Striking a new chord

I've decided that since this is my first attempt at blogging that limiting myself to a specific topic might take away my ability to post more often. That said, I'd like to discuss a thought...

I was thinking about something I was told that seems to be rather applicable to "climate" in America right now. It stems from something that one of my professors told me when I first started law school.

The atmosphere for new law students is one rife with uncertainty. Naturally, your first move is to find someone, somewhere to tell you what it is like. So like all other 1L's (first year law students) I was looking for any kind of advice to help me deal with my new environment. I found it everywhere blogs, book, and every opinionated law student were dumping the "must do's and don'ts" on me like bombs. Then my Torts professor gave me the best piece of advice ever--be careful who you take advice from.

Today people are getting rich on self help and career advice. This is not to say that it is not helpful to some. The reason that people eat this advice up is because we stopped making the hard choices that life asks us everyday. This is why America is overweight, undereducated, over opinionated, and caught in an economic tornado. We have stopped asking ourselves the tough questions, and instead take the easy path. We take the easy way to dinner, the easy way to our finances, the easy way through school, and without hard work our nation and lives will stay stuck.

Talk is cheap, action speaks. As I struggle through law school I have learned that advice is weightless until I supply the substance. No single piece of advice has helped me get to where I am today without the hard work I filled it in with. Life is hard, it takes a lot of work to achieve your goals but that is the road to self discovery. I can't help but wonder why our culture has stopped pushing each other to find a way. The easiest answer is never the best answer, its only the easiest.

So if you are a new grad, a student, or someone looking for new work remember who you take advice from and answer the hard questions yourself; because the hard decisions you face are yours and yours only. Realize that you are the maker of your destiny.