New Goals Part One!!!

**Just to forewarn anyone reading this, it is most likely going to be a long winded post... But aren't they always?**


Growing up I was that kid that always knew what/who they wanted to be. If you asked me at any point between the ages of 6 and 19 what I wanted to do when I "grew up", the answer was always that I wanted to be an attorney. As a kid I always had questions about anything and EVERYTHING, I love(d) a good debate, and I have always felt an intense need to stand up for whomever I deemed to be the underdog. I remember the exact moment that I decided that I wanted to be an attorney. As stupid as this is going to sound, it was the first time that I saw the movie A Few Good Men. There is this part in the movie when Lt. Galloway (Demi Moore's character) says this little speech to Lt. Kaffee (Tom Cruise's character) about how being an attorney wasn't about always winning but about standing up, making an argument, and fighting for what is right. That part really stuck in my head and I always had this glamorous idea of what attorneys did.

Then in college I started working for a law firm and I learned that it truth the practice of law was much more about Lt. Kaffee's always win-even-if-you-have-to-plea-bargain version than Galloway's make-an-argument-stand-up-for-what's-right version. Our criminal clients were dirt bags, you know like repeat sex offenders and people on like their 3rd or 4th DUI's. There were many other reasons but I hated almost everything about my job. On the other hand, I loved all of my pre-law classes and I did really well. I loved, and still love, law in theory. What I finally figured out though it that I love law more philosophically than practically. I mean I probably could have gone to law school and made a decent career out of it. I probably could have even been a cut throat shark if I really wanted to. But the thing was, I didn't want to do that. I know that if I gave in to succeed, I would lose part of my soul. No amount of success is worth losing your soul.

It took me a while to really accept that I didn't want to be an attorney. I had this goal for so long that I didn't really know where I ended and my goals started. My family was so supportive of me and they believed in me so much so that I felt if I didn't want to go to law school, I was letting them down. In particular, my dad was probably the one person in my life that never questioned my ambitions. Other people may have told me to pick a more reasonable goal, like perhaps being a nice teacher, but my dad always believed that I could achieve anything that I really wanted to. I don't think it was completely unreasonable to question my goals since I am the first person in my family to graduate from college. Part of the reason that I felt like I was letting them all down was that I didn't know what I wanted to do if I wasn't going to be a lawyer.

I should probably state that my intention all along was to be a human rights attorney. Obviously you are probably asking yourself what would be so wrong with doing that. The answer is that there is nothing wrong with that, and that I would still love to do that. However, the reality is that I am not independently wealthy. In order to go to law school I would need to go much further in debt than I already am from my undergrad education. Unfortunately, human rights law isn't exactly lucrative. This means that I would need to figure out some way of just paying off my loans... soooo I would most likely have to go into some kind of a general practice first. I knew that if I ever let myself get sucked into something like that I would never leave or do any of the things I want to do.

My number one passion in life is probably human rights and social justice. For me these things are connected to my personal faith. I feel like if we were created by God and if God loves all human beings unconditionally, then the least we can do is love our fellow human beings as well. Part of loving your neighbor is making sure that everyone is given the love and respect that they deserve as human beings. I also feel that when you hurt and dehumanize another person, you dehumanize yourself. So in an effort to retain my humanity, I must at least make an attempt to prevent others from being treated cruelly and inhumanly.

O.k. sooo getting on to my new goal/ambition... I have decided that I want to work in the non profit sector with organizations that advocate human rights and social justice. My ultimate goal is to start my own non profit human rights organization. I will write specifics in my next blog because this one is getting really long and taking me fooooorever to write.