Prior to the beginning of the school term this past Fall I worked for six months in a grocery store near my family’s home. I was subjected to no external intellectual demands and whatever thought I did not want to pursue, I could set aside with the equivalent of “I prefer not to”. There was, as compared to law-school, no language acquisition involved and I often felt like I was better for it. While the work was mundane, I was back home after living abroad, close to family and friends. The reading I did for pleasure was uncompromised by any sense of responsibility other than that which the piece itself inspired. A separation of my work and personal interests seemed to make the pleasures of the latter more pronounced. Strange as it now sounds I felt at times as if it were possible that within a range of greater breadth compared to the types of work I am now considering that the nature of the particular work I was doing was immaterial to my personal happiness.

Ambition, the Law, and Bartleby

-- By StefanRinas - 24 Apr 2012

Two years ago, a family member I both respect and am very close with told me that they could never admire someone who lacked ambition. While that statement did not consciously contribute to any subsequent decisions of mine, it has stayed with me and has become increasingly relevant over the past year. The consequences and value of ambition both categorically and with respect to particular aspects of my life entail questions that I am struggling to negotiate now more than ever. Ambitions both specific and general informed my decision to study, and to continue to study law, and how to act upon that decision’s consequences may be aided by a consideration of their relation to the character of Bartleby. Prior to the beginning of the school term this past Fall I worked for six months in a grocery store near my family’s home. I was subjected to no external intellectual demands and whatever thought I did not want to pursue, I could set aside with the equivalent of “I prefer not to”. There was, as compared to law-school, no language acquisition involved and I often felt like I was better for it. While the work was mundane, I was back home after living abroad, close to family and friends. The reading I did for pleasure was uncompromised by any sense of responsibility other than that which the piece itself inspired. The separation of my work and personal interests seemed to make the pleasures of the latter more pronounced. Strange as it now sounds I felt at times as if it were possible that within a broad range compared to the types of work I am now considering, the nature of the particular work I was doing was immaterial to my personal happiness.

After a challenging year of law school, I am often left wondering if my having moved to a different country to study a discipline in which I have often had a marginal interest has or will continue to be worthwhile. I wrote on a scrap of paper in Legal Methods in response to the question “Why did you decide to come to law school?” that I had wanted an “intellectually challenging experience”. This class has helped bring into focus that for my purposes neither the process of obtaining another degree while maintaining a given level of performance as a matter of ambition, or the studying of law under and the auspice of education for education’s sake are sufficient justifications for continuing to do so. It now seems to me more ambitious to answer the question of what it is law has to offer me and how I can use it to contribute to the work of those who share my interests. Also, while there are alternative means of acting on this desire I have been left with reason to doubt that I would have been able to remain content in my previous job.

Over the past year I have become increasingly dedicated to the idea of working for a not-for-profit arts-related organization, but when my Dad called a few weeks ago to tell me that a lawyer he works with had a connection at Paul Weiss and that it represented the possibility of a summer associate position, the excitement of my response was genuine. My dedication to the notion of working for a not-for-profit hadn’t lessened, but I was forced to acknowledge an aspect of my personality that I am still trying to rid myself of, namely, an inability to be satisfied with something in the absence of an opportunity to turn down the alternative. Acknowledging a desire for choice and the commensurate sense of control isn’t especially revealing, and that is part of what left me disappointed in myself following that phone call; that the making of a choice with it’s potential to mask a lack of an affinity for a given option gave me the lift it did. I am tempted to project the above idea relating to finding satisfaction only in what has been chosen after some form of validation onto Bartleby, as he ceases to work following our encountering him as one capable of an “extraordinary” amount of work. But ceasing to pursue a goal in the absence of a desire to prove something to ones self seems like a vanity that I would hold Bartleby above if not deem irrelevant to his story.

If Bartleby’s preference to not continue working can be seen as a gesture either affirming the or questioning the value of his own life in the face of a meaningless or unsatisfying task, it may not be the value of his own life that he is seeking to affirm, or possibility question, but that of the other occupants of the law office by inspiring them to question their own motivations and choices. An ambition based primarily on negation strikes me as extremely challenging as it can require an extended exercise of patience in order to observe it’s effects if they can be observed at all. This suggests some potential value in an upcoming summer spent more in observing personal changes that have already taken place rather than accelerating them prior to my appreciating their consequences. Whether I have romanticized my summer of manual labor as a simpler life and have confused stress for excitement over the past year while placing too great a premium on the latter are questions I would like to see played out.

In contrast to his employer who readily characterizes himself for the reader as a “safe” man, Bartleby’s most telling characteristic may be that he escapes or refuses to acquiesce to definition. Between those two poles is where I hope this investigation has left me, both acknowledging the value of a form of self-reporting while embracing the value that can be added to any story be leaving something unsaid.

I would like to revise this draft at a later date.

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