So, I'm on vacation, which is not something I do very often, at least unrelated to work.  It's been great, and we're lucky to be able to do this (and to vacation as all). It's ungodly hot, but hey, that's the beach. I guess. Like I said, we don't do it like this very often.

Anyway, I recently read a piece that talked about freedom in way that really resonated for me.  It is applicable personally, and it is applicable professionally.  Law schools, collectively, could stand to pay attention, as well. We have choices, we just have to recognize it. I'm no philosopher, but here's the gist of the post that resonated with me, from Rapitude.com:

Sartre believed that we have much more freedom than we tend to acknowledge. We habitually deny it to protect ourselves from the horror of accepting full responsibility for our lives. In every instant, we are free to behave however we like, but we often act as though circumstances have reduced our options down to one or two ways to move forward. 

This is bad faith: when we convince ourselves that we’re less free than we really are, so that we don’t have to feel responsible for what we ultimately make of ourselves. It really seems like you must get up at 7:00 every Monday, because constraints such as your job, your family’s schedule, and your body’s needs leave no other possibility. But it’s not true — you can set your alarm for any time, and are free to explore what’s different about life when you do. You don’t have to do things the way you’ve always done them, and that is true in every moment you’re alive. Yet we feel like we’re on a pretty rigid track most of the time.

We often think of freedom as something that can only make life easier, but it can actually be overwhelming and even terrifying. Think about it: we can take, at any moment, any one of infinite roads into the future, and nothing less than the rest of our lives hinges on each choice. So it can be a huge relief to tell ourselves that we actually have fewer options available to us, or even no choice at all.

In other words, even though we want the best life possible, if life is going to be disappointing, we’d at least like that to be someone else’s fault.

As law faculty, we don't always know what to do to make major improvements, but it's on us to work to make that happen.  I think we do a lot of things right, but there's a lot (a lot!) we can do better. And that's our job — to figure out how to be better. What to do is not an easy answer, but suggesting that we can't make changes is junk.  Again, the idea that we can't change, …. "is bad faith: when we convince ourselves that we’re less free than we really are, so that we don’t have to feel responsible for what we ultimately make of ourselves."