A dear friend of mine gifted me with this book (in preparation of law school), saying that she had to read it in her pre-law course:

I have always been a fan of Clive… As a wide-eyed child, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” introduced me to a fantasyland and always made me peer into closets with secret hope & wonder.  “Mere Christianity” and especially “Surprised by Joy” helped build the foundation for my faith as I related to his own spiritual journey.  I became more vigilant to the insidious, sneaky ways of the enemy through “The Screwtape Letters.”  “A Grief Observed” offered me a sense of empathy and taught me it was okay to go through cycles of grief and mourning for loved ones.   All these books came at the right stage of my life, and this book was no exception, considering I was talking about moral relativism just two posts ago!

This book, like his other books, was short in length, but extremely dense in content. I feel like I have to reread it in order to understand the depth and breadth of his argument. In this one, C.S Lewis addresses and criticizes those in academia who wholly reject this idea of universal truth and those who put a sharp divide between reason and sentiment.

“It is the doctrine of objective value, the believe that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.  Those who know [this] can hold that to call children delightful or old men venerable is not simply to record a psychological fact about our own parental or filial emotions at the moment, but to recognize a quality which demands a certain response from us whether we make it or not…. No emotion is, in itself, a judgment; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical.  But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform.  The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.”

“The head rules the belly through the chest – of emotions organized  by trained habit into stable sentiments.  The chest-magnanimity-sentiment -> these are the indispensable liaison officers between the cerebral man and the visceral man.  It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man; for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal… it is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks [these academic men] out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary; it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.”

I thought by the end of this month, I would have a clear direction & answer.  That I would know what school I’d be attending and what city I’ll be living in.  If I would feel assured of staying in NYC or if I needed to prepare my heart for the cross-country move.  But nay, as fate’s cruel hand would have it, this torturous season of waiting has been extended.

A huge part of me wants to kick & scream. I can be a pretty impatient person; I have this strong sense of urgency when it comes to my plans and even my day-to-day life.  I need to take action, make strides. And this state of uncertainty has crippled me in regards to moving forward with my life.

So what can a person do at this point?

Since it’ll be a more heartbreaking decision to leave NYC, I decide to assume I’ll be leaving as a default. So as I spend (what could be) my last months here, I try to find reasons to hate this city (which actually has been pretty difficult due to the glorious weather).

The subway is taking forever.

Ugh, Duane Reade wastes too many plastic bags. (Eco-friendly markets in LA would never do this.)

A latte & rice krispies treat breakfast almost cost me $10. 

Cockroaches. Rats. People. Everywhere.

But even as I pointedly complain to myself, I find my own efforts unconvincing.   Almost like if there’s this dream guy who doesn’t really express interest in you, and you just try to feebly make reasons to dislike him though you know deep inside, these are just micro flaws that you’d wholeheartedly overlook if he’d just have you.

So since this isn’t working, I decide to make the most of the last few months here (though it might make parting that much more painful).

Well, here’s my (growing) bucket list so far:

1. Brooklyn Botanical Gardens
2. Outdoor movie nights!
3. NYC rooftop views (Top of the Rock, Empire State Building?)
4. A Central Park Summerstage show
5. Late Show w/Colbert
6. Comedy show (this particular one that my friend has been raving about)
7. Hamilton!!!

There have been instances where I find my friends/coworkers getting slightly irritated with me, because they say I don’t give definitive answers to their questions.

For example:

Q: What’s your favorite movie?

A: Well it depends… are you talking about the movie I can keep seeing over and over again or a movie that has had a longing impact on my life?

Q: Would you divorce/break up with your husband if he was caught cheating on you?

A: Well it depends… how often/long has he been seeing this other woman? Does he love her? Does he want to leave me? Do we have children?

For me, nothing has ever been black & white; everything has always been grey. That’s what I am – subjective in my thinking, almost to a fault.  I’ve been around people who are fiercely objective. Rules are rules. Principles are principles. No if, ands, or buts.  And these people are also the ones that probably find my “wishy-washy” perspective as weak, fickle, and void of strong convictions.  These people are the ones who are strong proponents of absolute truth. After all, isn’t my faith supposed to be based off of an absolute truth? And that’s actually why I struggle and wrestle with it at times. This is what is true to me, but is it true to everyone?

But as my mind broadens, I’ve come to realize that rules are not just rules. And what you see isn’t all that’s there. There are layers of complexity behind each unique situation.  Yes, that person might’ve acted out irrationally or physically, but it might be due to years and years of being horribly treated by cops.  Yes, those cops might’ve been a bit rough or presumptuous, but it might be due to years and years of violent reactions from their perpetrators. I acknowledge there is some danger associated with this relativist plane of thinking. Then you’ll start excusing all types of disruptive behavior and attribute it to a bad childhood or past.  But how much behavior can be pardoned by a rocky past and how much cannot? Where do we draw the line? Being in the grey is trickier, more complicated – but sometimes life can’t be defined by clear lines.

I wondered if this type of perspective would make me a bad or good lawyer.

edit:

How did Kimmy Schmidt know I was going to write about this?

Weird.

I thought visiting California last week would clarify & cement things for me, potentially settle my heart a bit in respect to moving there, but it seemed to confuse me even more.

As I visited schools, my convictions felt confirmed in some ways.  I felt assured that there will definitely be like-minded people (both faculty and students) at both of the institutions I visited. Each school highly emphasized their mission of serving the community (though my lawyer friend claimed this is what all law schools do) and had students speak to all the interesting clinics and pro bono work they did while attending school.  I’ve also learned that a legal education can span much broader than I ever comprehended it to.  I think I was always thinking pretty narrowly when it came to a legal career: you’re either working in a corporate firm or you’ll be working in the courtroom.  But there is a vast spectrum of organizations and causes you can be working for.  For instance, some students/professors spoke about international law, which is an area I’ve never considered before this week but might be something I want to explore.  I also learned about working in criminal justice reform, which focuses on researching policies and building campaign strategies, which might be more up my alley rather than working in criminal defense.

Yet in some ways, visiting schools also started planting doubts in my head.  Am I really up for this?  They didn’t sugarcoat the severity of that first year and being away from school for so long, I couldn’t help but wonder if I still have the mental stamina to keep up.  It was a reality check that once August comes around, I’d have to quickly shift gears and start thinking and living differently with barely any buffer time.  My life will become a bubble, and for once in my life, my career/education will completely consume me and become central to my identity.

But possibly even larger than the burden of changing career paths, another question loomed on my mind.  As I soaked in the warm sun and drove down wide streets, I asked myself if I could truly picture myself living here.  People ask me all the time why the hell I would leave this slower-paced, sunbathed life for a crowded, grungy place where people freely push & shove you and throw garbage on the streets. But being in the perfectly manicured OC and beautifully breezy LA only made my heart quietly yearn for NY.  The thought of tearing myself away from my community I’ve grown, my bustling life, and the city itself terrified and disheartened me.  I have to admit I’ve experienced some low points in NY especially during this past year to a point where I started thinking this environment had grown toxic for me, so I thought I would be more comfortable with the idea of moving back to the west coast.  But I found this was far from the case. This city had battered and beaten me, yet I still love it to pieces. And now that the time is nearing, I already find myself growing wistful of letting go of it all.  My heart doesn’t feel ready.

One of the law schools I visited had a student panel, and the students were asked what skills they’ve learned through their pro-bono programs. Some said they learned how to hone their legal writing skills, some answered broadly that they learned “real life” skills.  But one 1L girl responded with an interesting answer: she said she learned how to put together a good story.  She said that through working with her clients, she learned how to ask the right questions to get deeper with them, find out their core issues, and craft this information into a story that is coherent, compelling, and ultimately resolvable.

Even in “The People vs OJ Simpson” (which I’ve been watching religiously for the past several weeks), Chris Darden frustratingly tells Marcia Clarke, who keeps emphasizing the power of their DNA evidence, that people care about stories. They like good stories (and in such particular cases, almost to a fault).

I think for a small group session, I remember an icebreaker question asking what we would want to do with our lives, if we had the skills/gifts/resources to do anything we wanted.  I simply said I wanted to do something that allowed me to tell stories, whether it be writing books/articles, hosting a podcast, or crafting a screenplay. With a naturally curious mind, I want to learn about people, learn about things. I love listening to “Fresh Air” and hearing Terry Gross (with her calming voice) ask questions on to her guests, who might start realizing things about themselves as they open up.  I enjoy watching documentaries about random topics from an artist’s recyclable art projects giving life to his subjects to the hyper-competitive world of young ballerinas to the legacy of a hated college basketball player.  I eat these stories up like delicious treats (or ramen). After all, it’s ultimately a handful of narratives (both real and fiction) that led me to change my career.

So hearing that student say what she did hit me in a way that I didn’t expect. Though it might not be the most “creative” format of storytelling, I realized I can still do what I dreamed of doing.