Decisions Part 1: I'm Not Going

At 11:55 pm on New Year's eve, in a ratty pho restaurant in Hanoi, Wendy looked at me. "Okay, you have five minutes to make a decision about law school," she said.

I eyed her over my steaming bowl of noodles. "Even if I do decide something now, it's not going to be real. This isn't the real deadline," I said.

"It might as well be," she volleyed back. "Two more weeks aren't going to make any difference. Just decide."

"Okay," I sighed. Humoring one's companions is a crucial part of traveling. "Give me a coin."

"I don't have any. This country doesn't use coins."

"Shit. Okay, well, I'll use an imaginary coin, then." I made a fist with my right hand, tucked the tip of my thumb under my curled forefinger, and imagined a quarter lying on it. "Okay, I'm looking at a quarter, at George. He's lying on my --- wait. Lemme use Abe instead."

"Because he's in charge of the mother ship?" Wendy probed.

"Maybe he is and maybe he isn't," I smirked, concentrating on the imaginary penny balancing on my thumb. "No, because the last time I talked with Mr. Lincoln, he told me that I had the answers in me, and that I just needed to look for them. So here he is. I'm looking at him." I flicked my thumb up. "Okay, the penny's in the air... it's flipping over, slo-mo... it's coming down... okay, I've caught it."

I held out my open hand, palm up, and peered at the imaginary penny. "It's tails. Okay. It's decided."

"So what does that mean?"

"Oh wait." I realized something. "I didn't call the choices before I flipped. I don't know what tails means."

Wendy sighed.

"No, no," I said, "I'll decide. I'm gonna decide right now." I stared at the tiny Lincoln Memorial engraved on the imaginary round copper disk in my hand. "Tails. Tails means ... it means no. I'm not going to law school."

Wendy stared at me. "Really?"

"Yup," I said. "There it is. I'm not going."
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That decision lasted for a few days. (It actually did happen that way, by the way. More or less.) I flipped a coin on new year's eve, and it decided my fate.

Except it didn't. Because it was an imaginary coin, and because I didn't call it before I flipped, and because ultimately, I decided what the outcome meant. Heads, go. Tails, don't.

Why did I do that? For the past three years, I've been stalling, unable to decide whether to go or not, but unable to let go of the chance to go. Why did I decide that night that I wouldn't go? This is a chance available to a few thousand people in the world each year. It would assure me financial security. It would get my mother off my back. It would guarantee prestige. I might even like it.

I decided that tails means no because I finally chose a value system that I pay lip service to, but would have totally violated if I had chosen to go to law school. Among the many variables in this decision, a battle of values was being played out in my head. On one side, there is the safe, well-trodden path, the path clearly defined and well-rewarded by society, friends, family, and oneself. This is the path of college, a couple years of work, a graduate or professional degree, a high-paying and prestigious job, and above all else, security. A graduate of Harvard Law School is always going to have a job -- a well-paying job at that -- no matter how much the economy tanks. A graduate of Harvard Law School is always going to command a certain amount of respect. These are important things to me.

On the other side, though, there is the incontrovertible fact that I don't want to be a lawyer. I've never looked at a lawyer and thought, "I want to do what that person does." Outside of the usual thrills you get from watching a good courtroom drama, I've never felt drawn to law. It's not my calling. Period.

The first side, Security, speaks to that: "So what? Most people don't love their jobs. More importantly, you don't HAVE a calling -- or least, you haven't found one in the past six years. If you had a passion, by all means, I'd be for pursuing it! But if you don't, you may as well have job security and respect. That's probably a lot more than what other people who don't like their jobs have."

The second side, Idealism, replies: "Be honest. You haven't been seriously looking or thinking about what you want to do except for the last few months. It's too early to give up -- you haven't even finished your Parachute exercises! Remember what Carla said in DC two years ago? She said, 'The fact that you've struggled with this decision for as long as you have tells me that you should struggle with it longer.' In other words, if you wanted to go, you would have gone."

"Right," Security says. "But if you knew what you wanted to do, you would have done it by now. And since you don't, why don't you just go?"

"Because," Idealism answers, "there's a part of you that still believes that people should do what they love. That you're within the 1 percent of the 1 percent of the world population that is truly free to do whatever they want. Whatever you want!!! And you're going to default to going to law school because you don't have the guts, the confidence to keep searching?

"Ultimately, you're just afraid that you'll fall behind your peers who have gone to law school or med school or grad school, that you'll be seen as the weird Yale grad who never amounted to much, despite having this sterling education. Well you know what? If you go to HLS, you're going to end up like everyone else who defaulted into law school -- at the exact same point you're at now, searching for your bliss. Except saddled with an enormous debt, which is gonna stop you from taking jobs or other options that don't come with a pornographically big salary. Isn't it worth it to take the time NOW to figure out what you really want to do? If it's law, then law school will be there in a year, two years, five years. If you really don't have a passion you want to pursue, then -- again -- law school will be there in a year, two years, five years. Don't let fear be your chauffeur. You owe it to the millions of people out there who don't have the choices and opportunities that you do to take advantage of those choices and opportunities.

"Going to law school isn't going to make you into anything but a lawyer. And if you don't want to be a lawyer, it's a pretty stupid decision to spend $100,000 that you don't have to become one. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. Anything you do, you will do well -- you're just built that way. You won't choose to do something you CAN'T do well. And so you should have confidence that you'll have that respect you want, that you won't fall behind your peers, and that you'll be fine.

"Now. What are you going to do instead of go to law school? As BC pointed out two years ago and Wendy two weeks ago, you've set up a not-very-useful binary of law school vs. not law school. Without a solid alternative, you're comparing a ghost ship to a 365-horsepower speedboat -- who chooses ambiguity over a sure thing? Think about what you actually might want to do -- period. You're in an enviable debt-free, well-educated position. If you had all the money in the world, what would you do?

"You haven't finished those annoying Parachute exercises, but you know that certain interest areas keep coming up when you think about the future and what you want to do. These include: dogs, movies, history, women's rights, religion, human rights, psychology, race, understanding and bridging differences between people or cultures, infectious diseases and health. Stop thinking so much. You know you like reading and thinking about these things. It's not an exhaustive list. It just includes things that keep coming up and don't go away.

"As for skills, you know absolutely, positively, indubitably that you love to write, you feel compelled to write, and you're good at writing. (I'm not saying you're a great writer. That's different. I'm saying that you're a writer, for better or worse, and you'd do well to face up to it and accept it.) That's not the only skill that you have and enjoy, though. You like researching, you like observing and learning from people -- you love learning, period. You also like advising and counseling people, even though it takes a lot out of you at times. In one of the cheesy Parachute exercises, you wrote that one of your goals in life was to 'bring peace to people's minds and hearts, and help them make good decisions for themselves and become happier and healthier members of society.' Another one of your goals was to 'help bring more compassion to earth and help others understand each other and have compassion for each other, especially in the area of bridging cultural gaps.'

"Now THINK. Think about the careers you've considered and discarded and considered and discarded 45 times in the past three years. You've considered being a teacher. Going to grad school in any one of the areas you're interested in. As a professor, you'd research, you'd advise, you'd learn. You've considered being a therapist or a counselor. As one, you'd help people, you'd advise people, maybe bring more peace to them. You've considered being a journalist. As one, you'd write, you'd observe and learn, you'd learn about a wide variety of things, you'd help bring things to light. You've considered going into the foreign service. As an officer or part of the corps, you'd help bridge cultural differences, you'd learn about different people and lands, you'd travel. You've thought about being a movie critic. You'd watch a lot of movies, you'd learn things, you'd write. You've thought about serving as a consultant for movies, in whatever area you chose to study, like history.

"Any one of the above careers sounds like it would be interesting and something that you LIKE. Take a look at them. Think about which one you'd like to do most for the next couple years. It's not forever. Like the South African woman you met in Halong Bay said, 'Pick something that you like and do it. And if you don't like it, do something else.' She also pointed out that most of the people who were sitting at that table on that beach were not doing what they had studied to do.

"One of the best pieces of advice you've ever heard was from a lawyer, Maggie's mom. She said that she used to think that being free meant keeping all your options open. But she realized that being frozen in front of a dozen open doors isn't being free. There's freedom in commitment. Taking one path closes some doors. It opens at least as many different ones.

"Stop thinking so much. Pick something you like and do it."

[Tomorrow: Part 2]

[PS. Comments welcome.]