Miguel and the Piano

A story inspired by true events:

It was 9 PM, and Miguel was tired. He had woken up that morning with a sore back from work the day before, which had made the hour long bus ride to his job at the hotel difficult and uncomfortable. He had been working since 8 AM that day moving carts, unloading boxes, and carrying away dirty plates. He had been working at this job in the cleaning crew for 5 years, and it had not been easy.

But it was 9 PM, and an excited grin crept across Miguel's lips. As tired as he was, he looked forward all day to this part of the day. He was about to clean the ballroom. The ballroom was the largest room in the hotel. It was reserved for conferences, events, and dances. This week, there were rows and rows of tables and chairs set up for an education conference. During breaks in the sessions, Miguel and his coworkers had scurried through the ballroom, replacing water glasses, refilling pitchers, and taking away platters of dirty plates.

But it was 9 PM, and the ballroom was empty. As Miguel and his coworkers entered the ballroom to clean it one last time, Miguel walked over to the piano. Without a word, he sat down, and as his coworkers began to clean the room, he started playing.

It was a simple song, nothing remarkable or amazing. But it was the song that Miguel's mother had taught him years ago. His mother had been a piano teacher for many years, and had taught Miguel a few songs as a child. This was the only one that he remembered. After his mother had died several years ago, he had started playing this song again. He couldn't afford a piano at home, so he would play this song every night in the ballroom. Every night. To remember her.

His coworkers finished clearing the room. Miguel closed the piano and stood up with a smile. On the bus ride back, he didn't think about his aching feet, his sore back, or his tired hands. He simply closed his eyes and remembered.

Marriage and Money

My flight into Oakland was delayed and I arrived close to midnight, so I decided to take a taxi to Berkeley. My taxi driver asked me where I was coming from and about my family. When I told him that I was Korean-American, he said that he was Ethiopian. He then asked if I was married. When I told him that I wasn't, he said that should get married soon, and to make sure to marry a Korean-American woman, not an American one. In his words, "People like you and me, we know the value of money and know how to save it. But the people here, they waste money. They have it one day and it's gone the next."

He may be right as a general matter (it is feasible that immigrant families have higher rates of saving, since their financial base tends to be more precarious.) Of course, there are exceptions, as I know some thrifty Americans and some spendy immigrants. On a personal level, it was a reminder that conversations about money are important in preparing for marriage. One prevailing cultural narrative is that money should not matter in a relationship and that love is enough. Yet it is precisely because of love that conversation about money is critical. If I have a disagreement about money with a client or a business partner, I can walk away from that relationship; it is much more difficult to do so with a marriage. Talking about money may not be fun, but it is important.

For now, I want to work on developing healthy financial habits, such as reducing spending. Now that my first winter is out of the way, I won't have to buy more winter clothes.

Contracts Law

One of my favorite classes this past year was Contracts. Most people think of contracts as boring, tedious, and cumbersome (think iTunes user agreements.) Contracts law, however, is fascinating, and it helps to have an excellent professor who makes contracts his life (the other professor was great too, but he was more of a bankruptcy guy.) During winter quarter contracts class, I had a sudden realization: contracts is about the duality between human ambition and human fragility.

Contracts are about promises, and promises are about our desire to shape, plan, and predict the future. We make claims on things to come, and believe that it is in our power to deliver a perfect hand, or the bales of cotton, or a share in a company. Contracts law reflects our desire for control.

Yet we are finite beings, prone to mistakes or miscalculations. We are adrift in a sea of uncertainty; we can't control what will happen in the next 5 minutes, much less the next 5 years. Circumstances spiral out of our grasp: the music hall burns down, the king gets sick, the price of rubber plummets. So we reach out to the other party, asking them to mitigate or to accept money damages. We try to protect ourselves and even claim that our promises have no legal force.

Contracts law is about anthropology. It's about aspiration and error, designs and deviations, lofty human enterprise and inevitable human folly.

Criminal Law

Summary: Sharing my thoughts on crim law final.

I took my final exam for my introductory criminal law class. This is a standard class for nearly all first year law students. I do not intend to take any more criminal law classes, nor to practice criminal law after I graduate. This class was one of the more complicated and confusing classes this year, but I am glad that I took it.

What I learned is that US criminal law is very complicated. It is a mishmash of laws from different eras, from judge-made laws from 1600s England to modern statutes that have been adopted different ways in different jurisdictions. There are the rules, then the exceptions to the rules, then the defenses, then the exceptions to the defenses (e.g. grading of homicide from murder to involuntary manslaughter, and the defense of duress, unless entered into negligently, which may or may not matter.) Some of the problem may be attributed to judicial ineptitude, some to jurisdictional inertia, and some to cross-purposes of the criminal law (is it to punish, to deter, to rehabilitate, or to incapacitate?)

But the real problem is that criminal law matters. It touches lives in a deep and fundamental way. A wife stabs her husband, who has regularly physically abused her the past 14 years. A male college student mistakes his female classmates "No" as token resistance and is charged with sexual assault. An 11-year old boy, growing up in a violent and unstable family, takes part in a gang-related shooting. These people, and those whom their actions affect, enter into the criminal law system, with its myriad contradictions and illogical mechanisms. For them, criminal law is not just some confusing doctrine that needs to be spun out into a workable answer on a 3 hour test. It marks a fundamental shift in their lives and their place in society.

I was listening to a radio show about a man who had an argument with his wife and killed her in a fit of rage. He was 40 years old. By the time he left prison, he was 70. He spent 30 years in prison. He spent more time in prison than I have been alive. It would be as if I had been born in prison and had spent all of my life there. The man himself said that he believed he deserved it, since in that brief moment, he had wanted to kill his wife. Yet reflecting on his sentence gives me pause.

I'm glad to be done with the class, so that I can move onto other things. Yet it was a reminder that behind the outlines, the cold calls, and the finals, there will be real people affected by the work that I and everyone at the school will do.

Dysfunction

My counseling teacher taught me that the dysfunctions we have as adults are often rooted in coping mechanisms as children.

For example, Tim grew up in a family with parents who were constantly fighting. He learned to cope with the strain and turmoil by avoiding conflict. Whenever his parents seemed to get into a heated exchange, Tim would do what he could to steer the conversation to calmer waters. Tim learned to avoid conflict, since conflict would inevitably lead to fights. But as an adult, whenever his wife Barbara brings up a difficult topic, Tim shuts down. Even though he is 40 years old, part of him is still that 8 year old, the sound of his parents' shouting ringing in his ears. He isn't even conscious of the role his childhood trauma plays in his current life.

The key here is to recognize where the dysfunction comes from. Oftentimes, we try to will our dysfunctions away. We resolve to do better, to be more attentive, to be more emotionally open. Yet if we remain ignorant to the deep well of our habits and patterns of thinking, resolve will only go so far.

For myself, one such coping mechanism/dysfunction is an expectation of rejection. It manifests as a little voice that says "No one really likes you. All these people that are nice to you, they are just being polite. If they said what they really felt, they would want nothing to do with you. The best thing you can do for everyone is to leave them alone, so they don't have to put up with you."

The story behind this coping mechanism is long and involved. Suffice it to say, I know that it isn't true, but it still triggers within me at times. Yet when these thoughts come back, knowing the story behind them and how to speak truth against them is transformative. Instead of becoming hopeless or upset when these thoughts come up, I can ask myself: Where does this come from, and what is the truth?

Home Buying

I was having a conversation the other night about the merits of buying a home against renting with my legal writing teacher. He commented that he strongly encourages renting over buying for students entering private practice, since most such lawyers have careers that allow or even require geographic mobility. He said that he was buying a house because he knew he wanted to settle in San Diego and wanted certain amenities that buying allows, but otherwise would have still kept renting, and that he didn't believe in the predominant cultural norm that encourages everyone to buy.

Yet another dimension to renting/home buying that came to mind was how the act of buying solidifies ties to a location, which is particularly important for immigrants. When my parents moved to the US from Korea, they had no family ties here whatsoever (even now, all of my family is back in Korea.) They had come on my father's graduate student visa, and it wasn't clear if they would stay or return. When they bought our house, it wasn't just a financial investment, or a nice building in a neighborhood with good schools, or a choice for a certain bundle of goods that a local government could provide. It was a statement about the future, that our family would be rooted in this new place. The Kim family would make this place home.

Marriage is work

It's almost summer, which means it's almost wedding season. I haven't been invited to any weddings this year, but I remember the weddings from the past few years that I attended (happy anniversary to Vinicius and Christina.)

I was telling a friend who is in his mid 30s that I'm getting to the age when many of my friends are getting married (in the past few weeks, two couples I know got engaged.) He said that he's getting to the age when several couples are getting divorced. He said "I was a guest at their wedding. I talked to the guy's uncle. I gave them a blender as wedding present."

It is a sobering thought; I hope that none of my friends need experience a divorce, but underlying it is an important reality. Marriage is work. Once the wedding is over, once the champagne flutes are packed away, the decorations are taken down, and the music is over, marriage is hard work. It's easy to look with loving eyes on your partner on the big day in a dashing suit or beautiful dress. It's a lot harder when both of you are exhausted, you're stressed over finances or family, and you don't know how to make this life together. Marriage is messy, divorce is messy, and I have great sympathy for those who go through such hardship.

It will be interesting to see how my perspective on weddings changes once I get married (if I get married). Those who have experienced the joys and scars of married life will likely see weddings from a different light. Some may be cynical, knowing the difficult things ahead. Some may be patronizing, wanting the new couple to avoid the same mistakes. And some may be even more joyful, knowing that the hardships make the beautiful things even sweeter.