Does it seem odd that the word we use for graduation, finishing a program of study, is commencement, which means beginning? It would be nice if finishing one thing meant that you were automatically ready for the next, but life doesn’t necessarily work that way.
When have you found yourself finished with one thing before you were prepared to embark on whatever would replace it?
My biggest one was, in fact, my graduation from college. In high school, I had been told, “If you have aptitude in math, major in that because computers will be the big new thing.” But by the time I finished my bachelor’s degree in math, computers had been taught to speak English; you no longer needed to have a math degree, or even know a special language like Fortran to use one. We didn’t have the thorough and specific career guidance todays students have. I had no idea what one could do with a math degree, and like many of my fellow math grads, ended up doing the first thing I bumbled into.
Whenever in my life, a presumable romantic affair was finished, by him…or by me…it came as a time when I couldn’t see clearly why it had happened and suffered from confusion, sadness and loss of faith in anything comforting that might come my way again. I was wrong; other ties did develop; other happiness came and the time seemed right that it was meant to be that way.