There are so many things I would like to do. Most of them don’t gel with the looking-glass self I’ve served so faithfully, but I am gaining the courage to start listening to the inner voices that have stayed quiet for so long. I want to continue traveling—for me—and help people along the way where my skills can. I’d like to get back to reading, writing, and drawing: my creative instincts have been stifled by my own perception of them as weak and unfit for professional life. I’m still a law student. I’m still young. I’ve spent years pursuing a life shaped the expectations and realities of others, steered by the idea that black male success only comes in business formal. I fixate on how I am perceived, in turn dictating how I perceive myself. The process of abandoning this fixation won’t be simple. It is a part of my being, responsible a great deal of my successes. I don’t want the next generation of me’s to fight the exact same racial and social convictions I did. The very first good that I can do for this world is serving as an example of an individual who rose above the competing voices to listen to my own. But ultimately, I’m going to start listening to me, for me. I will never get satisfaction from living a life for others.