Category: General

In today’s thrilling episode of “this is probably a sign of depression”, I pondered, if I lived up to my potential, if I did enough, and if it was enough. And the big thought in my head right now is, could I have been a lawyer?

Background: I have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. I do IT for a living. My high school Grade Point Average was in the 3’s. My college GPA was not. I was in Honors and Advanced Placement classes in High School in Math and Science courses. My English classes were always Regents-level, and Social Studies was only in AP for US History in 11th grade. This is to say, I had enough natural ability in Math and Science to make it in the AP classes without trying, and no natural ability in the others. Even now, I can’t tell if it was due to a lack of trying, or just not understanding what was needed in English and Social Studies to get an A. Regardless, I have known people throughout high school and college that became lawyers, and I know a few lawyers today, and I think I’m as smart as them, so I think the capacity is there, but the will was always lacking.

So after writing all of that down and reflecting on it, maybe it’s good that I’m not a lawyer. From what I understand, practicing law requires a lot of reading and writing, which I was clearly not interested in even when I was in high school. And it’s not even cool and sexy writing either. It’s all… caselaw and citations and arguments. Bleh.

And this maybe isn’t material to my crisis, but while I did grow up in a middle class family, I don’t know if we were “attend law school” rich. It would have required oodles of student loans that would have locked me into a law-related career whether I liked the field or not. And one of the things I’m grateful for today is that I don’t have any student loan debt.

All in all, I picked comfortable routes all my life, and am currently exactly that: comfortable. I’m not saving the world or doing anything a bystander would consider “great”. I go to work, come home, and partake in whatever gaming thing I’m currently interested in, and I try to catch up on a Star Trek series I’ve fallen behind on. And I have a cat who I guess is grateful that I feed her every day, but she’s a cat so who can say how grateful she actually is.

Could I have been a lawyer? Maybe. Would I have liked it? Debatable. Does the world need another lawyer? … probably not.

I’d like to briefly address personal responsibility vs. collective responsibility through an anecdote. 

It’s a windy day today and as I was walking from my car to the deli, there was a shopping cart from a nearby store in the parking lot. The store doesn’t have dedicated corrals on the lot or by the store’s exterior. The cart was free standing, and there were many cars in the lot. Being a windy day, it was only a matter of time before the cart began moving on its own and invariably damage a car. 

Now, this wasn’t my cart. I didn’t shop at the store, I just so happen to be in the shopping center at this time. But with no one else around, no one else could move this cart away from the other cars in the parking lot. I did what I thought was best, and I moved the cart to the sidewalk close to where I was going, and laid the cart down on its side so the wind couldn’t move it. I hope this was out of the way enough where people won’t trip over it. 

So while I didn’t have to move the cart, I did so anyway because it does a collective good to take an action even if you don’t have to. And leaving a place better than you found it is good, even if it doesn’t personally benefit you or even if it inconveniences you. 

Unrelated: California is currently on fire. Climate change is real. 

I dunno. Today is a Sad Day (not for any good reason, just the brain has decided to feel bad today) and I said to myself “is hoping for a better world a naive thought? Is wishing for world peace as juvenile as ‘when I grow up I want to be president’?”

Because in the natural world, there’s conflict. Predators and prey. Things die so other things can live. 

So is thinking that human beings are above that an arrogant thought? What makes us better than that? Is it our opposable thumbs and the ability to do math? Like oh, humans can do all this cool shit like farm crops and make roads and capture the sun’s energy and explore space. We carry around phone-sized computers that allow us to communicate with others all over the planet and we don’t give it a second thought! And yet when it comes down to it, we’re just these dumb creatures that stumbled upon the insight to make tools and use fire. Heck, we industrialized food production to the point where life and death is just part of the process. We cultivate life just to kill it and eat the leftovers. We’ve removed the need for hunting but have not removed the need for killing.

So when I see war and conflict, are we really better than that? Or is that exactly who we are? 

Anyways good afternoon.