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< | -- By JoeTeresi - 10 Mar 2017 | >
> | My Comfortable Vanity | | | | |
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< | Disassociation is the most natural and easiest way for us to avoid the predicament that is now. But, it’s also necessary for us to deal with the here and now. I’ve always used disassociation as a technique to address things that I thought were beyond my control, and I never considered if I was making the right choice or not. I was selfish. Discussion in class centers on the theme that as lawyers we should hate injustice, love justice, and use our tools to advocate for social change. From this, I started questioning my decision for coming to law school. Is my apathy to some of the issues we discussed a warning sign that I’ll be destined to hating myself? I’ve realized that my goals were just different, smaller than others. I’ve disassociated those greater issues from those I deem controllable. Furthermore, I think disassociation is crucial for a lawyer. | >
> | By JoeTeresi - 10 Mar 2017 | | | | |
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< | I began disassociating from issues I deemed beyond my control at an early age. I faced a situation I couldn’t change no matter how many times I tried nor how much effort I put into doing so. At first, it was an emotional reflex, a way to make things manageable. I then stumbled upon the serenity prayer – grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference – which I internalized and practiced religiously. If I judged a problem outside my sphere of influence, I would accept as much and move on. It’s a useful technique; there’s a reason some of the largest support groups in the nation use it as their maxim. At first, I told myself to completely disassociate from issues not for myself, but for the people I cared about. It sounds paradoxical, but I convinced myself by using the cliché – how can I help others if I can’t even take care of myself. The oxygen mask warning in an airplane before takeoff was the real-world example I analogized my reasoning too. This example doesn’t necessarily hold true anymore. It assumes that the other person is helpless, which just isn’t true anymore. In my personal life, disassociation serves its purpose, but with strong support it’s unnecessary. Oftentimes, disassociating can lead to poor communication and create more issues than it solves. However, I believe that disassociation is necessary for law, especially disassociating the law from one’s personal life. | >
> | As a lawyer, I'll be unhappy in the future because I don't care about justice. I'm much more worried about this statement than I was 2 months ago. The first draft for this assignment I wrote trying to convince myself past the doubts that I had considered prior to attending law school, crept into my weekly worries in my first semester and thought about significantly more the second semester. In that draft, I said I had disassociated my whole life. It had always worked for me. I was good at it. Lawyers have to compartmentalize to deal with handling clients, their own interests, and life outside the law. Since compartmentalizing things was required and I was good at just that, it followed that I would be happy and a fine lawyer. I wrote this with confidence. I was wrong. My confidence was faulty and naïve. | | | | |
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< | I came to practice law. I thought it’d be a good profession to use my skills. I didn’t consider justice or injustice. I worked with a man I looked up to, saw both the people he touched and the money he made, and thought the law would be a profession where both rewards were dependent upon each other. He practiced personal injury law, low brow law to some, but I respected him nonetheless. He advocated for genuinely hurt people who had been wrong and helped himself at the same time. He didn’t start out in personal injury law; it was originally his feel-good project. He ran his own practice that specialized in product liability defense work for 30 years before switching to personal injury due to burnout (I think). He would tell me, “working with a corporation just doesn’t bleed.” The case isn’t tangible like an injury is, and as such the win isn’t either. The thought of working with people who were wronged, making an actual impact on their lives, and while doing so enriching my own enthralled me. However, the longer I worked with him, I saw more and more disassociation between his practice and what he preached. The viability of every case was calculated using objective criteria: potential damages, defendants economic standing, the chance of winning, the effort required to win the case. The decision to take every case was a business decision. If the case crossed the threshold inquiry of viability, he’d wholeheartedly and zealously advocate for them. The dichotomy between him as an advocate and a businessman was striking. He disassociated the potential good he could do for someone as their advocate from the calculated decision about the case's potential. At first, I was troubled by this, but I realized law requires disassociation. Running one’s own practice is a business. It requires a disassociation from addressing all the problems one wants to solve as a lawyer, with the ones that one can. So, I find it acceptable that he dissociated the business from his advocacy. Disassociation is compatible with a lawyer who can find worth in his work. Also, it made the compartmentalization of his personal life from advocacy issues easier. His personal life wasn’t easy, abnormally so. He repeatedly told me how he had to compartmentalize and disassociate the issue addressed throughout the day and his personal life. Doing so was necessary for the health of his practice and his personal life. To keep our lives balanced and manageable, I believe that disassociation is necessary for a lawyer | >
> | Hunkering down works to a degree. I thought disassociating was the perfect solution to the problems I encountered. It had always worked for me or at least worked to enough to keep me from trying to find a new solution. But, I found its limit. My dad passed the week before my contracts final. So, I did what I preached. I hunkered down, denied my feelings, rationalized his death, and kept on moving forward. For a time, it worked. It got me through finals relatively unscathed. Then it stopped. I'm stuck now. | | | | |
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< | In class, we began discussing how a lawyer needs to be able to deal with the here and now to identify and address society’s predicaments. I never considered doing public interest, nor has my opinion changed on the matter. I don’t need to create drastic social change. I’ll be satisfied with having a tangible effect on some people’s lives. The talk about big law and what’s coming for us in the near future has been daunting. Reconciling, that future where we’re compensated handsomely for work that is not as meaningful for us our client, with my expectations, having a tangible impact on my client’s life, will take time. But it is possible and disassociating is key. Being able to compartmentalize the practice from the advocate is necessary and something I believe I am prepared to do. | >
> | I have regrets; both with respect to my father and my life as a whole. I forwent saying things in the interest of comfort for myself and my dad. I chose to avoid or mitigate conflict in the interest of serenity. I was alright with it because I thought sometime in the future I’d get to do what I’d put off. I can’t anymore and those lost opportunities are gnawing at me. By putting off the true things I wanted to say for the sake of comfortable vanity, I stymied our relationship. I thought I was helping it. Once again, I was wrong. | | | | |
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< | I didn't say you should
care about justice. I said that the people who don't and who go
through law school anyway are often unhappy about it. Of course, if
you can hunker down and deny your own unhappiness, why should that
matter? | >
> | I do the same thing in all aspects of my life. I forego true realization in favor of keeping my comfortable façade intact. It’s easier and leads me to believe I have a greater control over my life. For example, I spent 1000 words explaining how I’d compartmentalize the parts of being a lawyer I thought would bring me happiness from the parts I thought I’d loathe. I wrote an essay explaining how I’d accept the pieces that fit in my façade and discard the incongruous pieces. Just by writing that piece, I was reinforcing my comfortable façade. | | | | |
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< | The only route to improvement I can suggest here is to use
imagination to open the fortress so you can escape. What would it
be like to be someone who didn't have to deny his feelings quite so
much? Suppose, just for the length of one exercise, that you tried
to feel what you have tried not to feel, and imagined living a life
as a lawyer out of that (perfectly imaginary) condition of life.
Naturally you won't do anything as dangerous and crazy as actually
living in the possession of all your feelings; surely you will keep
as many of them safely buried as some sampler hung on the wall about
serenity (meaning anaesthesia) will permit you. No actual change of
any kind will occur. But just having the occasion to write from
such a perspective might be good for you anyway. | >
> | I lose out on a lot though. It took me losing my father to realize what I’d lost with respect to him. Denying or avoiding the truth made things easier, but in the long run, it hurts more than it helps. My father denied, denied, and denied some more. He was chronically extremely unhappy. I do the same thing with the same results, except I’m not at extremely unhappy merely unhappy. I don’t want disassociation to be my maxim anymore because inevitably my façade will come down leaving me worse off than if I had not even made it. I couldn’t keep up my disassociation for my father’s death and I won’t be able to do it for the rest of my life like I originally planned. | | | | |
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> | So, did I matriculate because I love justice? No. Did I matriculate because I hate injustice? No. I matriculated because I thought I’d find satisfaction as a lawyer. I’d be a member of a profession, challenged with interesting and novel problems on a regular basis, and make a good living. | | | | |
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> | Will I be happy as a lawyer? I might or I might not be. I can accept that. If I’m not, I’ll do my best to notice why. Addressing and noticing why will be the first step towards gaining my happiness back. If I’m irrevocably unhappy as a lawyer, I’ll consider other options. I won’t recklessly and consciously avoid reality like I originally planned. However, much of my personal denial is done unconsciously. It took me losing my father to realize the extent I did so with him. Reading your comments for the first time I was ready to double down on my first draft. Even as I first started writing this I was set on doubling down. I kept writing the same thing over and over – I want to be comfortable and happy, the best way to do that is disassociation, and I will do just that. I don’t want that anymore. To that end, I’m not ready to attack everything head-on. I don’t have the skill, guile, experience, or genius to do that. I probably couldn’t even do so if I wanted. For too long I’ve ignored my gut for the sake of my façade and at this moment I’m having trouble enough with the little bit that’s broken. Meaningful change might not even come from writing this. I can’t say with confidence that I’m going to flip a switch and stop disassociating everything that doesn’t fit smoothly in the persona I’ve cultivated, but, merely saying as much as I have is farther than I’ve ever gotten before. |
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