Like little coins jangling in one’s pocked quite unheeded unless the odd cup of coffee is needed, change is something that we don’t quite pay attention to until something fairly major turns up. We’re often reminded by seemingly pithy business posters or advertisements about how ‘change is a constant’ and the inevitability of things changing. While that is indeed true, we’re so inured to changes that happen around us that we don’t appreciate how we grow and change with the times.
Today is the last day of March which also coincides with my last day of formal employment as an educator. For the time being. It was a strange day of farewells and thoughts about what the future holds that prompts one to the realisation that changes like today are but formal signposts to the more gradual changes that happen to us in life. I look back at the past years I’ve spent teaching and learning only to realise how much more of the latter I’ve done even though I was employed to do the former. The learning doesn’t cease – and I’m certain that much more of this will occur in the next phase what looks to be an interesting journey.
The 31st of March came with a suddenness that surprised even me – the past month flew by without me realising where it went and I got the proverbial tap on the shoulder three days ago when I realised that I had a short time with which to pack, say goodbye and leave the place where I’ve grown quite comfortable being in. I realised how much of a pack-rat I am and the act of getting rid of things that should have been discarded long ago was a good reminder of how one does need to live more cleanly and simply. The giving away of stuff reminds me that we often have too much that we don’t need and should share this largess with others. The packing and leaving the desk and cubicle where I spent many days (and nights) working, thinking and spilling food and coffee was symbolic of the change that is to come. The time has come to move on.
Was asked many times how I felt today and wasn’t quite sure how to respond. There was a little sadness at leaving behind a place where I learned what it meant to be an educator, at leaving good friends and at bidding farewell to an institution that I grew alongside. There was also a certain lightness to the day as well – a lightness born of being free to move on to something that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.
And so it’s happened – changes and a change that happened on this last day of March. Thirty to go.
musings of a brush 
2 replies on “Loose change”
The clean cube across the tiny window is very unsettling! 😦
Change is constant, even if one wants to resist it. It is something that God has set in motion when He create the day and night. If it is not there, then renewal with not exist. With renewal comes new experience, new knowledge, new hope, new life.