The TV show “How I Met Your Mother” aired its season four finale last Monday night. It is a show set in present day, but the story is told from the year 2030, from the main character Ted Mosby’s perspective, on how he met his wife, the mother of his children.

The latest episode has us closer than ever to finding out who the mother is, and as future Ted went over the events in his life that happened in 2008 and 2009, some good, some bad, he ended upcalling it the best year of his life.

It was the best year of his life. presumably, because the chain of events set in motion for Ted in that year ultimately led him to his one, true goal: finding the love of his life.

As all of us close another school year, I can’t help but relate the past nine months of my life to a TV show. It doesn’t feel like a year has gone by, but rather a “season,” as if I’ve had a bunch of writers in a room create multiple story lines for myself and my friends.

From the first day of the fall semester up to this very moment, I could not have foreseen the things that have happened to me. A lot of good, a lot of bad, but most of all, it feels like all that has happened was important. It was all for a reason.

And hopefully, the same goes for the people I have met and covered this year, thanks to being a part of the El Vaquero staff.

Whether its meeting a young, spirited drummer and her band mates, a cheerleader who happened to fight her way to success on a game show and in real life, or a coach who stresses the right way to do things but still has to have patience for his own reward, I feel fortunate to have met them and have come away with a new found sense of admiration for what they have gone through, and ponder what the future holds for them.

The same goes for our athletes. Our basketball stars Josh Guillory and Markus Monroe are leaving Glendale. Where will their hoop dreams take them? Where will they be in a year?

Our great track and cross country star Nathan Sellers is moving on as well. Sellers has been more than amicable to this newspaper and in getting to know him, I wish him the best going forward with whatever he does in the near future.

There’s also Ryan Stanbury, one of the standout Vaquero tennis players. I had never covered a tennis match until three months ago, but Stanbury was more than helpful in assisting me with who I needed to talk to and informing me of the ins and outs of his team.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that getting coaches to talk is easy. Getting athletes to say more than a couple of sentences? That’s a challenge. But Stanbury has the personality that can take him far in life, long after tennis is gone.

Outside of school, I have also met and developed great admiration for several people. People that I see on a weekly basis. And these individuals, truth be told, have really helped me. Not by talking to me or lending their advice necessarily, but by their actions. I know what some of them have gone through and to see them week in and week out be strong and continue to push on, well, that’s inspiring.

Every season on a TV show, new characters get introduced while some key regulars say goodbye. I’ve definitely experienced both this year. It’s all part of the process. It will happen again next year, too.

But this process…it’s something that is difficult to trust. Whether people that were important to me leave, or whether I’ve started a new act in my life, I can’t help but treat it with a little bit of trepidation.

But what other choice do we than to keep going? We do our best and hope that the process ultimately works out, and maybe down the road, something incredible will happen.

Maybe 25 years from now, I’ll set my kids down on the couch and say to them, “Kids, this is the story of how I met your mother.” And my story will have started right here, in the spring of 2009. How exciting is that, when you really think about it?

Maybe that’s what’s happening to others right now.

The outcome doesn’t have to end with someone finding their husband or wife. It can be a career goal that was finally attained, or someone close to you accomplishing something meaningful. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that certain things are being set in motion at this moment that will only be understood by us years from now, and maybe all you need is the right year to get you going.

Honestly, I don’t know if the 2008-09 season will have been the one that started it all for me. It sure feels like it, though. The ups and downs, the success and the failures, the joys and the hurt…it all had to have happened for a reason, right?

Somebody told me recently that life is good. It is not easy, or always fun, but it is good. My hope is that going into this summer and beyond that we can all find this out for ourselves and come to appreciate those words, whenever that time comes. Maybe we have to wait a little while longer, but make no mistake, what we’re really searching for is coming…and it’s getting here as fast
as it can.