Blog Your Way to Sanity, If You Dare...

Another day with the blogging - I like the instant nostalgia factor of it for sure. Other than that, I think I’m still a bit undecided...

One of the benefits (and trust me when I say it is only one of many - another might be that I have time to do this blog post...) of working mainly from home is that I can watch tv while I work. For someone like me, who enjoys the companion factor of television more than the actual content, this is heavenly. It can be lonely at times, but mostly it is just awesome.

Right now, however, it is surprisingly more than just a companion - and I don’t even know if I would call it awesome. Flipping around for some comfort food version of television, I have discovered "To Kill a Mockingbird" is playing on a Cinemax and it is right at the tumkultuous trial scene, with Mr. Ewell’s ignorant outburst and May Ellen’s screaming and Atticus’ thoughtful treatment of Tom Robinson. It has reminded me of the first time I saw this movie, sitting in my parents’ living room with my mom (who gets the credit for introducing me to both heartfelt legal drama and the glorious Gregory Peck) transfixed by all the inter-weaving relationships and poweful social commentary. It is now one of my favorite movies of all time and a classic connection between my sister and me and my parents.

But it is more than that, too. I would love to credit Atticus Finch with my becoming a lawyer, with my deeply-engrained desire to fight injustice and stand up for those upon whom the system has tread heavily. I wish I could pinpoint that first viewing of the movie with my first idealistic thought of defending my own wrongly-accused criminal defendant - but it would be a "creative reimagining" of the past if I did. It is only after enrolling in law school that I began to envision a day when I could channel such brilliance into my own career.

But, that idea to work fervently for justice has been outed as its own sort of "creative reimagining" - of reality. It is hard on me to be a cog in the wheel of injustice our legal system spins. I know people do it all the time. I guess I did it myself. I felt sufficiently guilty about it - guilty enough, I suppose, that I am struggling every day to remove myself from it if at all possible.

But then, watching Atticus Finch stand so firmly and unmovingly on his convictions, suspecting that even he had a pain in his heart but soldiered on to fight for what is right, I feel a heaviness - a sad feeling for this world and for those people I so wanted to help and for myself, for wanting to quit so easily and so quickly into my legal foray.

It is this internal conflict, that most dramatic of literary themes, that causes the heaviness in my chest. I want to make the right decisions and fight the "good fight" but I don’t know if I am strong enough to take it.

Then again, did Atticus himself know? Did he go home and, while sitting on that porch swing after Scout and Jem were asleep, doubt his motives and whether he was actually making a difference? Maybe he did. Maybe everyone does. Maybe I would do better to just start working forward, standing on my convictions, rather than trying to take the easy way out.

Maybe so...