Engaging Existence

In this week’s blog, we hear from our newest Americorps VISTA, Sudeepto. He dives into to why he is Engaged, as a VISTA, and as part of the McCarthy Center team!

I do not recall if it was a Big Bang moment or a gradual dawning of awareness that I exist. Thence my awareness recollects experiences had and decisions made that have transported me to these spacetime coordinates where I am playing the concurrent roles of AmeriCorps VISTA, EdTech consultant, and private STEM tutor. Along the way, I have performed as engineer, scientist, astronomer, researcher, coder. But these suited me not as I hungered for more than the panoply of symbols, systems, theories, algorithms and other dead-ends that I encountered as these previous versions of myself. That rare species Life was missing in The Universe and Everything. The new release needs to include the Human.

All too human. I experience confusion as noble thoughts chase each other in profusion: I want to Help! I want to effect a lasting beneficial impact on my community, on humanity! Delusions and projections! my previous versions flag me, and remind me of all the other narratives that my expectations had failed to live up to: I want to be a contributor, an engineer, a scientist, rich, famous, happy, in love! I want to discover the deepest mysteries of the Universe! So much strutting and fretting. This time I am not embarking on any paved roads. I am going on an organic detour.

Stay focused on the task at hand! So I urge my variously -whelmed students. And so I practice. Right now here am I. I am AmeriCorps VISTA at Success Centers San Francisco and The Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at the University of San Francisco. I am participating in a database/data visualization project at the McCarthy Center as part of an assets-based community development initiative for the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco. At the Success Centers, where youths find social integration through art, education and employment, I am systematizing the curricula, establishing systems of protocols, and researching educational technology infrastructure to help build capacity.

These are the tasks set before me. I am focused on my tasks. I am engaged!