It is not change that scares me, but rather the idea of inevitable change - change that I have not willed nor created - that unsettles me. Today, I became a college graduate whether I am ready for the world or not.
I’m still too close to it to synthesize entirely, but the ceremonies were pleasantly expected and tame. We have waited patiently for it to arrive, chewed endlessly over its meanings, that its quiet in and out under rainy skies was simple. I flipped my own tassel and released a happy, simple sigh.
Rather, it is the bare walls - the ceremony of the dust outlines of photographs that once hung - that brings me to understand that more than my zip code is changing. It is an evolution that will not wait for me to celebrate, to cry, or even to breathe. I will strip the beds, seal the cardboard boxes that commodify my life, and come to understand what my footprints, my presence, and my memories will leave behind even as I drive away.
Is my legacy enough? Will my future be enough?
I will come to know that this all will wash away without continued nurturing of who I am, the constant rumination of what I have created, and the understanding of how that lays the foundation for what I will create.
New York is my future. I have no doubt about that. But I am realising - in little, savored bites, in tiny, careful steps - that it does not overwrite my past. It does not change where I have been, nor does it trump how where I have been has changed me. This is a special place, and I am lucky to have been among the special people that have traversed its grounds.
Now it is time for everything good that is coming - and everything bad that inevitably weaves in between. And nothing will help me more than that happy sigh that I felt today. As I breathe, it will connect past to present, and push me through to future.
Today, I am changing. Today, I am lucky to be able to change gracefully.
M
