Advice

The expat crowd in Beijing consists mostly of early twentysomethings wandering the world in pursuit of wasting time self discovery.  Most of them are aware, though, that one day this burdenless life will end and they will have to head back to the real world, because if they don't, their parents will cut them off and/or the pollution will surely kill them sooner rather than later.  As a result, I often hear this sentence being passed around along with the cocktails: "I think in a couple of years I'll go back to the U.S. and go to law school. Or something."

I usually have no problem repeating myself ad nauseam when passing my sagely wisdom onto future generations around the globe, but for the sake of convenience I'll just put this in print now:

Dear Future Generations of America,

There are 2 types of people that consider going to law school:

1. People whose dream in life is to be a lawyer.  These people get a mental orgasm just thinking about reviewing contracts and researching statutory codes.  If you're one of these people, you should absolutely go to law school.  You will spend the rest of your life in euphoria reviewing the crap out of contracts and researching the shit out of statutory codes.

2. People who have other dreams in life but decided for whatever practical, financial, self-guilt, family-guilt, societal pressure, risk averse reasons to not pursue their real dreams but to spend the rest of their lives reviewing contracts and researching statutory codes instead.  If you're one of these people, step into my shoes for a second and smack yourself on the head.  Are you fucking crazy?  Put down that LSAT prep course bundle and go live your dream instead, you stupid idiot.  Yes, you will probably live a long, struggling, frustrated and financially tumultuous life.  But remember, you can always ask your parents for money.  This is not as bad as it sounds, because most law school graduates are now also asking their parents for money, and their our lives are so much worse in so many ways.  Also remember, death is the great equalizer, and we will probably all die soon.

3.  I just remembered that there is a third type of persons roaming this earth: people with no dreams whatsoever.  These people have no idea what it is that they want in life, or what makes them happy, except short-lived sensual pleasures derived from late-night pizza, beer pong, and...uh you know.  They have no shining goal, no great desire, no overwhelming passion, no overarching direction or path.  They have no concept of the deep dark depths of despair or disappointment because they have never even wanted anything that much.  Law school is just one of the many shifting ideas that happened to float into their aimless path and seemed like a good idea for no particular reason.  If you're one of these people, stop reading this and go kill yourself.  There are too many people on this planet now and natural resources are scarce, so stop wasting them with your meaningless existence.

4.  Okay, sorry, just remembered a fourth type.  My creative writing professor in college was all about stream of consciousness writing and I guess it stuck.  Some people have dreams, but these are bad dreams.  Now I don't want to get all judgmental and say that some dreams are better than others, but you guys, some dreams are better than others.  If your dream in life is to be, like, the next Snooki...okay, fine, go to law school instead.  You will probably end up no better or worse.

Why should you take my advice?  You don't have to, but you will surely regret it, as everyone eventually realizes that I have always been right.  Some have realized this sooner than others.  Obviously, the some are now living enlightened, meaningful lives, while the others are still groping their way around in a sea of befuddlement and illusion.  There is a saying in Chinese 好自为之， which roughly translates to: Don't be an idiot.

Sincerely,
Me