I remember sitting in my 3rd grade class on the first day of school looking at a time line of my expected life. My teacher, Mrs. Laumann, who still continues to be one of my favorite teachers to this day, called us the class of 2010, because that was when we were going to graduate college. Interesting isn't it? I wonder what was going through her head when she predetermined all of our futures for us in those simple, and at that time, insignificant words. It was if she purposely wanted to insist upon us that we were all made for this great rite of passage called college... despite whether or not all of us would go to college, or finish in four years, or even make it through high school--she wanted to let us know that at the age of 8 that we were all made for some kind of greatness... we are the class of 2010.
And now it's here. Can I really say that this year will be my year of greatness? Can I really be so bold to predetermine what life may hold for me in the future as my third grade teacher had once did for 30 impressionable children? I feel like a wanderer standing in the middle of a road that stretches so far to the horizon that you're almost tempted to turn around and walk back. You look over your shoulder and gaze upon all the things you had done, all the friends you had made, you had lost, all the pain you had endured and all the joy you had engulfed. You see all the nights you had spent alone and you see all the nights you had spent with that one special somebody talking about all your dreams you have for the future only to see that the future comes closer and closer, and now you feel the immense pressure to make these dreams realities... it's so tempting. So tempting to be envious of your memories and to long to rewalk a path you had already dug out for yourself... perhaps if you could do this, you'd iron out the rough parts, you'd do what you would've/could've/should've done, and you could check off your list of "what if's"...
So what more greatness could you possibly generate with so much greatness before you now? Do I really have the confidence to say... this year will be more amazing than the year before when the mere thought of the paths I've crossed brings tears to my eyes... that I've passed onto the other side of the bell curve of my college experience... that everything from this point on will be dedicated to ending a chapter of my life that has meant so much to me...?
I am class of 2010
A fact that had been decided for me before I could even understand what it would mean. It was never a question to my mother... I'd go to college and that would be that. But now I see this road ahead of me and all I see is a blank canvas--no guidelines, no instructions, no preselection of themes... it's intimidating. BUT... memories, should never be so envied, and should only be treasured. Maybe life isn't so much a bell curve but an upward slope... that it is a privilege to be able to stare at a blank canvas with no boundaries and no limits, and that with the friends and strengths that you had cultivated in the past, you could walk down this road on a wing of faith and hope and be able to create the very first thing that will be your own... the rest of your life.
So will this year be great? Well, perhaps that's not the point. Perhaps greatness is not so much the state of being great but the journey you take to find those ways that you can be greater. With that, 2010 will be great because it's a time for me to leave my wandering shoes behind, lace the boots of a huntress... and run.
