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LUCIEN LETTERS
Dear Lucien,
Just finished my third final paper, quite exhausted, and am now down to the last three. Finals season in law school is such an odd thing. Some people end up exhibiting signs of the 'either-or' syndrome, thinking that passing (or doing well) or flunking are the only two possible outcomes from this whole exercise. In my case, it's been more of a retreat towards oneself and mastering the art of 'compartmentalizing', or boxing up all my emotions into neat, tight compartments so as not to get too frayed.... *wry smile*
I know exams are a common affliction for any university student, particularly post-grads. Imagine the agitation law students feel, constantly harangued with daily recitations, cases, exams....and then, the Sword of Damocles that is the BAR EXAM. I smile quietly sometimes, when I see the panicking freshmen going through their first law exams, juxtaposed with the relatively calm, astute upperclassmen, thinking, "no one has an idea what we go through."
Sometimes though, I can't help but feel in the thick of all this personal wrangling, we're getting too short-sighted. Missing the point. A university education is vital in enabling us to find our niche in the world, in the work that fully satisfies us. But that's as far as it goes. It doesn't teach us how to live.
How will we fare once we leave...in the tests of life that don't have objective benchmarks for success? The last thing I want to become is to substitute ephemeral things like money or fame as that standard of success. But I DO want some measure that tells me what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong, one that tells me I've justified all these years of work with REAL work that makes a difference somehow. Yes, I KNOW that's such a typically-idealistic-twentysomething-thing to say, but I can't state it in any other terms. Knowing that I add 'value' to the world, no matter how 'small' or 'large' in others' books, is as objective a standard as I can adhere to.
You asked me once, what I would choose if I COULD choose the life I would lead. I told you it was to live a quiet life, mostly solitary, far away from the world hidden in the recesses of a countryside, with all the books I've always wanted to read, my violin, to write all the things I've always longed to capture with words. But I never told you why.
If I could spend a life like that, it would mean that there is so much peace and equanimity in the world that it would not demand that I contribute to making that 'difference'. It would not ask of me the fruits of my hard work, nor would it seek compassion in my efforts. A life spent in that much solitude is a complete retreat unto oneself, the ultimate indulgence to the soul. Such 'self-ishness' can only be justified by the absence of need for 'self-lessness'. It is a dream, Lucien, because such blessed harmony among men would mean my freedom and theirs.
But life is a struggle. And my dream remains compartmentalized into my attic of the unrealized and yearned.
Fide.
Angel Fidelis