do you really not want it, or did you just get rejected?
why you sometimes shouldn't leave before you are left
🎶 Wicked Games (HugLife aka DJ Slink Remix) - The Weeknd​
We've all heard about the school shooting in Uvalde, TX, by now. (If not, here's a primer from the New York Times.) I have nothing large or profound to say about it--just an overwhelming sadness. In my Legal Research & Writing class during 1L, I worked on an appellate brief and oral argument on behalf of my fake clients in a fake negligence case against a fake gun manufacturer that sought to impose fake liability on the gun manufacturer. Back then, I felt so empowered, like maybe if I just wrote the perfect brief with the perfect argument, I could change everything.
I was about to call my former self "naive," but you know what? I don't want to fall into the trap of seeing people around me not change things and consequently call anyone who has hopes of changing things "naive." Reality can always change in an instant, as we've seen. In any event, if your wallet can swing it, consider donating to the victims of Robb Elementary School.
don't confuse rejection with lack of desire.
I recently read a profile on Ke Huy Quan, the actor who played the captivating and multi-dimensional male protagonist in Everything Everywhere All At Once, and one paragraph cut me to the core:
It didn't take [Ke Huy Quan] long to discover that Hollywood roles for Asian men were few and far between. [] Decades passed. Not until Quan saw the success of Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 did he allow himself to think about performing again. "I was happy working behind the camera, but this entire time something felt missing," he says. "When those opportunities dried up, I spent a long time trying to convince myself that I didn't like acting anymore. I didn't want to step away with the feeling that it was because there were no opportunities. I was lying to myself."
Lying to yourself about what you want because you don't see opportunities for yourself. It's a variation on the age-old theme of "leave before you are left," which I think is probably circulating around all of the (bad, imo) dating advice TikTok accounts that are cropping up at an alarming rate. It sounds intuitive and like common sense, but let's examine it more closely.
"Leave before you are left" is, at its essence, a defensive posture. It centers the actions of unidentified third parties, not your own thoughts and desires. This is certainly fine to do sometimes, but I'm always wary of life directives that center other people and not you, the very person who will be living said life. Living your life solely in the spaces that others want you to be in is certainly no way to live.
But how many times have I chosen to do exactly that? Countless times. I got a B+ in my first English class in college and told myself that I didn't really want to pursue writing as a career. A mean girl in high school said that I sucked at singing and ever since then, I tell everyone that I don't like karaoke (even though my friend and I would spend hours singing the same three songs on her karaoke machine in middle school). I didn't know how to interact with pets as a child so committed to not being a "pet person," and now I can't imagine loving my cats any more than I do.
Point is, it is easy to confuse rejection with your own lack of desire, when rejection is a necessary output of pursuing what you desire. You can't succeed if you don't fail. (Or if you did, you weren't aiming high enough.) For most of us, no one is going to make room for us to sit comfortably in the world, and in fact, many are going to jostle and fight us as we try to take our place. Let's not forget that when RBG entered Harvard Law School, the dean asked her and the small group of women law students, "Why are you at Harvard Law School, taking the place of a man?" If she had confused the industry's rejection of her with her own lack of desire to participate, well... I don't even really want to think about that.
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​Can we ever hold gun manufacturers liable for mass shootings? This ABA article is a great overview of why it's tricky to impose liability on gun manufacturers for mass shootings. That being said, the families in Sandy Hook settled with Remington and its four insurers for $73 million earlier this year. Hopefully this is a turning point, legally, and I can tell my 1L self that someone would one day litigate a case that does, in fact, change everything.
​The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial keeps appearing on my FYP. Ngl, I lowkey hate trials that are televised and publicized to this extent. I get that courtrooms are supposed to be public, but I don't think our conception of "public" included the truly scary publicizing powers of the capital-I Internet. Litigating a trial is already intense; litigating the same issues in the court of public opinion simultaneously is way scarier and laden with unintended consequences.
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