The Opposite of Regret: Thoughts of a Law School Dropout

Somewhere deep among our pile of family albums, there’s a photo of six-year-old me sitting as straight as a six-year-old can on a little wooden chair. It was one of those dress-up-as-your-future-job day photo-ops. I’m in a barong and black slacks. On my lap is a law book held upright by my right hand. The book is as tall as my torso.

I didn’t smile in front of cameras as a kid. I was too shy to show my teeth, so I bit my lower lip. The photo is a funny reminder of that. I’m looking straight at the camera, signature lip-bite, stoic and stiff.

I remember the feeling of having been placed in this position. But then again, I was six years old. At that point, wherever I was, chances are, I was placed there.

Two years ago, I was living with my older brother Kankan in a condo unit in Ortigas. At the time, I was working at a branding firm just a 10-minute walk away from our building. Meanwhile, he was waiting for PLE results. He had just taken the Physician’s Licensure Examinations, his one last step before officially becoming a doctor. Things were steady.

One morning, at around five o’clock, I heard some silent screams at my feet. I’m a light sleeper, so voices, no matter how suppressed, are enough to wake me up. “Oh my god, oh my god,” the loud whispers continued. My brother was seated on a chair right next to the foot of the double-decked bed I was sleeping on. Half-asleep, half-annoyed, I ask him, “what happened??”

“Results are out,” still half-whispering in disbelief, “I think I topped.”

“Ohhhh shiiiiit, what’s your rank?” I ask, half-awake, half-excited.

“Wait, let me check….. I dunno yet.” There’s a real sense of relief in his voice. “OK, I think I’m ninth.”

“Wow! Congraaaats!”

I really was happy and proud of my brother — and I still am. I wasn’t surprised (his batch half-expected him to top the boards), but I was still really impressed. Top 9 is no joke. At that moment, I was awakened by this feeling of joy and pride.

And then almost immediately after, for about five selfish seconds, this feeling faded and a thought appeared. It cut right through the remaining drowsiness that still hovered over me. It stared right at my face. Funny enough, it was also whispering. It said: “You’re never going to experience a moment like this in your life.”

When I left law school four years ago, it felt as though I had taken the last 15 years of my life (I was 21 at the time) and stole it away from that six-year-old sitting stoically on his chair.

I had all 15 years in my hands, all the public speaking training after class, all the writing workshops during school breaks, all the answers to “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, all the expectations, even my choice of a college degree… I took them all and just said, “Yeah… we’re gonna have to start over.”

Well, not exactly. None of those were done in vain; they’ve prepared me for all that I do today. But emotion knows no logic in cases of big life decisions. It wasn’t a do-over, but it felt every bit like it.

There’s a voice in my head that was born that day, and it lingers. “I swear if you regret this,” it’d threaten me every time the thought came up. It was the fear of being wrong and of society’s “I told you so.”

My reason for leaving has always been the same. In fact, it had been clear to me even before I started law school: I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I still don’t. But at the time, it was an issue of testing this hypothesis. Law school was the experiment, and I was right.

On the second-to-the-last day of 2017, I was back home in Iloilo with my family for the Christmas break. At this point, I had already finished one semester of my first year at the UP College of Law.

On my way downstairs for lunch, I see Kankan was already seated in his spot on the dining table. “You already know what you want to do. Just make the decision,” he tells me as I walk to my seat.

My whole family had been waiting for my decision. It was only a matter of time. “Yeah, you’re right,” I reply to him while scooping mounds of rice onto my plate.

After lunch, I go back upstairs and I notice he had sent me a link on Messenger. I click the link and I’m led to a video compilation of Elon Musk speeches and interviews. After watching all 40 minutes of it, it was clear.

I wanted what Elon felt about all his companies. I wanted the same sense of “this is something I have to do.” I knew I was never going to find that in law. And I also knew I didn’t want to drag this decision until after the new year. So that was that. That day, I began writing the letter informing the college secretary of my decision to leave the College of Law.

Ironically, the person who had convinced me to make the decision to leave is the same person who has led me to revisit this decision.

While my brother was figuring out how to react to the news of his success on the PLE, checking online just to make sure it wasn’t a false alarm, I was having this internal battle in my head.

My logical brain went into defense mode. Having given up my shot at taking and passing any sort of major nationwide examination, which is naturally followed by all my friends, family, and people I don’t even know congratulating me, it seemed that I was missing out on an experience. My ego tripped on this thought, and then again over itself.

I had had this same thought process before. It was familiar but it was one I always dreaded. It used to just go in circles, never fully resolving itself, only to come up at some other inconvenient moment in the future. But this time was different.

Now that it was staring right at my face, it was more real. And then it hit me like a truck, a breakthrough in my usual line of thinking. If this was the only reason why I wanted to go to law school, then I had made the right decision to leave. Do I still want the recognition? Sure. Even if it were only to stroke my ego? I’ll take it. But did I want to do what a test such as the Bar would license me to do? Not really, no.

Regret implies a yearning for a reversal. This isn’t that. It’s quite the opposite. I would have made the same decision a hundred times over had I been given the chance to relive it. As far as purpose is concerned, I made the right decision that day.

But what is the opposite of regret? It’s not all good times and happy days. Of course, it isn’t. Right doesn’t always mean easy. It rarely does. Choices are tough because the consequences of those choices are also tough. And the right ones, too often, are the toughest ones.

I still see a hint of disappointment in people’s faces when I tell them that I had left UP law by choice, almost as if I had robbed them of something. I hear it in their voices, too, “Oh. But why?”

I don’t blame them. That’s just part of the deal. Society expects what it does.

You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.

As I write this, the batch mates I entered the college of law with have since graduated and are now reviewing for the Bar. I miss them and I am extremely proud of them. And next year, I look forward to seeing their names as members of the Philippine Bar.

It is tempting to feel that I have missed out on this experience. It is tempting to validate this feeling and be in all other possible timelines besides the one I’m currently on. One can go crazy contemplating all of one’s possible lives. And who are we to be entitled to this life and to that one as well? Only greed wants this for us.

But sometimes, greed wins, and I can’t help but mourn for the life I had killed off, the relationships I could’ve built further, the ones that never saw the light of day, the potential of a million different choices that come right after a single choice.

I look at that life the same way Shawn Michaels looked at Ric Flair moments before that sweet chin music at WrestleMania XXIV.

The opposite of regret is reality. There is only facing it.

As much as I’d like to look at the six-year-old version of myself in the face and tell him that everything will go as planned, that one thing will lead to the next, and that it’ll all make sense, that would be lying to myself.

Lives will be left un-lived and relationships will be left unfulfilled. However, as long as these sprang from a decision that was ultimately right, the only real remedy is acceptance.

Reality — like the law — is harsh, but it is reality. We strive to live not that which was written, not the easy one, but the right one.

Photo by Pat Gallo, a lifetime ago