Big mistake

Minutes before a test...

Test 2. I'm listening to "The Streets" again, the edge of a cliff. I think it is a soothing feeling to hear that song, because there is a lot of truth to it. How in the world did I end up here, in Boston, at this exact moment, getting ready to take a constitutional law test? The sheer number of events that had to collude to bring me to this moment is staggering--not just those events that have happened in the past day, month, year, or even 26 years, but generations back. Sometimes I will think about that. I wrote about this a long time ago, in my New Testament class. "If my ancestors could see me now, what would they think?" I always get this image in my head of peasant laborers working some field somewhere in a remote part of China. I have no idea if that is true, as I don't know anything about my family background, but it makes me feel better about where I am in life. That somehow, I am not doing something that my ancestors would be ashamed of. I think I feel this way because this is a world that my ancestors could not have imagined. I'm trying so hard to live up to an ideal that I have built up in my head. This con law class is a small part of this dream, but I have worked really hard to understand this material. I have worked really hard, not because I just want a good grade or because I think it will lead to a better job. But because I don't want to let my ancestors down. There have been too many confluent events that have led me to this exact moment. I look around, and there are another 45 people in this room with the exact same situation. I may not be special in the way that is normally associated with the word, but I am part of a special group. I know this material. I know these cases. 200 years ago, none of them could have imagined that one of their descendants would be sitting in a classroom in Boston, learning about American law, trying to make something out of his life. In 200 years, there will be another descendant, and perhaps she will think back to this moment that I am in. Of course, she won't know of this exact moment. But I hope that she is also striving, working hard, trying to live up to the expectations I have of her. That's all I can ask of her. And that's all anybody can ask of me. 

Reflections on Paper Tigers

New York Magazine published an article yesterday called "Paper Tigers," which discussed the social and cultural barriers Asians face in American society. I have been reflecting on it today, and as I consider it, I grow increasingly puzzled about the state of my own life.

I think it begins with a brief story about high school. On August 27, 2001, I wrote an entry on my blog titled "Doctor, Lawyer, or Engineer. Always the same thing." I don't have access to what I actually wrote, but I do remember that time. It was before my senior year of high school, and I fought nearly every day with my parents about my future. They wanted me to become a respected professional with a stable job. They argued that it was the safest route to financial security, stability, and happiness.

I just wanted to be a writer. To write novels. So I resolved to finish a novel before the end of high school. The plan at the time was to finish a novel, sell it to a publishing house, and prove to my parents that I could find my own path to financial freedom before heading off to college and pursuing something I had no interest in.

Ten years after that moment, I now find myself finishing my first year of law school. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up here. I know that I enjoy it and I feel no regret. But I also know that the 17-year-old me would be disappointed with what has transpired, and I can't figure out why I care about that.

A pretty good philosophy

Something never achieved

"I left them to go to the lavatory, clear embroidered hand-towel, new soap, the bowl a frothy, disinfectant blue, a small bowl of potpourri; I noted and despised it all. On my quiet return I saw that, sitting a little apart, they had stretched their hands across the gap to each other, then, hearing my step, had quickly, almost guiltily drawn apart. That moment of delicacy, tact, perhaps even of pity, produced a second of conflicting emotions, experienced so faintly that they passed almost as soon as I recognized their nature. But I knew that what I had felt was envy and regret, not for something lost but for something never achieved." 

Pacquiao'd

A warning: don't go for a semi-serious run 12 hours after giving blood. Apparently, I'm not Wolverine.

Eating

The more important point here, though, is that the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing. I should add that it appears to me unlikely that many readers of gourmet wish to think hard about it, either, or to be queried about the morality of their eating habits in the pages of a culinary monthly. Since, however, the assigned subject of this article is what it was like to attend the 2003 MLF, and thus to spend several days in the midst of a great mass of Americans all eating lobster, and thus to be more or less impelled to think hard about lobster and the experience of buying and eating lobster, it turns out that there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions.

- David Foster Wallace

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster