Mastery

On Thursday, May 27th I handed in my very last assignment (what ended up being a 33 page research report, lest 'assignment' sound too diminutive!). And on June 4th, 2010, I'll graduate. It is amazing to me how much work I did and how little work it seems to have been now that it's all over. I'm grieving a bit over losing the amazing community of social workers that I've been connected to over these last two years, and hoping this whole era of online networking will keep us all in touch. But I'm glad to be done. I'm looking forward to not having "homework" hanging over my head for 30 weeks of every year. I'm looking forward to dispelling the sense of my life being suspended and instead feeling like I'm back in it -- out of the cerebral, intellectual world of theorizing and role-playing and into the humanistic, physical, sometimes spiritual world of understanding and interacting.
I use the term 'mastery' with my tongue firmly implanted in my cheek. I don't think anyone ever attains mastery over relating to others, or figuring out how to help them without harming or hindering them, or gaining insight into their motivations and fears. But I've gained mastery over the education that promotes this other work, and there's something to be said for that.
Spring is becoming summer. The heat turns up, shy buds give way to confident blooms, life shimmies under its own abundance as roots lengthen and shoots stretch and clouds burn off beneath a powerfully blue sky...