Originally published in the March 2008 Issue of ThePalladium -- in my column Legal Personality.
As a super-senior, I can't help but reach back into my immediate past to try and draw out a cumulative meaning that will somehow justify this long-overdue end. After years of leafing through thousands of pages of often-incomprehensible text and braving hundreds of hours of humiliation, terror and disappointment, I finally see the finish line in the short distance -- a sight that gets sweeter every day. And just as we were taught always to begin with the end in mind, it's equally important to end reflective of everything that had been.
Roughly a week before I descended into the hell that was Intro to Law, my dad gave me an elegant wooden Ingraham table clock, and on its face was an inscription that read:
One Day at a Time
Help me believe in what I could be, and all that I am.
Show me the stairway I have to climb,
Lord, for my sake, teach me to take one day at a time.
This is a prayer that I see twice every single day: Once when I wake up to prepare for the day and a second time as I wind up my affairs for the night. And it helped. It allowed me to take one piece of the puzzle at a time from the manifold parts of the law and reassemble them inside my head, albeit often with much difficulty. Law school has consistently pushed me against the walls of my own personal limits and I found myself repeatedly tearing them down just to make it through another exam—another semester—another year. I admit I was never as smart as my classmates. But by some grace, my academic destiny is all but complete.
In any case, law school is not just a lengthy exercise in intellectual sadomasochism, but it carries with it gifts of immeasurable value. One such gift is an extension of our youth. Most of us have been attending school our entire lives, and these extra four years give us an excuse to delay growing up. It gives us a chance to keep holding on to our ideals and our innocence up to the last possible moment. Indeed, to the casual outside observer, a law class would appear to be nothing more than a group of older, better-dressed high school students in action. Even our professors encourage this through their comical antics and shameless commentaries while discussing constitutional concepts like Stop-and-Frisk or family case law like Chi Ming Tsoi v. CA. In spite of all the pain involved, law school can be quite amusing. It's one huge carnival –- an attractive nuisance, if you will. Law school teaches us to be critical of all things brought before us, and this philosophy is always attended with humor and wit.
Another gift that law school affords us is the chance to clarify who we truly are. Many of us found ourselves in law school either because we couldn't get work that pays well enough or because we haven't made a career choice just yet. And long before even considering law school, we were writers, activists, artists, musicians, athletes and many other things that have nothing to do with legal education. To some people, law school is a reason enough to abandon these skills and passions for the much-needed additional study time. For others, this is simply unacceptable. These are the same people who join organizations in and outside school to find some semblance of normalcy in their lives—to say that law school is not the be-all and end-all of who I am as a person. We have law students who compete in sports or performance arts locally and internationally. We have writers who have penned brilliant pieces of literature, both outside and inside the legal spectrum. We have students who volunteer with charity organizations to work closely with and for the poor. All these is, to my mind, the Magis that we always keep hearing about: the more—the lingering discontent with the world and the corollary desire to always push it further towards goodness. Our character is built by the things that we pursue with fervor alongside the tests of academic life.
In the end, there are many people to thank: our mentors, our friends and even those who just love giving us a hard time. They all build up our character. I was a legal tabula rasa when I entered the Rockwell campus and I will be leaving it dramatically stronger and wiser than I was then.
Last Christmas, my dad gave me a beautiful silver Breitling wristwatch. I wear it proudly after several years of not having any watch at all and relying on my mobile phone for the time. This time, there were no inscriptions or prayers on its face. But I felt that it was my old man's way of saying "It is time."
End with the beginning in mind.
Dean CLV once said that being in law school is like going to your death. You have to allow your old self to die in the process so that a a new you can rise from the ashes (or something to that effect... exaggerations mine).
With one week of classes to go, I can't help notice that the final traces of the pre-resurrection ashes around me are being wisped away by even the slightest draft.
Five years ago, here stood a man who was ready to enter a lifetime commitment and be a father. That man became broken, bitter and angry because of the loss of those dreams. His jealousy and hatred resonated throughout his little universe but he never said a word. The worst part was that he was already in law school. His grades had suffered a blow he would never recover from as everything was a mess inside him... emotional cancer had struck and there seemed to be no way out of it... and as the demons seemed to take everything from him, he prayed that he would be removed from this cursed place forever... this was not to be...
The heavens opened a window... one that would allow the man to expand his universe slowly so that the cancer would be isolated in the old areas... and so he took it... to escape what he has become with a hope of becoming something totally different. That window was called the Ateneo Human Rights Center... and this would soon become part of the triangle that was his new universe. It was here where he learned that the only way to start becoming whole again was to expel all that negativity. He focused more on what he could do for other people to distract him from the crashing tides inside him. Fortunately, he was never alone in this task. He found kindred souls and fellow lost spirits in the trenches. It was the summer of 2004 and the curing process was terrible and slow... but it it did happen... and because of this, he was not only healed but transformed into something totally different. He would stay for four more years, loving the work and the people involved in it. This was the work that blessed him with a chance to take his first trip to the West and shrink the world in his mind. This also helped him to find the greatest friends he could ever ask for in his life... and a continuing source of people of that same quality and caliber.
And in the process another window opened: The man started writing music once more. After having abandoned a dream for almost eight years, he just picked up his guitar and wrote what he felt. This became the second part of his current universe: Music. On that same summer of 2004, a more experienced musician friend came to Manila and called the man up... said he wanted to hang out. The man obliged and the talk turned into a jamming session after the man told his musician-friend about some material he was working on. In a single evening, the veteran and the rookie were able to record two songs of amazing quality on a beat-up PC. The rest is history, the band Sundown Caffeine would be born a few months later at a psuedo-Mexican bar in his hometown of Cebu City and the music would go on to be not just a source of amusement, but a viable career path for the two (not so) young men.
So what's the third part of the triangle?
It's family. The past, the existing and the future. The beginning and end of all that we do and all that we work for. This is a point in time when such an elusive dream has to be cast aside, at least partially. You want your own family and your own home but you have to get there first... and though you keep repeating the words to yourself that "there's no rush"... you realize deep inside that you wont be in this waking world much longer and that your present family will probably outlive you by several years. Perhaps you've accepted that you end up dead without ever knowing that sensation. Perhaps living vicariously through your brothers and sisters will do the trick. In any case, this leg will have to be set aside...
I've been walking on two legs for years... why should it be a problem now?
A few days more and I will face my final recitation, my final classroom session, my final hours of detention in the necessary evil that is the formal education system.
CLV was right. My death is almost complete. Entering law school was perhaps the best mistake I ever made in my life. And if could talk to the me five years ago, I'd tell him to brave it out... because things are really going to be alright.
_____
And so it's time.
I walk out that door with no regrets... only honest mistakes.
And I will walk with two legs for now, if only to carry a steeled heart.
My death is almost complete.
