I had to write about today. How could i not? With all that it has made surge in me. I owe it to this day. I had to talk about it. It was indispensable. Unavaoidable. Unfathomable.
To many, in a brief description, it would be a seemingly ordinary day with a minute change in the nature of events. But to me, the magnitude of this change was not just gigantic, it was crucial. It embodied everything that it boiled down to at the end of the day; or rather, in this particular case, at the end of the year.
It was one of those days where you find youself floating, physically and metaphysically, from one event to another, from one feeling to another – from one shift in emotion to another. One of those days, where everything gets a superficial chaotic shell; but deep in its core, we know that nothing ever fit so wonderfully like the way it did now. Deep in the core of things, beneath the apparent mayhem, things made perfect sense – they were right where they were supposed to be. Underlying all the disorder of regualr schedules, rituals, programmes, time tables, blah blah blah, were the pieces of the puzzle merging together. The scattered pieces towards which the teachers, the staff, had been working all year long – so that at one moment, they would make us see the big picture.
And today, i saw it. I understood what it was all about. It was exactly this sense of mingled feeling that attracted me to the profession of teaching. the attachement that gradually builds its way up the teacher and the student, the bond that is unlike any other, the gratitude and the feeling of accomplishment. The sense of having achieved something and to have made a difference, how ever negligible it may be, in somebody’s life. Knowing full well, that one day, my memory could be erased permenantly from the kids conscious. But also, that what the child learnt today, would never be erased. Never. And that would be as good as holding me in his memory. Because a teacher is nothing more than the knowledge that he/she imparts. And as long as that finds a way to hold on to the borders of memory, the teacher stays alive inside the student too. Anti-destin achieved. And that is indispensable.
Like today was. Today, through a hazy, frenzy, whizzy bubble, i saw reality. Reality of the moment. Reality of the difficulty to say goodbyes with a teary smile. Reality of satisfaction and accomplishment, at the teachers’, students’ and the parents’ end.
So now I sit alone in this huge, nude classroom; devoid of all color, and the aftermath of the emotional tornado seems to prick me deeper somehow. The absolute, heavy, loud Silence, moist with the sensation of complete Nihilism reinforces and replays every moment of the days gone by. And sitting alone, with noone for company but the souvenirs of these past three months graved in my memory, i find closure. And then i think out loud ‘mince! c’est dur les adieux’
