When Life Isn't a Race

-- By CodyHuyan - 20 Feb 2024

Introduction

It didn’t occur to me, until Eben pointed it out in my first draft, that I have been constructing my life as a perpetual race. Every stage of my life has a finish line and every day during that stage is a calculated step towards that finish line. Once I cross it, I naturally step into the next stage of my life, with a new goal to race to.

I’ve always explained it as me being extremely goal-oriented. To some extent, I wasn’t wrong. It’s not toxic to have goals in life, rather I think it is commendable. The line where goal-setting converts to a perpetual race, though, is when urgency attaches. Most, if not all, goals in life does not imply a deadline. But subconsciously, I have always imagined a sense of urgency. Not knowing scares me – so I always want to know the answer, to whether I can achieve my goals, to what my next steps would look like – and the faster I achieve my goals, the faster I know. So inevitably, I race ahead, at all times, at full speed.

My Law School Decision

A lot of decisions I’ve made throughout life, including coming to law school straight through can be attributed to this fear for uncertainty. Many people have asked me why law school now? I’d always give some grandiose reason about pursuing justice for the why law school part of the answer. But the driving factor was my fear of uncertainty. Sure, what first drew me to law was the ability to correct injustice (or at least try to). But long before I applied to law schools, I have already realized that the type of lawyer I plan on becoming (aka a BigLaw associate) not only doesn’t exterminate injustice, but often reinforces it. I nonetheless chose to attend law school, not because I desire to make a difference in the legal market, but rather because law offers a comforting degree of certainty as a career, with work that is sufficiently stimulating. Legal recruiting is structured in a way that I can know exactly what I should be doing and what I should be expecting at what point in time. The progression tracks are also foreseeable and relatively certain given the hierarchical structure of firms. The transparent compensation scale assures me that I can sustain the lifestyle that I want. Can I accomplish this with another career? Maybe yes, but probably through a more opaque path. And I'm too scared to forego what I know is a well-paved path ahead of me.

And why now? Time is inherently uncertain. When I contemplated working for a few years before law school, I was unsettled by all the “what-ifs”. It wasn’t necessarily that I was certain I would be better off attending law school now. No one can predict the future. Rather, it was the ability to stop wondering that appealed to me. The faster I make it to law school, the faster the rest of my life (where I'll start my career, where I need to build my network, what kind of law I will practice, etc.) falls into place.

Origins

It’s difficult to pinpoint a moment in time when my fear for uncertainty began to dictate my decisions in life. My upbringing is most likely at the root. From a cultural perspective, every generation of Chinese people, especially women, are time-stamped by their parents and societal norms. By the age of 25, you are expected to get married; by 28, you should have your first child; and by mid 30s, you should have a successful career, which translates to holding a socially esteemed position that pays well. I have been preached this timeline for so long that I have subconsciously adhered to it. Because I've never considered an alternative where stages of life are not necessarily associated with age and time, when I veer off the timeline even just slightly, I immediately set a new deadline for myself to get back "on track".

Another factor that contributed to my fear for uncertainty is the family atmosphere I grew up in. My parents didn’t have the happiest marriage would be an understatement. I didn’t know when a new fight would break out, what they were fighting about, if something I did may trigger them, how and when the fighting would stop, and the list goes on. I constantly lived in fear until one day I brought home an A+ report card. I realized that when I exceed their expectations, they would temporarily cease fire. I was like a dying fish finding water – I found one certain way to keep peach in my house and it was something I had control over – so I held on to in desperately. Over time, it gradually became a habit to set a goal, exceed it, and repeat. Even though my parents have separated and there is no longer a need to “please” them, I had been preoccupied by the race itself that I have failed to slow down and see an alternative where life doesn’t have to be a race.

Looking Forward

To be completely honest, I don’t know exactly what a life that’s not a race would look like at the moment. And that’s ok. Just like athletes need cool down laps after an intense workout, I think it’s okay for me to take some cool down laps before fully figuring out what and where I want to be in life, after running full speed ahead for 23 years. The first step for now is to actually take those cool down laps and continue to remind myself to slow down.

What I do know is that, ultimately, to truly restructure life, I must face my fear directly and learn to co-exist with uncertainty. This is obviously easier said than done. But I am optimistic that recognizing my fear and its causes is a positive step towards tackling it.

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