Let the Last Wisps of Idealism Wither by the Banks of Lake Poso

**This was a 'Reflective Journal' assignment, where we were also supposed to make our definition of true success.**

(*DISCLAIMER: I don't know anything yet for my definition of True Success. The following, and most of my current personal/professional focus, is to find out what it is.*)

        

“3,000 families own Indonesia.” I decided on my way out to try a little of one of my old favorite skills –sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong, on behalf of others. I used to be good at it. Senegalese officials, perhaps because I guaranteed them a good laugh, never said no when I showed up at their offices demanding they answer my questions or pay attention to my tiny village hundreds of miles away.  I think one of my proudest moments was, after riding across half the country in the bleaching sun on dusty red roads on a broke-down motorbike (we found out after –the bike was not meant for two –my weight on the back led to approximately 10 flat tires, among other problems), my village counterpart and I showed up in the doorway of the Minister of Education. “My village wants to build a middle school.” I announced in my staged haughty-American way. The Minister, although not promising us a school at that moment (mission –failed) did take the time to explain to Laity Baidjan, my counterpart, wide-eyed and speechless, the exact process my village needed to take to apply for a school. Believe it or not, we had to come all the way to the Minister of Education to get a straight answer. Still, it felt so strange sitting there in our patchwork fancy clothes that smelled of sweat and were a tinge more orange then they were originally. But it was also an intensely proud moment –my shamelessness had made the Minister of Education take time, while a line of others waited outside his door, to address Laity as a person, to recognize the needs of the village I had lived in.

This seems to be a non-transferable skill. Or at least, one that doesn’t work in Indonesia. Of course, my appointments were a bit different than they were in Senegal. I had made use of an old contact to connect with some ex-pat lawyers and business people in Jakarta. So none of them were Indonesian. Well, one was half. But still, Indonesia has a way of carrying out all its daily activities while the government officials remain shrouded in mystery. It’s true –I hadn’t heard it put into a number –but a small number of Indonesian families –the Jakarta elite –control not only the capital but everything else in the country. I had two fundamental questions for my contacts in Jakarta –“Is there any order underlying the chaos of the legal system?”, and, “What advice should I give to the people in Peura?” My first contact answered the two questions in one –“Just stay out of the court system. Once you get it in the courts, you lost.”

I was speaking to the country head of a certain well-known multinational business (that may or not have had a large hand in the global financial crisis.) After he made this statement, both him and the company’s senior consultant began showering me with stories of how they had dealt with clients who had managed to get them into the court system. They were both a bit giddy –one thing about ex-pats that I rely on is they are never reluctant to submerge visitors into the sea of their daily experience. They perhaps get tired of recycling the same stories to a small group of people, who are having similar experiences themselves, and who won’t laugh in the same way at the irony. So I found myself addressing this figure –who I had previously only known through uber-formal and respectful emails that had to be edited 10,000 times before my boss would press send –in the only way I knew how. I have a problem socializing with business people –especially the higher they get up the food chain. I am a naturally crude person, I spent the first 17 years of my life in a box (and so lack a lot of cultural/social knowledge), I don’t know anything about business, except quips I have picked up from the “other side” (i.e. –business is the devil.) So I can either sit there silently and politely –my chosen strategy for the two years I worked at my last job –or, if I was forced to have a personality, I would swallow a giant lump in my throat, try not to pay attention to my instantly overactive sweat glands, and open the floodgates to the channel of my brain.

“So…basically your business is just a bunch of glorified bargaining?” I asked hesitantly, but with confidence. Phew –they laughed as if that was the right thing to say. But then I couldn’t help myself –I kept on going. “How do you do it?” (solemn stares), “I mean, you guys are like warriors,” (hearty laughter), “How do you live in a world where everything is suspended? Where there’s no solid ground?” I felt as if I was being too invasive, too informal, but mostly, too depressing. Mr. B’s eyes fell out of contact as he explained, “Well, here, there are no rules. So it works both ways. You can go outside, and cross the street whenever and wherever you want, and people will make room for you.” He was really focused on the crossing the street aspect, but also vaguely referred to Indonesia as a communal society whereas in the West you can wither by the wayside and no one will notice or come to help. I found out later that Mr. B came from South Africa (in another mortifying moment –I guessed that he was Australian), and his family had apparently had a rough go of it. So to him, Indonesia perhaps was more ordered, less chaotic. And perhaps the tint of darkness that I couldn’t help but notice in every interaction didn’t even register on his radar. Now I feel bad that I asked him those questions.

But as far as self-reflection on this experience, I think perhaps what could have saved me from making a hard-working, well respected executive feel bad about his life decisions would have been an earlier realization about what type of person I am. I left that meeting feeling like “What’s wrong with me? Why am I so focused on the negative? Why am I not able to focus on the beautiful things about this country?” But then I thought of the many conversations I had with fellow law students before I left, and will probably continue to have when I get back. To them, working in Indonesia sounds exotic and strange –I get any number of reactions along the lines of “Wow, that is so interesting/exciting,” “It’s such a great thing that you’re doing,” “What a great experience!” But many of these people would never consider basing their life in Indonesia. So perhaps I am somewhere in the middle. But, my worst fear is that perhaps I have just been on the wrong track.

I don’t want to reflect too much on my actual experience this summer, since I did enough of that in the blogs and on the discussion board. I also hesitate to reorient my life based on what is, of course, a unique experience. But I am a bit of a handmaiden to fate, and I came here this summer to answer certain questions. So not only can I not help but interpret my experiences in order to answer these questions, but I have some faith that my experiences were the universe’s way of unfolding the next leg of my journey. Is this the proper way of looking at law school? It is how I have interpreted my life so far, and so either I allow law school to change me or I just try to apply my unconventional way of thinking to this experience I voluntarily engaged in despite the best advice of my trusted circle.

Perhaps in hindsight I will remember the good more clearly, and will be enticed to return. But right now, I kind of dread going back to school and facing the inevitable question –“Oh my God, was Indonesia so awesome?” Because the biggest impression that stands out in my mind right now is how pervasively frustrating it was to deal with the dark and mysterious nature of a people raised in a conflict and post-conflict society. Of a people bred on various shades of colonialism. Of a people in a society that it would take me a lifetime to understand. This is paired with the reality that –faced with this situation in the community –much of my summer was spent face to face with my computer, reading about perhaps even more depressing realities (conflict, domestic violence, a disastrous and corrupt legal system).

There are many questions that run along side this major one (i.e., maybe I feel this way because I wasn’t working in the right place, with the right people, with the right support, etc.) –but after this summer I have to ask myself  -“Is this the right place for me?” Yes, this question is very similar to the one I was asking at the beginning of the summer -“Is a job like this the best fit for my skills and interests?,” - but it is different in a number of ways. First of all, I don’t think I should hold myself responsible anymore for really meaning “Westerners” in the place of “me.” No matter what my conclusion on that question, which probably will take me a lifetime to answer, I don’t have to feel like answering it is the only way I can move forward in my career. The reality of this way of thinking is playing itself out right now –I am 29 and have yet to find direction. I can’t wait until I figure out the answer to this question to move forward –or else I never will. So, perhaps Mr. B and others are able to work in Indonesia, I no longer need to try to fit this into my framework of understanding my place in the world. I no longer have to reflect on their answers as they apply to my life. I essentially didn’t need to ask them the questions I did, because, in order to keep things simple and professional, I can simply tell myself that these people are different from me. Let them answer the bigger questions on their own, and me on my own, but we don’t need to answer them together. We don’t need to decide if Westerners belong in Indonesia in order for me to chose my career path. I only have to decide if I belong there. Even if my skills and interests match up, I personally have to be happy in a place or I am not going to do anyone any good. Although I have raged against this conclusion formerly, living the experience of being in a place where I am not happy has shown me that no matter how I try to perfect my ideals, I am in the end human, and can only work to my full capacity when I am happy. So, for the sake of the work I want to do for the world, I need to be “enlightendly selfish.”

So first, I have changed the question. But second, I have at least a loose answer to my original question. Or, I have suspended it. Perhaps later in life, a turn will happen that will allow me to reconsider. People have advised me that it would be a tragedy to answer this question so definitively based on my experience this summer. But, my experience this summer has fit in nicely with my previous experience, and since I was asking the question, I feel that I have to accept the answer at this point and proceed accordingly. No. This is not the right place for my skills and interests. Let’s say I put 100% effort into my externship this summer. 10% of it, at least, unfortunately, was spent dealing with the online portion of this class, although half of that was me overdoing it with my blogs and discussion boards, so it was a bit of a personal decision to reflect and keep myself sane. So who knows if I would have spent that time in some other way (i.e writing on my own or processing with others) but at least 10% of my energy was not applied directly to the work I was doing. I think, in the future, if I was doing a similar externship, I wouldn’t want to spend that much of my time disengaged.

I would say another 40% of my energy was spent dealing with interpersonal conflicts/politics. This is the part that is most significant for me. Granted, in any job, a vast amount of your energy will probably be spent dealing with “people problems.” But as I tried to explain to my co-workers this summer, if you are working within your own culture, either this entire 40% is applied directly to dealing with the interpersonal problem, or perhaps you would spend less than 40% of your energy on it. This summer, I felt like everywhere I turned I dealt with pervasive people problems, but I was often at a loss to interpret them or to do anything about it. Language barriers, cultural barriers, as well as the fact that 2 months is too short to get to know any person well enough to be able to effectively manage their personality (this would happen anywhere but is compounded by language and cultural barriers abroad) meant I spent most of my time spinning my wheels, asking questions, or too scared to act.

Additionally, my ethics regarding the level of Western influence over developing countries has gone through a series of progressions. Lets just start with colonization/missionaries: not a good idea. Then we moved into the IMF/World Bank strict “get your act together” policies: also didn’t work. Then we moved more into a development model –Western organizations working in developing countries, somewhat side-by-side, but assessing the situation from a Western viewpoint and prescribing the right “path” towards development. I think I stepped in somewhere at this point in the development-development timeline. But my time in the Peace Corps showed me that prescriptions from Westerners/outsiders, or even the national government (most of which had never actually been to the places they were making the prescriptions for) was the entirely wrong model. The only thing that would work is a grassroots-initiated initiative. Around this time I decided to go to law school. I understood the only proper place for myself was as an advocate. The community would tell me what they wanted to do, and I would use my Westernity (comprising education, opportunity, connections, etc.) to help them do it.

I set out this summer with this model in mind. However, there are two roadblocks. One is, its never that simple. People come to me with lots of different ideas, helping them achieve all of them is not possible. I can’t help but give them advice on which are the most feasible, not only for practicalities sake, but because I am a person operating from my own experiences and some ideas sound better than others, some ideas sound damn near impossible. But similarly, as an educated and somewhat experienced individual, I can’t help but exert at least a tiny bit of influence over the direction people are taking. And, even providing this service I think in the end inhibits people. The Poso conflict ended 8 years ago, yet I got the sense this summer that people are just sitting there waiting for NGOs to come in and help them recover and reconstruct their society. This is the typical result that demonstrates the failure of development models: dependency theory. If there are always outsiders in there trying to commandeer the solution to the problem, people never develop their own initiative. The intense initiative that’s needed for revolutionary change.

Take the Indonesian legal system. It is VASTLY fucked up (please pardon my language, but there is no other way to express how bad it is.) Legal inflation, corruption, the underlying problem of either making a unified legal system for thousands of different peoples, or finding some way to string together a multitude of systems, fitting the customary and formal legal systems together. Many suggest a complete overhaul –and I, with my limited knowledge, frustrated with the inability to go forward because the legal system is perhaps simply un-understandable, can’t help but agree at this point. If legal reform isn’t hard enough, Indonesia also needs to convince its officials to buy into it: to apply the laws, to enforce them, to not be corrupt. I can’t see where my place could be in this sea of disaster. Perhaps I could sit beside the judges and encourage them not to be corrupt, but I think this needs to come from Indonesian’s themselves. Perhaps I could advise lawmakers about how to make the system work, but it seems like those with the best knowledge of this would be Indonesians. The time it would take an outsider to gather the information about all the different cultures, legal history, current legal operation, etc. would be in a sense reinventing the wheel. Indonesia’s legal problems are so unique it would be difficult for an outsider to apply their knowledge to the Indonesian situation. In fact, it might end up leading right back to the original trap: ideas prescribed from outside are not only vulnerable to not being the right fit, but deprive the Indonesian people from the intense national debate that needs to happen to decide, together, what is best for them. Thinking back to the legal debates we learned about in our Constitutional Law class, the intricate detail that was debated, fiercely, by our founding legal scholars, it seems crazy that a country would be formed without this process. Marshall, Adams, etc. –their entire lives were dedicated to whatever relatively tiny legal cause was currently on the table. I don’t think the concept of personal and professional separation existed for them. That is a luxury we are now able to enjoy. But I am thinking about how in all the capstone cases that decided relatively minute details of what the word “commerce” means, and how the various lawyers would have to get on horseback and ride out to discuss the meanings up for debate with their constituents. How many years did this process go on for? Our country, as a group, decided, over a long period of time, every concept that exists in our founding laws. People died over it. People gave up their entire lives for it. The thing that always comes through for me reading about that time was people’s dedication. But they were coming relatively freshly off the heels of persecution, they had already risked their lives to travel across the ocean into the unknown in hopes of a better life. (Sometimes I wonder if the way our country was founded makes it the only possible place for a functional democracy.) I think it is that process that makes people committed to their laws. And I think outsider influence in developing countries hampers people from riling up the dedication that is needed for them to form their own legal systems. I don’t pity them the process –it makes me incredibly thankful for the work our founding fathers did for us. But, it seems to be the only way.

So, now there is nothing left as far as my place in developing countries. Perhaps later in my career I will discover it, but I think for now I have made the choice to pursue more of a policy angle. Then, at least, my daily life at work would be working within my own or a similar culture. So I wouldn’t have to spend this extra time, which for entire days/weeks of the summer was sometimes all-pervasive, figuring out the ropes of another system. Perhaps this initial viewpoint is similarly idealistic, but I think I need to try it out. Of course, I instantly meet another road block: one of my personal and professional ethics is I never want to be sitting at some air-conditioned desk in the capital of some country (or, God forbid, Washington, D.C.) writing policy for a people that I have never even met. But, there must be some niche in the middle. I am going to set out to find it. What I think I have managed to chip off of my too-broad and undefined career aspirations is “direct service” grassroots work. I no longer think I want to be based in the jungle, living with the people. Although this is an element that I have to deal with on a very personal level, I think my career experience thus far has shown me, time and again, that this type of work does not allow me to be as effective as I could be. Personally, I must set sail the Viking funeral of my college self –the Jaime that was committed to becoming a Jesus figure –to making personal sacrifices, to shoulder a bit of the burden of the world to make it a better place.

I just had dinner with a friend from high school last night and was talking about just this, and she was disappointed. She pointed out how I have always loved and excelled at learning languages and integrating into other cultures, and so it would be a shame to let this go. I agree. So perhaps another element to this new career track, or maybe even a separate track to consider simultaneously, is to instead focus in on one culture and language and get really good at it, to avoid the 100/40% dilemma. The most obvious for me is somewhere in the Middle East. Do I want to learn Farsi and work in Afghanistan? Will Afghanistan be intricately tied to our own national fate for the rest of my lifetime, or is it something that will fade and therefore make my skills obsolete? Should I just learn Arabic so my skills will be more transferable in the Middle East? Am I too old to take on a new language, especially Arabic? Where am I going to find the time to learn it? But most importantly, am I brave enough to confront the Middle East –a place both frightening to me, but also where my own personal emotions are bound to get tied up? Do I need a separation of personal and professional space, or have I just been avoiding the true goal this entire time? Is “Middle Eastern” (I am aware, this is entirely too big of a generalization), or any of the Middle Eastern countries, a good fit for me? How will I work as a woman in such a patriarchal society? How will I integrate my current despisal of religion into a society formed by it? At the very least, at this point, I need to start investigating the answers to these questions.

The other option is Senegal, where I both excel at the language and know a lot about the culture. But somehow Senegal seems too limited to me. Not only is it just one country with its own unique problems, but development is not my end goal. Development to end poverty, to end lack of options, to end lack of education, which I think are the biggest contributors to global violence. So I don’t think I would get personal satisfaction from working in Senegal. Put simply, I don’t think it’s my calling. Though it is a shame to let those skills, which are relatively rare in the world, go to waste.

I could think of another country/language/culture to focus on, but at this point, I think if I don’t chose the Middle East or Senegal, I might rather just stay at home and work on policy. A way to deal with the policy from afar problem would be to work on American policy that affects other countries. Like, the law that governs how corporations have to negotiate with “locals” when operating in other countries. I want to take a class on this (what is it?) to explore that option. The other obvious area is foreign policy/national security, though my explorations in this field in the past have led me to conclude that only the best and the brightest get these positions, (correct me if I am wrong), so I might be wasting my time pursuing this angle? And then of course is international law. I am so excited to take International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law this semester to learn more about this field. The stereotypical, and perhaps misguided, complaint that comes hand in hand with this is that international laws are basically “best practices” guidelines and don’t mean anything in reality. And my experience this summer added another example to confirm this conclusion. Indonesia is part of about a bagillion international agreements about gender equality, women’s rights, violence against women, etc. And they report every year to the UN or whatever commission on their progression in enforcing these agreements. I read through the transcripts, and they are pathetic. It must be an embarrassment for the UN or whatever commissions to even print these transcripts as they are blaring examples of their inefficiency: they go through the checklist of goals, Indonesia responds that it has made minimal efforts to meet any of them, or avoids responding all together, and they plan to meet up again in 5 years. But maybe a good professional goal would be taking international legal agencies one step closer to being more effective?

I also might want to pursue a bit of Native American law, not only to help our own indigenous people, but to work on a model that truly respects indigenous people. I find it funny that helping indigenous people abroad is a trendy career option, yet our own indigenous people suffer from some of the worst legal injustices around. Though this risks falling into the same trap of prescription from abroad, it could at least provide an example of one system that has worked?

Am I thinking about my career to broadly/generally/idealistically? I think I am trying to pin down the overall roadmap before I get down to the details, but perhaps that is the opposite approach. I should just throw myself into a job that seems relatively related, where I can imagine going to work every day and enjoying it, and build up the big picture from there?

Anyway, this is where my experience this summer has taken me. There are a couple of different angles I want to investigate at this point, a couple I want to lay to rest for a while. I have to admit, back to the new question -“Is this the right place for me?” that I am excited by the idea of a career option that will allow me to stay at home, not be alone, eat normal food (for me!), and pursue a bit more of a “normal” career that will perhaps –gasp! –allow me to make some money! I hope that these feelings, which intensify as I get older and have started thinking about family –do not corrupt my thinking too much. That would be another sell-out blow to my college self.

All of this makes me ask –why do I feel so dedicated to it? There are major underlying personal motivations, which I have to take some time to ask myself if I am ready/willing to let go of. Rationally, I know that it could end up in such a disaster if I continue to make career decisions based on personal motivations. But on the other hand, I feel like the best careers are made this way. And, I also don’t understand how you could make career decisions otherwise. (Unless for money, for power, etc., and I’m not willing to go there!) Sometimes I try to think about what I would enjoy, but this seems to abstract for me, and it seems like the only way I could find the answer was by trying a bunch of different jobs until I find one I like. It seems, at 29, that the experimental time has passed for that. I spent my window of opportunity otherwise. But, I feel law school has given me a fresh chance in this regard. I am being trained in a special skill –so I could wash out all other career options and just focus on those offered within the legal field. And, since at this age I have a good sense of my ethics and what I do/do not enjoy, I might actually be able to experiment around enough in law school and in a couple of years after to find something I enjoy. So I’d like to work for a firm, a judge, a corporation, etc. to see if those are something I would like. Could I possibly like trial law? The idea of letting my personal baggage set sail, finding something I enjoy and don’t just feel obligated to, and actually making enough money to support myself, sounds incredibly refreshing and wonderful. But then the thoughts start creeping in that I am betraying myself.

Why do I feel so dedicated to my college self? College is such a pure time. I think it is the time when the weight of the world finally settles on us. The world holds itself in a giant net, and from when we are born, it slowly lets itself down bit by bit, allowing us to feel its weight. College is such a beautiful moment because we graduate from childhood –from fully realizing the extent of ourselves –filling out our own form. We are a pure form of ourselves –not yet tainted by outside influences (i.e., the need to make money, provide for others, do something meaningful for society, etc.) –and so its easier to trust our judgment as emanating from who we really are and what we really want. But at the same time, we get our first glimpse of the world as it really is. I feel like there is a lot to trust in that judgment. We recognize things that are fucked up, and things that are good. We judge things with a simple sense of right and wrong. We line ourselves up, often forcefully, with causes that ring deeply within us. With this foundation, we set out upon the world to find our place in it. We are barraged with images from every level of society and from the people around us. We are manipulated by our needs and the needs of others. It just seems obvious to me, at least in regards to my own personal journey, that I want to trust the decisions I made before life forced me to alter them. To trust my original judgment of what was good and bad in the world and do my best to accommodate reality, but stay true to them.

Perhaps this is misguided. And perhaps this is the biggest question I have to tackle to move forward effectively in my career.