Decisions Part 2: Yes

Yes. Yes to writing a summary of the lecture on Korean religion I heard last year. Yes to going to Beijing the day after tomorrow. Yes to law school.

Yes to an uncomplicated life. Yes to not thinking too much. Yes to being in step with my peers. Yes to spending.

Yes, goddammit! Y-E-S. Yesyesyesyesyes. I'm going. Yes I'm a lawyer. Yes I went to Harvard Law School. Yes.
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This afternoon, I was studying in an empty classroom with my schoolmates Gyung-li and Maiko, when Gyung-li mentioned that she had yet to buy her ticket to Beijing, her hometown, for this weekend. After a bit of back and forth about that, I mentioned, a little wistfully and a little jokingly, that I'd like to go too. She promptly said I should, and we ended up going down to the travel agency on the first floor of our classroom building to find out ticket prices (with the price of getting a visa in one day, $408 USD). We went back up to the classroom, where I laughed at myself.

"I'm nuts. That's it. I'm freakin' crazy," I announced. "I've been back here for less than a week. And I have to make this decision about law school. If I go traveling again, I'm not gonna have time to think about it."

Gyung-li agreed, "That's true. We'll be too busy seeing stuff. And eating." Her eyes got dreamy. "Chinese food. Yum."

Maiko piped up, "Then you should make your decision about it tonight!"

For the second time, I laughed. "Got a coin?" I deadpanned.

She broke into giggles. "Well," she said, "I think you should -- no, never mind."

"No, go ahead," I said, slightly resigned. "Tell me what you think."

"Well," she hesitatingly continued. "If you don't go, it's kind of a ... waste. Isn't it?"

I sighed. "Yeah," I said, "it kind of is." I looked out the window into the dark Shinchon streets. "Okay!" I exhaled. "I'll go and I'll go! I'll go to law school and I'll go to Beijing, and I'll stop thinking so damn much and life will be a lot simpler and I will be a lot happier. I'll go!"

They both laughed at me. "Good!" Gyung-li said. And in the same breath: "Or you know, you could go study Chinese history in China."

"Whaaaat?" I said. "That does NOT help. Oh, whatever. I'll think about it and call you tonight."

As I was packing up my bookbag to go back home, Maiko looked at me with sad eyes. "I'm sorry that I couldn't help you decide, Helen," she said.

"What kind of talk is that? You don't have any reason to be sorry," I assured her. I was touched. I wanted to add that many, many people have been unable to decide for me, but that that wasn't their responsibility, it was mine, and I was grateful for every one of their contributions to the giant Parliament debate in my head. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to say that in Korean, so I just smiled at her again, thanked her, and left.

As I left, I thought about what I'd just said, in jest, about going. Just saying yes. I halfway believed that I'd just made a final decision about it. Because why should this be such a freakin' hard decision? Why do I turn everything into monumental battles between value systems, ideology and other completely non-reality-based issues? It's not that I want to be the type of person who gets into HLS and hoots, "Score, baby!" before going out to party all night long. That would be nice, yes, but I'd settle for being someone who didn't agonize over every decision and didn't feel compelled to chase out every single permutation and outcome of any given choice.

I just want to live simply. I want to think less. Not live unthinkingly. Just avoid being the person to whom a Cambodian hotel desk clerk says -- smilingly! -- "You think too much. Just go to the restaurant we recommended. It's good." (True story, by the way.)

But. But but but. I am that person. I do pore over all the permutations and possibilities and the whys and wherefores, and I don't make snap decisions, even about what I'm going to eat for dinner. Yes, there's limit to the constant swirl of questions leading to more questions that double over and bend in on themselves and become gateways to questions about other things entirely -- a point at which it becomes repetitive and nauseating. My effort to reach a decision by next week is my attempt to put a limit on this second-guessing.

But there's also a point at which you have to accept the swirl as part of yourself. Myself. I think about stuff too much, but that's part of who I am. A friend said to me recently that she didn't understand why I made it so hard for myself. Why not do something I love? Why do something if I'm not compelled to do it? What's funny is that the easy thing is GOING to law school. Not because everyone else is doing it and it's a safe path. Because there's a part of me that WANTS to do what everyone else is doing.

A fine distinction, you might say, and not worth the inevitable argument over semantics. But it touches on something that's deeper -- more insidious, you might say -- and well worth a good look, because this rambling, streaming mess of an entry is finally (I think. I hope.) heading into the real reasons why I say yes to law school.

I've never wanted to be a lawyer. But I -- on some level -- want to go to law school. Not any law school. Harvard Law School. For a long time, I excused my dithering about going on the pressures of family, especially my mother, who has wanted me to go for a long time. It's true that most of my family members are in favor of me going, though they all, to a man, also want me to do what makes me happy. (As if that's so simple! But it is, if you'd just -- okay, stop, right now. But you don't have to -- stop it. But -- NO.) (You see what I have to put up with?)

Asian parents are famous for pressuring their kids to go into law and medicine (and sometimes architecture -- hey, it works for some). Blame it on the Confucian hierarchy that features scholars and anyone with higher degrees at the top, doing the Bump with their caps askew. Harvard Law School has got more cache than a Queer Eye makeover, and it will ALWAYS have it. Less well known are that Asian mothers are completely and utterly devoted to their kids, with the expectation that their kids damn well know it and are wracked with guilt any time they think about even breathing the wrong way.

Neither of these factors has much bearing on my decision. Not to say that they don't have any impact, just that they're not the most important factors. It's not my family. It's me. I don't know where, or how, but somewhere along the line, I absorbed the values that make up the "Security" side of the argument, and those values are powerful in a way I can't describe. BC, my personal sage, opined that my "Security" arguments were weaker than my "Idealism" in the last entry, and that's partly because that entry was the "No" entry, but it's also partly because in the rationalistic western humanist tradition, I can't adequately express what a hold the "Security" values have on me. Or, in turn, how much I embrace them. I can't defend them except in terms that can be defeated -- even by me! -- by the logic of Idealism.

Yes, if I didn't have in my possession an HLS seal-embossed piece of paper that started out with the word "Congratulations!" I would not be inclined to take the LSAT and apply for law schools now. Yes, I might, if I didn't have that letter, apply for the foreign service, or go learn Chinese in China, or move to New York, or explore the idea of graduate school.

But yes, I do have that piece of paper. And yes, I am deathly afraid that if I don't send a yes letter to HLS next week, I will feel an intense surge of panic and regret and spend the next 50 years flagellating myself over not going when I had the chance. Yes, I want the cache.

Def (of Def and Stave) sent me an article a couple years back about a fellow who'd avoided the law school route, choosing instead to go to graduate school (or maybe be a writer, or one of those commie professions). It was a really astonishingly honest and moving piece. The author freely admitted that he felt virtuous and holier-than-thou when he opted to go the poor, starving student route instead of "selling out" like his lawyer friends. But he also wrote openly about later deeply envying his sell-out friends, despite their long hours and crappy quality of life, for their ability to live where they wanted, drop $100 on dinner without blinking, take exotic vacations, buy $2,000 living room chairs, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And he wondered if he shouldn't have gone that route, because it's lonely being the odd one out, even if you like what you do, even if you don't have to work 80 hours a week, even if you're sure you did the right thing for you.

I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to regret not going (and according to the dad of Tomato Nation's Sarah Bunting, most of the time you regret not doing something, not doing something). So I say yes. Because there's no guarantee of happiness or satisfaction in Idealism, but there is a guarantee of a kind of happiness in an HLS-embossed Security.

[Heartfelt thanks to those who wrote in.]

[Comments welcome.]

[Tomorrow: Part 3]