Disappointment tastes like ash
When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade. What do you do when life throws you a left hook, followed by a hard right, and finished with a haymaker? Because that's the question I'm contemplating now.My teammate J and I mutually decided to resign from the Thomas Tang Moot Court Competition. We had been working intensively on our brief the majority of our waking hours for the last 2 weeks and were supposed to have serviced the brief on our opponents today. We had sacrificed our other responsibilities to make this work, but we came up short. I just fired off an email to our opponents (who were very gracious by the way) informing them of our withdrawal. Defeat looms large in the face of the fallen.
Yes, this small setback seems insignificant next to the larger devastation left by Katrina. People who lost everything, including their family members, homes, personal effects- their entire life- and here I am writing on my blog about my little disappointments. And I was humbled when I heard last night that one of my non-law-school acquaintances was diagnosed with cancer. Wow. Hearing that is enough to put nearly anyone's problems into perspective.
Of course, one shouldn't dismiss the core validity of one's own problems simply because one's problems aren't as large as someone else's. But at the sametime, I think there's room for empathy, compassion, love, and service at the same time as one's own feelings of disappointment, and yes, failure. Just spend less time looking at your own problems and more time helping others with theirs.
Eh, I'm starting to ramble from sleep deprivation. I guess I'll see you next year, Tom.
posted by Unknown @ 10:35:00 AM
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