--{ a confession }------
from Catcher in the Rye:
Lawyers are all right, I guess--but it doesn't appeal to me . . . . I mean they're all right if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phoney? The trouble is, you wouldn't.
Yeah. How does one know? I am surrounded, always, by people I don't know about. Sometimes I don't even know about myself. How do I know I'm not just looking for that slap on the back, that approval of me as a great lawyer? How do I know I'm not a phoney? That you're not a phoney?
I don't know sometimes. About me, about you, about anyone. I get disillusioned when I see lawyers who originally claimed they were going to work for big firms "just to pay off their school loans" stay long after their loans should have been paid off. I get disillusioned when people who got big public interest law scholarships go off to work for firms that specialize in union-busting. I get disillusioned about how our claims of desiring justice get so easily discarded, by the lure of money and (even more so) prestige.
I do not claim to be immune. While I am not at all money-driven,1 I admit to falling prey to the lure of prestige. Yes, I wanted a chance, and will have the chance, to do good environmental protection work. But my desire to do good was tempered by the draw of a high-prestige job.2 It sucks, but I honestly cannot say that if prestige had not figured a little into my job-search equation, I would have chosen the same job that I did. So. What have I compromised?3 Am I little by little walking down that well-intentioned road?
I have the same concerns with publication. I try to write legal analyses about what I think is good -- better legal methods to achieve environmental protection, environmental justice. I would not commit something to paper otherwise. But is it the thoughts I want express that drive me, or the possibility of getting published, recognized? It is both, I have to confess. I look forward to seeing my words in print, I enjoy being cited immensely. I get excited when there are legal writing competitions revolving around topics on which I have written, because I secretly (or not so secretly, now that I've written it here) hope that they will generate even more citations. These are not the authentic, altruistic desires that I wish were exclusively driving me.
So I confess these things here. I confess them to remind myself that they exist. I confess them to remind myself that I do have selfish desires in my personal mixture of motivations that I should watch out for, that I should restrain. I confess them because I believe that the more aware I am of my inner conflicts, the more I will be able to avoid making ill-outcomed decisions because of them.
All I can do, I guess, is plod on and keep trying.
020801
1. After all, my pleasures are relatively low-cost. I still don't know how to drive, I don't have a deep burning desire to own a home except as a place to put my books, hell, I'm not even a big fan of travelling, in general. And contrary to what readers might think from seeing how much time I spend on the web, I'm not even a big tech purchaser. I don't want a major entertainment system, or so many computer peripherals. Rather, my main non-essential expenditures are on books, CDs, and the occasional food and drink. Oh, and this domain name. This is my virtual house.
2. Sorry, I'm gonna keep the job off this page, so I can rant more freely about the Bush administration in the future.
3. I know what I sacrificed. Fortunately, not level of do-goodedness, because all my options were about the same, really. Not perfect wonderful uncompromised stuff, but still fairly good, in my view. No, what I sacrificed was location and comfort, location and comfort. Sigh.