Not a business but a calling

Congratulations to my new compañeros and compañeras. Now what?

Just because you made it doesn’t mean it will be all roses from hereon. If you aspire only for material wealth, I am happy to tell you that having that “Atty.” tag affixed to your name will change your life drastically. No more riding jeepneys or eating lugaw for dinner, thank God, or at least not as much, and not as inevitably as before. There will be choices.

You can have your dream car in no time, don’t you worry. But let me ask again: Now what?

Don’t tell me you’re in it only for the money. How dare you. You’ll be doing yourself the worst disservice if that’s how you think. At the risk of sounding like a broken recording of Supreme Court decisions, let me repeat: This thing that we do is not a business but a calling. It used to sound preachy even to me but now, after years of toiling and witnessing the evil that men and women can do, the injustice of the law, the blindness of the law to reason, which is not always a good thing, those words sound hallowed, indeed.

Let the heart of the lawyer beat for something profound, something more important than all our lives combined, something to transcend our selfish plans and ambitions. I have been in this journey for the longest time and I have failed and continued to fail for the longest time. The only consolation I draw out of it is my unwillingness to give up, the blind faith I sustain at the expense of material gratification.

This is embarrassing. I still take the jeepney from time to time, and eat street food from time to time, but not because I crave them or I yearn for the good old days. Honestly, the reason is still economics.

Sometimes I am driven to self-pity by the inevitable comparison between me and my more successful and accomplished colleagues. I have only myself to blame for not dedicating myself completely to the realization of financial success. But then I would blame myself more, and in fact I doubt if I could forgive myself, if I take the opposite route after having come this far in my journey; if I give up the things I have stubbornly accepted as my definition of life’s ultimate fulfillment—the far greater goals for which I have foolishly turned my back on financial security.

I want to change the world. Now you can all laugh, or call me crazy. Maybe I am. But admit it, tell me I’m right: Something very deep inside you wants to do the same—to change the world—but maybe you are as embarrassed as I am. This is just a phase, I have been told so many times before, a sort of infatuation with idealism. But poor me, I haven’t been able to grow up past the infatuated stage. I am stuck in the same hole I fell in after passing the bar many years ago. It scared me then, and
today it scares me even more.

I would like every new lawyer to plead guilty to the mistakes that our brotherhood/sisterhood has inflicted on this already troubled world. And atone for it by undoing the crimes of the past and the present, because it’s the only way to avoid the same crimes in the future. Stop believing that we are a privileged class because we are not. To perpetuate the myth is to conspire in the historical deception that has so confused and so enamored the world, to the extent of making leaders of lawyers who eventually transform into plunderers, murderers, psychopaths.

New lawyers have the advantage of purity of intention—or if that is not enough, the benefit of the doubt—should they find the resolve to make things right. That something which I felt deep inside me starting from Day One still has a pulse of the faintest energy and a spark of life. And I know it will not die but, rather, will keep me troubled and restless, and even excited to know that many younger, better lawyers who genuinely feel the same way have just arrived.

Congratulations, compañeros y compañeras…..

Adel Abillar is a private law practitioner with a small office in Quezon City where, he says, “I alternate between being boss and messenger.”