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> | Finding a Sense of Purpose
-- By TanyaSehgal - 20 April 2009 (the original paper follows this revised version)
The Ideal
At this year’s Rebellious Lawyering conference, Van Jones told his life story in the keynote address. He enrolled at the Yale Law School because he had a budding desire to “do something” and thought law school would teach him how to best pursue justice. Jones was a student during the 1992 Rodney King riots and began to see police brutality as the site for all that was wrong with the world. After graduating, he followed his girlfriend out to the Bay Area and found a job that would allow him to work on his issue of choice. He soon found himself feeling sapped and hopeless. He still found the issue of police abuse compelling, and he was making progress, but he became disenchanted with the Bay Area activist scene because it tore down everything in sight without a vision of what to resurrect in its place. On an existential level, he felt that his efforts would be fruitless. For a time, he was paralyzed by his despair and could not get out of bed in the morning. Eventually, he decided to take that moment as an opportunity to reorganize his life on the premise that “change starts from within.” He began meditating, eating food grown locally, and practicing small acts of kindness on a regular basis. Instead of feeling like he was tapping an empty well, he was more energetic than ever. During this time, Van Jones came up with the idea that would eventually make him famous – Green for All, a “national organization dedicated to building an inclusive economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.” As Jones tells it, his pursuit of a “green collar” economy often tires him, but he no longer has feelings of hopelessness. Jones’ key message was that the idea of “rebellious” lawyering was too small, that it is time for us to stop focusing on what we are fighting against and think about what we want to be fighting for if we truly want to make a difference in the world.
I listened to Van Jones speak and I was stirred. He was a charismatic speaker to be sure, and his ideas were undeniably compelling, but what struck me was the depth of his sense of purpose. I want to know what I want for the world as clearly as he does. Is this something we can begin to learn in law school, or is this something that necessarily must come through years of life experience? Perhaps it is both. Maybe identifying who we are and what we want can begin in law school thought it is probably a process that will continue our entire lives.
Where I'm at
When I first wrote this essay, I did exactly what Van Jones warned against – I flippantly wrote off certain hallmarks of legal education without appreciating their value or offering viable alternatives. I did this, in part, because I don’t know what the purposes of some of these things are. For example, I am not sure if the Socratic method is succeeding in training my memory (as Eben points out, sometimes it is not useful to measure a proposition’s worth as it is taking place, or even immediately after). And, since I have never practiced law, I am not sure how important having a well trained memory is to being successful attorney. I also did this because I am not sure what the alternative looks like. I only know that in my law school experience thus far, I often feel like I am treading water – gasping for air and thrashing my legs around with no energy left to figure out which direction I am headed.
I do not feel this way because of a lack of information. In fact, we are bombarded with information in the form of emails and lunchtime panels which tell us about how to get involved with different clinics and journals and student organizations. But, these opportunities feel less like an occasion to find out what we are interested in than ways to build our resume. We are told that we should do a journal if we want to do a clerkship, only we don’t know what a clerkship is, why we would want to do one, or what being on a journal entails. We are encouraged to get involved in student organizations, but the only ways to do so are extreme. We can be dues paying members, consumers of an experience that essentially involves going to happy hours, or we can be in positions of leadership, positions that feel a bit odd if our purpose is to find out if we are interested in the issue in the first place. I have some sense of what areas of law covered by the first year curriculum I find most interesting, but then again, I am not entirely sure that isn’t just exactly correlated with how much I like the professor’s teaching style. I do not know how to wade through this mass of information and experience and opportunity to find what matters to me, and I am not sure to what extent it is the role of the law school to help me do that.
A "Resolution"
I have been obsessing over this question constantly for the past few weeks. As I am perusing the wiki one evening, it dawns on me: this class is the chance for us to figure out what we want, to connect with ourselves, to find a sense of purpose that will enable us to exist in law school without simply following the herd. Only, I am still confused, and I resent the recruitment process that makes me feel like I needed to know my life’s calling six months ago. But maybe Van Jones’ and Eben’s message is that if law school won’t loosen its grip, we can loosen ours. We can see our journey to finding our purpose as a process that extends well beyond these three years. We can use the clubs and the clinics and this class as an opportunity to reflect on what matters, but also give ourselves the space to decide seven years past EIP, if need be, what it is that we truly want to be doing.
| | | "Slaves ourselves, it would be a mere pretension to think of freeing others." -Gandhi
-- By TanyaSehgal - 27 Feb 2009 |
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