In The Footsteps Of Giants

Originally written January 9, 2007

Through the looking glass we find what we were searching for. And that is good enough for me. There are moments in life where the decision you make will change not just who you are and what life you are to lead, but it will impact countless lives for years to come. These are not the common choices one is faced with, we are not common people.

There is a part of me that needs to be in the spotlight. There is a part of me that’s insecure about being too exposed to the public. Apparently I left the latter stateside. I did not come to the other side of the world to go on walking tours and sightseeing trips every afternoon. The empire I had created was burning bright.

The rain fell hard during a spectacular late April thunderstorm. Still two weeks out from the last of our first year law school finals. The hardest year of my life, physically and spiritually draining, she was coming to close. On that day then, I sat at my desk, outlining, cramming an entire semester into an all encompassing bliss. The phone rang.

Matt Flynn had been my first friend in Kansas. We were roommates the year before while he was the state chairman of the organization I would reign over one year from this day. Matt explained the situation. The club at Kansas was in disarray, the bank account had been closed off, and Matt suspected the chairman of tampering with the funds. As it was, Matt was graduating, and before he left he needed to make a difference, like all of us he wanted to know that his time among us meant something. There was no time left for a drawn out operation, the elections were four days away and he was running on fumes, he was running his friend Sean for chairman against Justin, the incumbent justifying our suspicions.

In good old days, none of us were clean; we were all guilty of what we were.

Matt needed a backup plan; we knew that Sean did not have the personality or the support to be elected chairman. That’s where I came in. Matt asked me to run for an officer position, to expose Justin and bring down the incestuous grasp his lineage had on the control of the club. We targeted the weakest person running for an office, weakest in more ways than we wanted to admit; we were all going to hell.
I would run for Treasurer to keep an eye on the Chairman.

In mid-town Manhattan, at the French Hotel Pierre. There is a long narrow bar on the east side of the hotel where a four piece jazz band plays every night. We sat in silence and laid all of our issues to rest, listening to the sounds that were as foreign to me as Cantonese...

And through the looking glass we return to strange little world we have made for ourselves. I was appointed months ago, convincingly and relatively legitimately, as the interim president of the graduate law student association. The only white man in a school of Asians, they saw me as the king. I have been the team captain and the mascot all in one.

Months ago we spoke of this moment. For giving up power to others brought more power in positioning back to me. At this point, I am revered here; I have achieved a status higher than anything even while running the show in Kansas. Continuing on as chairman, with the responsibilities it entails, is best suited to be left for the kids I will leave behind. But there is one thing I have left to do. Every man wants to have a legacy that will continue beyond his years.

There is a candidate in the upcoming student elections that I believe will win the election for chairman, and use the position for her own selfish purposes. Perhaps this is merely a residual response leftover from all those years of conspiracy theories and needing a counter to my balance. Maybe this is what I do, champion the causes that mean something, fight the battles for those that won’t stand up for themselves. If I have learned anything from these trials, I do trust that feeling that stirs inside, and when something doesn’t feel right, I make my Presence felt.