The Hustle

About a year ago, I started to think seriously about law school. After long conversations with mentors and family, I decided that it was the right path for me: an education in law would give me a toolset that would allow me to actively be part of building a better world. Naturally, I began to think how exactly this path would express itself and realized that I had a opportunity to go to a top law school. During undergrad, I took my studies seriously and had a competitive GPA to prove it. (The fact that I generally enjoyed studying international relations was also a huge boon.) In the world of law school admissions, GPA and LSAT reign supreme. There is certainly some nuance to this statement, but, for the sake of understanding, it’s useful to buy into the model. As a result, if I were to net a competitive LSAT score, then I could find myself at one of the elite law schools in the country and with an excellent springboard for finding meaningful work. That is, after all, why I was going.

I didn’t really take the SAT seriously when I was a junior in high school. If I remember correctly, on the day of the test I arrived at the center an hour early and looked through the math section of one of the many prep books jammed in the trunk of my car under a heap of soccer bags. I (remarkably) ended up getting a decent score and was admitted to Carnegie Mellon as a result. Despite attending a university of privilege, occasionally “what if” scenarios played in the back of my mind. What if I had done really well on the SAT? How might things be different? I always brushed away these scenarios. Regret truly is a useless emotion.

When I began to study for the LSAT, though, I was committed: the occasional regret of the past was channeled into the possibility of the future. I did everything I could to give myself the best shot at a good score. I completed an online course. I paid attention to sleep, exercise, and diet. I took practice tests in the center where the real one would be administered. I consistently meditated to hone my capacity to focus. Anything to pick up a point or two was fair game because when the dividing line between an LSAT score that opens doors and leaves you in the cold is razor-thin, every one counts.

After a nervous first take, I knew I could do better and geared up for a retake. More practice tests. More hair-splitting over what makes one answer right and one wrong. More simulated test environments. On the retake, the nerves were crowded out by sheer determination and I netted a very competitive score to match my GPA. Needless to say, I was really excited at my prospects at getting into the likes of Yale, Harvard, and Stanford. These three law schools are somewhat fabled to be in a league of their own and I thought I might just find myself at one of them.

It was in this moment that the primary motivation for applying to law school - finding a way to meaningfully engage with the world - found a creeping competitor in the background: the prospect of prestige. Carnegie Mellon is a fantastic school and I am incredibly grateful that I had a chance to grow with my peers at such a dynamic place. Still, the idea of going to law school at “prestigious” institutions like Yale, Harvard, or Stanford - now a distinct possibility - became incredibly alluring. I sent in my applications, confident that I was going to be accepted to at least one of the three top schools.

Good news rolled in pretty quickly. I was accepted at NYU, Berkeley, Penn, Columbia and finally Chicago: all incredible institutions that would offer me a world-class legal education. Despite all of this good news, I was still waiting to hear back from the top three. Then, in quick succession, I was rejected by Yale and waitlisted at Harvard and Stanford. Admittedly, I was a little surprised. Yes, these are the best law schools in the country; of course cracking their admissions would be a challenging venture. Despite this acknowledgment, the string of non-acceptances stung. The allure of the prestige had creeped beyond the secondary, not quite to the primary, but enough to injure my pride.

It was in this headspace where I stumbled upon a time-worn truth: the world requires us to hustle indefatigably. I had learned this lesson well growing up on the soccer field. Talk is cheap; hustle is paramount. Your opponents might be on a better team, wear the best boots, or have complicated plays up their sleeves, but if they don’t hustle, it’s all for nothing. When an underdog team hustles, an upset can take both teams by surprise. There’s a reason why sports metaphors are so powerful: they’re almost always true. The hustle creates results that matter. Nothing else. Not prestige, not money, not fame, the traps that we fall for along the way, attracted by the false promise they each offer. When the rubber meets the road, it’s just the hustle that counts. The hustle for a healthy family and for a community in a time of confusing connection and disconnection. The hustle for meaningful work. The hustle for a more just world, for tomorrow.

Note: this next paragraph was written a few weeks ago but I wanted to include it as a promise to myself:

I had forgotten that the hustle was what it was all about. That’s why I was going to law school. I had been blinded by the temporary brightness of prestige, a projection of meaningless status. With my senses firmly regained, I began to think through what the future might have in store. Of my available options, NYU is best suited for the hustle. I have no passion for any iteration of corporate law and NYU has arguably some of the best institutional support for its public interest students in the country. So, I turned down better “ranked” schools (Chicago and Columbia) for the real chance to hustle at NYU. There is still a non-zero chance that I end up at Harvard or Stanford, accepted off a waitlist, but I won’t lose what I have gained in the process. I would do myself a favor if I only learn this lesson once.

That non-zero chance was realized: I was accepted off Stanford’s waitlist. With the mentality gained through the process, I was able to weigh my two options objectively. Stanford will, without a doubt, advance all of the goals that I care about and I am positive that I am starting law school with clear eyes and a full heart.

Welcome to the hustle, Daniel. Don’t forget it.

The Bend

This past week, I visited the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights) in Santiago. The museum is a way for Chile to remember the atrocities of the Pinochet era and the story of how the country fought back. I spent hours meandering through the space learning about Chile’s recent past.

I went with a recently-made friend from Chile. Afterwards, she asked me what I thought having visited the museum. I think that when confronted with great tragedy, there is the chance that our reaction to its evil and pain leaves us with a dark opinion of humanity. This pessimistic view is understandable as it is tough for optimism to endure when you encounter stories of murder, torture, rape, censorship, terror, and despair.

Given that, something about this picture is incomplete. It’s lacking our response to tragedy. One floor of the museum contained sobering stories of torture and oppression, but the next floor told the story of the awakening of Chilean resistance and the campaign to remove Pinochet.

The floor detailing the response to the horror of Pinochet was what I kept coming back to after the visit. At the beginning of the museum, there was footage of La Moneda (the presidential palace) under siege at the start of the coup, at once both a literal and symbolic destruction of the rule of law. I listened to President Allende’s final speech to the Chilean people; you could hear the world crumbling outside. His resolute protest was eerily profound and prophetic. When I made it to the floor about the revolution, it felt like Allende’s words had been laying dormant for all those years, waiting to capture the hearts and minds of an oppressed people. It was so powerful.

Our response to tragedy is what defines us. It is not the dictators and their institutions of fear. It is not the genocides and their senseless violence. It is not the terror of an unsafe world. It is our decision to speak truth to power, to engage in the brutal struggle for a better world. That’s what I came out with after walking through the museum. As Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I love that idea. Yes, we stumble, heavy and often. One doesn’t have to look far to see how much more we have to go. But, we will, slowly but surely, play a part in that great bending. If there’s anything I know, it’s that. If there’s anything we must believe in, it’s that: the dogged, relentless response of the human spirit.

Cafés y Parques

Cafés and parks. That’s all you need to make me love a city. In my humble opinion, these two types of locale represent almost unlimited human potential. Let me explain.

Cafés are meeting places. They are temporary (sometimes, permanent) workspaces. In a café, a couple could be sharing their first moment or their hundredth. A group could be plotting the next bold move in their brand-new joint venture. A lone thinker could be crafting the next chapter of the next great novel. Every café in every moment is a unique expression of its passengers; every ride is different. Beyond their bubbling movement, cafés can be a place of pause and escape. A pause on the increasingly accelerating pace of life. An escape from the cold or a bad day. Cafés can be holes in the wall or grand spaces. They can be bustling or quiet. The whole range of human experience and emotion can take place in one café. And I haven’t even mentioned the best part: this dynamic place has coffee. Coffee, the midnight oil’s partner in crime; the early bird’s jet pack. (Sorry, tea lovers: I’m a fan as well but coffee is in its own league. Coffee has over 1,500 aromatic and flavor compounds, making it an incredibly complex and rich beverage.)

Parks, too, have this interesting duality of action and pause. They are places where you can run, stroll, sit, and nap. One person trains for a marathon; the other sits down for meditation. A group of college kids sprawl lazily on the warm grass and under the giving shade of trees while a man in a crisis works through his problems (Solvitur ambulando: it is solved by walking). A couple with years of experience smile generously and quietly on a bench as a curious toddler plows through a new landscape. They are all here, contributing to this changing, pulsating energy of life. They are here, thinking, laughing, learning, and loving.

Between a park and a café, I can spend hours, days. I can write, share conversations, walk and think, people watch, people listen, and breathe fresh air. Parks and cafés are like showers for my soul: I exit their embraces feeling rejuvenated and ready for what’s next.

It’s no surprise, then, that cities that have a distinct culture and emphasis on cafés and parks feel like home to me. It’s almost as if it’s an expression of a culture that says, “Hey! The things that happen in these places are important!”. San Francisco and New York City in the US come to mind. In Santiago, I felt that culture, too. This isn’t to say that the things that happen in cafés and parks can’t happen in restaurants, or bars, or in community centers. They certainly can! It’s just I think cafés and parks are unique places of energy and people.

Not surprisingly, I composed this love letter in a café and on a park bench. On that note, I have a very important cup of coffee and stroll to attend to.

Tabula Rasa

I’ve been thinking way too much about the nature of our interaction with technology and the Internet for the past year or so. (Writers like Patrick Rhone, James Shelley, Leo Babauta, Shawn Blanc and Nick Wynja have long been populating my reading queue and contributed to this ongoing introspection.) While this is undoubtably a feat of navel-grazing and nothing groundbreaking can come from it, I thought I would share where I came out of all the thinking.

I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the way that I’ve been engaging with the online world and my relationship with it. It’s one fraught with addiction, best exemplified by the reflexive keystrokes and thumb movements to reach social media and email. Often, but not always, it’s a relationship devoid of value. The latest viral video or pictures of my friends’ meals aren’t moving me towards anything meaningful. I can’t have those minutes back. Worse, these minutes are entrenching the addiction. Dopamine is a powerful drug.

Beyond the addiction, there is the feeling of permanent vulrenability. When something is put up on the Internet, it’s there forever. Our digital selves have a life of their own. You can try to delete, to erase, but that’s like trying to pull light back out of a black hole. I still have vague aspirations for a life that might put me in the public eye and the permanence of the Internet is a bit paralyzing. Even without those aspirations, the deterrence is real. Maybe don’t post that picture, that link, that status, that blog post, lest you be judged for eternity. Maybe it’s best you stay silent.

Then, there are these mounting concerns regarding privacy. If you’re not paying for something, you are the product, so the story goes. Do I really want to be part of a massive data mining operation that is geared towards feeding the future of advertising? How does an industry focused on creating space for revenue impact the end user experience? Do I trust these companies with all this information about me? These questions only scratch the surface of the plethora of concerns surrounding emergent tech.

My initial reaction to my relationship with the online world was to break it off. I embraced the philosophy of disconnection and deactivation. I wanted to become sober, to beat the addiction. I wanted to keep my identity constructed by interactions I understood: my actions and words. I was looking for a modern day Walden. Facebook was deactivated; email was delegated to strict timetables; other social media was curtailed. I was approaching zen, I thought. Look at these pitiful addicts, trapped on their hamster wheels of cheap thrills, pawns in a large corporate game, I mused haughtily.

While I am certain there is value in all this disconnection, there is only so much time I can spend in the woods. Thoreau did, after all, return from his faux-isolation at Walden Pond. I, too, returned from the woods, but, unlike Thoreau, I didn’t come back with any new ideas. I had no guide with which to navigate society. Old habits and fears came flooding back in again.

Then, like a gift, I began to travel. It was a welcomed caesura in all the madness. My bad habits were overwhelmed by the constant assault of new experience. When you’re in a new landscape in a foreign land, your inboxes can wait patiently. Sometimes, circumstance dictates that your inboxes have to wait (maybe you hike through the mountains to Machu Picchu).

In this space of pause, I was able to gain a little perspective. I began to write a whole lot more. (Travel tends to do that to me.) I liked this different me: more confident, more expressive, more reflective. Every day had a tangible feeling of value to it. I was traveling alone and every new person became a chance to authentically relate my identity with confidence and passion. When I could “connect” I was excited to do so. I just had so much to share!

It seems to be a theme so far in this journey, but I really want to hold onto the relationship with the online world crafted in the furnace of travel. So, starting today, I’m going to begin anew. My manifesto: tabula rasa. For all I know, the internet didn’t exist before now.

What does that mean?

It means that I have a chance to build the relationship I want. The world is not returning to more simple times, to some fabled analog past of pure, meaningful interaction. If anything, it’s hurtling in the opposite direction. We must do the work of sorting out what it means to find quality in a digital world.

The more shit we create, the harder it is to find the good stuff. I can’t with a clear conscience contribute to the noise; I have to help light the signal. I want to be quality-obsessed: if I’m not creating or interacting with value, it’s going to be cut. I must dare to be brilliant and fail often in that endeavor. I must craft my own identity with care and every time I come to the table is a chance to shape it. Judgements be damned! I’d rather my voice be heard in its imperfection than it become lost in disuse. To disengage is not the answer.

That doesn’t mean the ideas of mindfulness and disconnection go out the window, either. I must build in those caesuras. In a world that demands constant connection, a pause can be good for us. It can pull us back and help us commit anew to the pursuit of quality tomorrow. But a pause cannot be permanent. The work of missing hands will, if absent too long, be replaced by the unsavory. Just like outside of the confines of the Internet, I must build the world I want.

Practically, this means that I might share more (links, thoughts, writing). Or maybe less. It means I have a firm grasp of what I’m looking for online and a way to weigh the pros and cons of a service. Maybe it means I ditch Facebook or give Twitter another try. I don’t know. I will sort it out. But I will mindfully work through that process with a blank slate behind me and vision of a future focused on quality ahead.

This is mostly for me, but maybe it resonates with you. If it does, join me! Let’s start a new movement and take back our relationship with the connected world. The tabula rasa Internet is waiting.