After this, then what? I've been so busy trying to scale this mountain that it's easy to push the thought of the other side away. I can readily justify putting it off, so much is required today-for the next step, the next hours. I'll take the bar exam next week, and then wait four months for the results- a sort of limbo.
I was talking with my friend last evening, and we happened on to the topic of life after the Bar. When you are 21 or 25, it's perhaps acceptable to take a sabbatical from grown up life. But I've been either Mom or wage-earner so long that the thought feels illicit, foolish and a little frightening.
Yet why? This time in front of me is a rare gift, it will pass so quickly, and will never come again. Perhaps I'll have such time if/when I retire but that is a long way off, and my ability to go on far adventures at that point is, at best, uncertain. I feel slightly embarrassed, as though I must explain myself, but I wish I did not feel so.
This trip I'm planning is in accord with who I am, my view of life, with my priorities. I do not wish to play it safe and end with regret for not having tried. If I were that person, I'd never have gone to law school in the first place. I sometimes wish that adulthood did not also mean the end of unmitigated joy. And yet that very characteristic is part of what makes intermittent joy so precious.
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