Most children live incredibly structured lives. Even if a kid’s home
life is in disarray, structure can be found in school. After preschool, there
is kindergarten. After kindergarten, there are all the other elementary grades.
After all those elementary grades, there is middle school. After middle school,
there’s high school. After high school, for many people, there’s college. The
next step is usually known.
After that is where it starts to get dicey. Contemporary children are
living increasingly structured lives and facing an increasingly unstructured
world when they become adults. Many struggle to navigate the transition. All
eventually come to realize that life is full of unexpected changes, and that
our own plans for our lives are often too big, too small, or just not right
when compared to our ultimate destinies.
I can now add myself to their ranks. In my life, I always knew what
the next step was. Leaving college, it’s easy to see why I was attracted to a
program like MTR. If I joined, I’d know exactly what I was doing for the next
four, maybe even forty, years- I’d be living out my life dream of being a
teacher in a high-need school, in the really cool and awesome city that is
Memphis.
As the earlier posts to this blog reveal, I had every intention of
doing just that, and with MTR. But, life is messy, and complicated. This blog
is not the appropriate place to get into specifics (but I’d be happy to share
them with you personally, if you want to know), but for various reasons my time
with MTR ended with my graduation two days ago.
As hard as the process leading up to this decision has been, I know
that it is the right move and I feel a sense of peace about it. While I have
learned much this year and believe that my time in Memphis has not been wasted,
sometimes it is just time to move on.
Later this week, I will be moving back to Western New York and facing
an uncertain future from there. Maybe I’ll road trip this summer, and maybe I
won’t; maybe I’ll teach next year, and maybe I won’t; maybe my new destiny is
teaching at an independent school or going the PhD-and-try-to-find-a-job-in-academia
route, as so many have encouraged me to do. Or, maybe not. For the first
significant time in my life, I don’t know what is going to come next.
I don’t know.
What a beautiful and terrifying sentence that is! I’ve never faced this
much uncertainty before and, I have to admit, it’s kind of exciting, not having
to live within a pre-ordained structure and plan. A literal world of options
awaits me! The thought is at once freeing and overwhelming.
Out of this bittersweet transition comes what I recognize now to be a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The
seemingly inconsequential choices I make now could determine how the rest of my
life pans out. Right now, the only thing I really feel like a “master” at is
being a student- which could turn out well if I do end up pursuing that PhD
path. I’m not at a point where I’m able to enter into that completely wholeheartedly,
though, and I need a break from school in any case. And in everything else…I’m
still an enthusiastic amateur. I’m an
enthusiastic amateur pianist and composer. I’m an enthusiastic amateur writer
and aspiring novelist. I’m an enthusiastic amateur teacher. There are various
other things I enjoy a little. There are many things I have still to learn and
explore and discover.
I pray that I would make the right choices and use my time well.
I envision the next several years of my life being filled with a lot of
uncertainty and hopefully a lot of adventures. There will be a lot of
challenges, and hopefully some triumphs. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do much
learning, living, laughing, and loving- wherever I am and whatever I am doing.
Whatever I am doing in this
next, unexpected but right, season of my life, it will not be chronicled here.
There is no reason for me to keep up a blog called “Mateo in Memphis” when I’m
no longer living in Memphis. When it comes time to publicly chronicle some
more of my adventures, I’ll let you all know.
To anyone out there who might be reading this- thank you for following
my year. Thank you for your love and your support and your encouragement, even
and especially during the darker, harder times. Thank you for giving me a place
other than Twitter and Facebook to flesh out my thoughts and this year’s
adventures. I appreciate and love you all. Memphians, I’ll miss you but you
will still be in my heart and the relationships we have developed will
continue. Californians, I hope to make it home soon. Northerners, I’m excited
about returning to your part of the world and seeing you all very, very soon.
I wish I had a more profound way to end this blog post, but I can’t
think of any, so…for now, Tilford out.
Peace, love, and history. :)
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