Last week was my graduation week. I am not big on formalities but the commencement exercise was something I could not miss. In part because, my parents flew all the way from Miami just for three hours of flat speeches and a picture of me in a hat. But also because I put hard work in four years of college and I deserved to finish the best way possible. During the entire ceremony a question was floating around the air: Now what? It was asked by a couple of speakers, in different ways. My parents kept having the “Now What?” look on their faces the entire time I was in my gown. I was asking it myself even before graduation; and It may sound exaggerated, but I believe every family call I received the last couple of months came with that same question.
The question is a tricky one. It is not about what you answer to people who asked it, because after all you can lie to everyone saying you know what is next. It is about what does it mean for you. Does it mean getting any job? Does it mean getting paid for something you are going to do the rest of your life? Or does it mean just a piece of paper that you can now put on a wall? In the exact moment I took my commencement picture I realize I was supposed to have things figure out and to know my next step. There was just a little problem, I don’t think I am ready to have everything figure out yet. It feels like we need you to have our life in order like a check list. Job: check, family: check, apartment: check, life away from your parents: check. Somebody forgot to add exploration, happiness, adventure to that little list, the most important points of them all. So, we get nervous looking around to classmates with new jobs, with new apartments, with a diploma and a different life. Would it be such a crime not to use that diploma, To turn our back to four years of education and travel the world or respond to a passion we did not know we had during our college experience? Would it be a crime not to know what is next? Or an even more interesting question, would it be a crime not to care about what is coming next because we want to start all over again, in a different position?
You may be thinking who wants to start again after graduation, but that’s my point; just because we graduated does not mean we are ready to become another link in the work chain, ready to stop looking for our passion, ready to fit our lives into a schedule that it is not ours. We graduated, yes, but we are just getting started to experience the world and personally I wish to explore it for a long time. I wish to get lost along the way and find myself again in an unknown place. To learn in every step I take and figure things out my own way, at my pace. Now what?, they asked. Honestly, I don’t have any idea and I don’t want to know, life is not a strict plan you can follow. It is more a series of paths that seems to collide in a dream, a goal, a purpose. If we are lucky we may get there. If we are lucky we may die trying. It is just the beginning.
