longer than is our due. It is now the time to find out who we are, beyond our professional life as a teacher.

Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ and Socrates, when asked what title they wished to be addressed by, responded simply “Teacher.” Being a teacher is, to my mind, the greatest of professions. That you can read this post and understand it is due in no small measure to someone who taught you to read and to understand.

This night was bittersweet for me. I had no desire to say goodbye, but needed to say goodbye to find closure and end one part of my life, so my new life could flourish. Like Moses and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man I had the honor of meeting when he came to speak at my college a few months before he was assassinated, I stand tonight on the mountain top. I look back at the landscape of a past life of forty-two years, and forward toward the green hills and pastures of a new one. The features of this new landscape are not yet distinct, but lie before me, none the less.

Tonight I take a step into tomorrow.