Ego dominates motivation

Two years and five months after I left my job with the Post Falls Urban Renewal Agency, I have graduated from law school. Between long, tedious sessions of bar study, I have had a little time to reflect on the experience. For example, the toll that going back to school has taken on my pride, for better or worse, is prevalent in my thoughts. At times, I feel as though I have taken a giant step backward. I have taken what was once a promising career and gambled it for further education. They say that graduate school is for the risk averse; I feel as though I have just taken a great risk, with no idea of how it will pay off... but very aware that there is a lot of paying off to do. I have joined a profession loathed by many as dishonest, and promoted from within as noble. I can definitively call it neither.

Despite my reservations, however, I am aware that something drove me to do it. Perhaps it is because, like a hapless ideologue in a recent viral video, "I love the Constitution." It could be because I like to fight. More than one time, I've been sure the only thing driving me is revenge. Justice, I mean...

Then, sitting in church the night before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I had a moment of clarity as the priest talked about men and women who had made an impact in history. The ego, he said, can either be the ends or the means.

Now, besides the fact that I know I am charming, good-looking, funny, courteous and wise beyond my years, I don't consider myself an egotistical person. However, at that moment in the sermon, I acknowledged that my ego was the dominant motivating factor that kept me going in law school. I've heard said that the ego is a drug that enables some people to live with themselves. That may be true, but where ego makes the transformation from self-confidence is a fuzzy line, and everyone needs the latter to function. Furthermore, a dose of the former is what helps us get over life's larger hurdles.

Those who truly stand for what they believe in often stand against the entire world. Dr. King and Rosa Parks did. That takes some extraordinary self-confidence. Yet, the change that they brought was not because they were slaves to their egos. Rosa parks didn't have a sycophantic side-kick to slap her on the back and tell her what a big effing deal it was that she stood her ground. Her ego empowered her to make a stand for what she knew was right. Her ego was the means, not the ends.

Conversely, we are bombarded with narcissism parading as altruism on a daily basis. Whether we are trying to be convinced that watching a new MTV program will make us more informed members of society, buying an iPad will improve our social consciousness, or that supporting an ever expanding government will remedy our country's pitfalls, we are in danger of falling to someone's ploy to manipulate our desire to be part of something good.

I stand at a crossroads with my shiny new degree. I have been told that this is an accomplishment in itself. However, resting on these laurels is antithetical to the reason I went to law school. I do not want to be a lawyer. I choose to be a person whose law degree helped him make a difference. I choose to have my degree, and my ego, to be the means.

Luke Malek is a home-grown Kootenai County boy currently on a voluntary exile in pursuit of a bar license that he hopes will empower him to battle objectionable compliance with the status quo.