I am in love. Truly, madly, deeply. It’s true, “when you know, you know”, and I know.
It’s not easy, though, the road to love. It’s given me more headaches than I can count, caused enough tears to end a drought, and kept me up, heartbroken, questioning everything I said and did. It’s not easy, love, but it’s worth it.
The love I’m in will not culminate with a diamond ring or a fancy white dress. I will not send out “save the dates”, there will be no party.
I am, truly, madly, deeply, in love with ambitious pursuits. I am a part of the growing number of women who have chosen to throw their whole selves into their dreams, passions, and pursuits. For me, that means the law. As long as I can remember, my life has been focalized around the pursuit to help people and to fix the world. A precocious child, I proclaimed that I would one day be the first woman president (and, unfortunately, that dream can still live, though I hope someone will beat me). I then discovered the honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg and decided I’d sit on the Supreme Court one day. I grew, I gathered more interests, and assessed my gifts, and, when I was 16, decided I would one day be an entertainment lawyer.
Maybe if I could, I’d let that ambitious 16 year old know that it would be a long road ahead. It’s still a long road ahead. I’d tell her that in 4 years the Law School Admissions Test would be the reason for the bags under her eyes, break her heart, tempt her to quit, but that persisting would be worth it. Persistence, as it turns out, is always worth it. If I could go back, I’d sit in that freshman class with my 18 year old self and hold her hand while a professor told her that she was far too delicate to be a lawyer.
But I’d also let those younger selves know that sometimes love is difficult and complicated.
I am not in love with my future profession or the prospect of it. I am in love with my ambition. When odds were set against me, as I cried on the phone with my parents, as I sketched out a plan B in my mind, with no one to tell me it would get easier, I persisted. There is no reason for that persistence to make sense because love doesn’t make sense.
My story is far from finished, I don’t have all the wisdom that I one day might, but I know what it’s like to look at the fruits of my labor, to open the “yes” envelope, and to see my goals, clearly, in front of me because I know that any resistance, obstacle, along the way is only temporary.
When life becomes difficult, filled with obstacles that beg you to quit, look to what you love. Look to where your heart is called. When you are asked by circumstance or or insecurity or oppression to quit, persist instead. Love instead.
