My Journey

I woke up one day wondering what I was thinking. Confusion came over me and the feeling of being lost was consuming. Ignorance is bliss and I thought that I was progressing rapidly to my better self. So I kept putting one foot in front of the other and following the motions, the comfortable route. Completing a degree in finance, because that would lead to stability. Off to corporate America, because that was the logical next step.

Based on this mindset I applied to law school. Introspection can be difficult, especially when you do not like what you see. One day after getting a job offer for a coveted 1L summer job I called my mother to reveal the good news. She responded that she has happy that I had the opportunity to choose to do something that I loved and it was coming to fruition. In that moment I realized what my parents truly wanted for their son. They were not happy because I would be comfortable, they were comforted because I was happy. Because my destiny was chosen and not given. In their mind I was living for myself and everything else would and should come second.

The Future

I am at a pivotal point in my life where I have the freedom, time, and opportunities to choose my path. In actuality, I will always make sure that this is the case. I have to make sure that I use my time to actually move toward my better self. Even if my journey to law school did not fulfill this thought process.

In 20 years I hope to personally see positive results from taking chances and never settling. I do not have to have a plan. In my parents’ time, not having a plan meant not having food on their table. I have the unique privilege of developing my intellectual faculties in order to be equipped with the skills to choose. I realized that choices and flexibility are what anyone wants. My ancestors had no choices, their lives were decided by someone else. My parents were ultimately not focused on whether or not I was comfortable, they just wanted me to have the option, to be comfortable making decisions for myself until I was happy. If I decided to go down the path of the starving artist, at least I made the decision. In 20 years I hope I know that whatever my circumstance, I have options and I have choices.

This served well the essential purpose of the first draft: to get your ideas out. Now we can see where the improvements in form and substance are easiest to get.

Shaping the essay is the most important formal work. The first two paragraphs set out the problem for your consideration, but they are too blowsy and indirect to make a good essay. Reshaping means distilling the real subject, the point as you have sharpened it, and putting that before the reader immediately, at the top, to show why the reader should go on. Your explanation of the role parents play in setting the level of imagination with which their children approach life can then be put, in context, swiftly. Whatever your approach to that restructuring may be, it will have to allow you to discuss the ostensible subject---your future two decades hence---in more than one last, perfunctory paragraph. The actual theme of your next draft, the one that gives us the payoff of your imagining, should be woven through the essay, from top to bottom. Stated at the outset, developed in the middle paragraphs, it should by the conclusion have generalized from you to more than you, to the reader herself in particular, and be offering her a way to take your insights about yourself further, on her own, for her own contemplation.

Substantively, of course, this is the key missing element in the essay. After all the language about self-realization, the conclusion at present, with its neologism of "comfortability," turns out to be no more about you than all the rest: your imagined future life is simply another backdrop for "the next generation" and its "spectrum of happiness," whatever that might be.

Why don't you try a draft in which there isn't this illusory "next generation"? What if you actually dare to imagine for yourself a life in which you don't have children, no one to pretend you are doing it all for, no one to waste your life over? If your own life twenty years from now had to have a meaning standing on its own---what one man has decided to do with his time on earth and is in the middle of getting done---what would that be? That may not be the draft you put back here---which will no doubt be more conventionally determined to honor the cliches about the importance of family---but that one will benefit from the radical "uncomfortability" of thinking about your life as though it were exactly, arithmetically, one.

Where do you hope to be in 20 years?

How it Started

Some variation of this question begins to leave the mouths of our elders beginning in first grade. Parents ask us this question in hopes of not only instilling in us a goal oriented mindset, but to also keep our imaginations in check. Children often dream of being astronauts, circus performers, or even other animals and although parents contradict themselves with the statement of “you can do whatever you put your mind to”, the question of should you, brings up concerns. Most parents in our society change the narrative as the child gets older. Slowly erasing possibilities and changing them into practicalities. Embedding their goals, aspirations, and struggles into our psyche so that we can live a better life. Is it really that selfish of them to do this? After all, everyone wishes that the next generation be better than the last, that is called progress. But, it is difficult to reconcile the dichotomy between societal or generational outward appearing progress and introspective or personal progress as one lives out his or her life. My parents squarely fit this mold, not anticipating my existence, but making sure that I knew that I could do better than they did. But, the way in which this was to be accomplished generationally was not through imagination. It was through putting your mind to something that your mind can grasp at the moment. Staying afloat was the immediate goals of my parents, of course with a dose of happiness, but their happiness was felt vicariously through their children. So as I started to formulate an idea of how I wanted to live my life, it was heavily influenced by the importance of being comfortable. Never having to concern myself with the obtainability of necessities. That was my definition of happiness. But in reality it was not, it was my parents’. I believe that happiness is not a concrete feeling that is there or not there. It is always on a spectrum that is constantly sliding, and the more you are on the positive end your disposition is considered happy by others. However, this sliding scale looks different for everyone. So, when your parents are from an environment where making ends meet equated to happiness this poses a problem for the next generation whose happiness spectrum is a bit different. The breadth of this spectrum does not always reveal itself from day one; it may take many learned experiences and reassessments to fully understand it. In the meantime, I made decisions based on what I believed would make me happy.

My Current State

While traversing the halls of my undergraduate institution, I began to become aware of my full spectrum. The end of my happiness spectrum was not just a comfortable life. There was more fulfillment that I wanted to achieve. This is a double-edged sword because the extension of the spectrum is a privilege that my parents never reached. However, the more I could see, the more I realized that my aspirations placed me only halfway on my spectrum. This is not necessarily a positive feeling. Confusion came over me and the feeling of being lost was consuming. Ignorance is bliss and I thought that I was progressing rapidly to my better self. So I kept putting one foot in front of the other and following the motions; the easier route. Completing a degree in finance, because that would lead to stability. Off to corporate America, because that is the logical next step. Then law school, because I continued to work off of my clouded view of my future. Introspection can be difficult, especially when you do not like what you see. I am at a pivotal point in my life where I have the freedom, time, and opportunities that my parents did not have. I have to make sure that I use this time to actually move toward my better self. If there is one thing I learned about finance, it is that it is never a bad move to cut your losses, the opposite is much worse.

My 43-year-old self

In 20 years I hope to make sure that the next generation has the openness to reach for the unattainable at an earlier age and if that does not work out, then focusing on the practical is not a terrible outcome. The opposite construction can be much more difficult to handle. I hope to personally see positive results from taking chances and moving away from comfortability. In turn, the next generation can see the breadth of their spectrum that much sooner, so that their realities are not as surprising.

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