Musings
<From Fall 2015. Posting because of how different things are: while many things feel the same, this feels like an earlier part of my life because what has changed is my sense of fear. I am so much less, I think, afraid.>
I sometimes feel like everyone in my life is doing work that is so much more immediate and relevant than anything I am doing, or will be doing in the near future. This also means I feel very, very silly complaining about any aspect of my life. Most of the time, this perspective is good. Occasionally, it bites me in the butt.
This is about one of those things that really-doesn’t-matter-but-matters.
I’ve had a tricky couple of weeks, and it’s pretty much just led to my stomach deciding that it wasn’t going to function earlier this week. Any time I ate I had terrific cramps, or thought I was going to throw up, or had to make a mad dash for the bathroom. (Of course the time I felt all three at once, the strongest, I was at a professor’s house. This professor is also most excellent, and I look forward to taking at least one, if not two, more classes with him. And he’s seen an excess of me this week -- at his home for a class event, in a meeting about a paper the day after that, and then for lunch today.)
So this professor, who absolutely dotes on his wife and two kids, has basically had one consistent piece of advice for me this week, when I’ve mentioned, alternately, the idea that (a) having kids is terrifying because they run around holding your heart and soul in their bodies and hands, tossing them about, and have no idea the power they wield, and (b) lawyering is scary because you’re not fixing anyone’s body, or plumbing, or house, or garden, and frankly, what if you fail and are just a waste of nitrogen, oxygen, and space?
Each time, he’s looked at me, a little quizzical, a little amused, and said -- “But anything that’s worth doing in life, is a risk. Having kids is scary, falling in love is scary, deciding to come to law school is scary.” The implied addition is -- and you do it anyway, you do it because of it. Sometimes, I wonder if I need to reorient my fears. This fear of failure, of meaninglessness, of unhappiness? Maybe I should just embrace it as a reminder that I am very much alive, very much able to choose the directions I want my life to take, and very much able to feel.
