Why am I here?

Well, here I am. I've graduated college, and now I'm on the other side.

There were so many times this summer when I sat down at my computer, and I tried to decide which part of my life I wanted to write about. SO much has happened this summer between training in Atlanta, celebrating my grandparents' 50th Wedding Anniversary, moving across state lines, and now training in the school system that I'll be teaching in. So much has happened.

So, I'm going to focus on what happened yesterday. Yesterday, we were asked to write our visions for our students and this school year. What this means in the education field is essentially a sentence or two about why you (and perhaps your students) are there. Essentially is the question: Why am I here?



Why am I here? In order to think about this, I started with why I joined Teach for America. The first most basic reason was to get my teaching license without having to pay for a semester of student teaching...that's not very inspiring or motivating. Just financially smart. Why am I here? Then, I thought back to the one pager I wrote for the Education department at Belmont Abbey College. In there, I wrote about how people expect you to reach your potential after college. You finally can do whatever greatness you do and you can contribute to the world. So, I said my fullest potential was helping others reach their fullest potential. It was basically the idea that helping others is the best thing I can do for this world.

But that still wasn't quite right. It wasn't phrased right. (The English Major in me is so picky).

So I stared at my paper for a while - blank - trying to figure out what it was that was missing from that idea that sentence. So I tried to think bigger. Naturally, my mind wandered as it tends to when I'm stuck (good thing to keep in mind come September). I floated over my faith and tried wrapping up what my life means as a whole rather than just as a teacher. Why am I here? Finally, my mind rested on something I had read a few days before. I couldn't remember the quote exactly, but I looked it up, and here it is for you:

"the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift and—by means of this gift—fulfills the meaning of his being and existence."

What I remembered or how I paraphrased this quote from St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body was: Humanity's greatest fulfilment - our greatest purpose - is the gift of self for another. This is what I designated as my vision - my vision for myself as a teacher and my vision for my students.

My overall purpose in life should be that true love - that gift of self - to those I meet, and I believe that it is a worthy enough "why" to apply to my personal life as well as my professional life. Furthermore, it can be difficult to help students develop the answer to "Why am I here" when they have so many things going on in their lives other than school, but I think that this is something different that both ensures they will take care of themselves, see the purpose in education, and be motivated to do something beyond the classroom walls.

In order for my students (and myself) to give ourselves as gifts, we must first know who we are, take care of ourselves, and know what our strengths are. If I am burned out and only getting 2 hours of sleep a night, what kind of "self" would I be giving to my students the next day? Wouldn't I be a better gift if I put down the lesson plans and got to bed at a reasonable hour? If I cannot draw, I may not be the best person to paint the mural in the new wing of the building. However, if I know that I am a skilled fundraiser, I could contribute by seeking paint donations and monetary contributions. By knowing myself, I become a better gift-giver. In the same way, this vision helps my students see themselves as valuable with something to offer. They are worth working on and working for.

Once the "self" part is taken care of, the students (and I) also have the "gift" part to remember. This is what will get me out of bed in the morning. This is what reminds us all that the world is bigger than ourselves - BUT it's also small enough that we can affect the world around us. Forming our best "selves" means nothing if we do nothing with it.

Through the guidance of God, that is: Why I am here. God has shown us the greatest love there is through the gift of Himself in each of us "made in His image" and through the gift of Himself in His son. His gift is an example of how we are to live our lives. We are meant to love one another. To give ourselves as a gift to one another, and that is why my vision does not need to be any more complicated than that.

Humanity's greatest fulfilment - our greatest purpose - is the gift of self for another.