Zen and the Art of Market Cycle Maintenance

I'd like to share with you all the two events that tie for the scariest moments of my life.  Conveniently for my word count, they were essentially the same event that happened twice.  They both happened on the beach.  That's awful.  Beaches shouldn't be the setting for bad things.  In theory, people shouldn't die at amusement parks, either.  But I guess reality doesn't respect the artificial barriers we like to erect to insulate ourselves from its nasty bite.  That's right - reality bites.  Ask Janeane Garofalo.

Anyway, to the setting: either Zihuatenejo, Mexico, in November 1987 (5 years old) or Ka'anapali, Hawai'i, in August 1989 (7 years old).  In both instances, I'm on a family vacation, minding my own business, playing with Micro Machines and/or G.I. Joes while building immaculate sub-prime sand castles, right on the shoreline where the water laps onto the beach.  You know, the spot where you can just stand and let the surf pound the coast and sink your feet deep into earth.  It's late in the afternoon as the sun prepares to set over the pristine waters of the Pacific.  If my vocabulary at the time had been enhanced, I would have thought the setting serene.  Given my youth, we'll go with "mega-fun".

As the sun begins to set, the waves begin to crash harder as the moon begins its shift.  Most other children at the beach must have had a stronger survival instinct; they cleared out like cockroaches from a blast radius.  Me?  Courageously stupid.  I decide that now is the time to hop into the water and go for a little swim.

Given that I am approximately one-fourth of the size of my 2009 self, the Sea sees what I am doing, thinks to itself, "WTF? It's never this easy!", and hones in on me as its next, easiest target.  As I big-arm my way through the water, confident in my Parks & Rec-developed swimming abilities, I fail to account for the Sea's secret weapon: Captain Undertow.  Unlike the chlorinated bodies of water I was used to, the Sea likes to throw curveballs at its visitors.  So it decides to grab me by the ankles like a rabid shih tzu on steroids and pummel me into the ocean floor.  After a few eternal seconds scraping the roof of my mouth on the sandy bottom, struggling against the tide in sheer penultimate terror, my subconscious overrules my logic and causes me to relax, and let the Sea do its worst.  Granted, in retrospect, this seems like a counter-intuitive strategy.  Then again, so is the idea that you should stand still when a T-Rex breathes down your neck.  Your gut instinct, in that unlikely instance, is to shed your internal organs and run like crazy in the opposite direction.  Fight or flight, our instincts tell us.  This is the logical way.

But I finally choose to relax, let go, and let the Sea have its way with me.  Within moments, the undertow sucks me underneath the waves and, like a knuckleballer in full windup, flings me back toward the shore.  I ride the waves back in head-first at high velocity.  The surf smashes me into the turf at an awkward and embarrassing angle.  I may have blacked out for a brief moment, then quickly pop up, dazed, confused, and woozy.  The lining of my lungs are coated with salt and, somehow, a terrified starfish clings to my left temple, holding on for dear life.  After I stagger around for a moment and re-gather my bearings.  My subpar Daniel eyes readjust to the light and I notice that I am the length of a football field away from my sand castle sub development on the other end of the beach.  Then, a peak experience, a rare moment of self-actualization - I have escaped a brush with death.  I had nearly drowned.  This was even more surreal the second time around in Hawai'i...I should know better, I've been through this.  I'm seven now!  Then, the crocodile tears of self-pity.  I sprint in the general direction of "home" and find Mom surveying the water to see where the sharks have dragged me.  I quickly jump into her arms with tears streaming down my face.  She kisses me gently on the cheek, wraps me in a towel, and carries me away from the water.  And then I forget all about it.

Everything I have said above is true, and it did happen twice.  Well, I did make up the starfish part, but I think we all needed that comic relief after going through that horrible ordeal, didn't we?  Anyway, the resolution of my near-drowning-in-the-Pacific experiences, in which I ultimately yielded to forces beyond my control in order to regain it, has emerged as somewhat of a metaphor in my life recently.  I think we all can relate to that feeling.  Since September 2008, many of us have been tossed to and fro by the brutal tides of the recession as banks started to collapse like flan in a musky cupboard.  Home foreclosures, massive layoffs, bailouts of the automotive and financial sectors.  Previously alien terms like "sub-prime mortgage" and "credit default swap" have rapidly become prominent in our common parlance.  And with these words has come a sense of sheer panic and anxiety.  Never in my life have I seen so many Americans quickly re-adjust their economic behavior in accordance with news headlines.  We have stopped spending, stopped borrowing, stopped lending and, as a consequence, stopped working and stopped living.  

I guess I'm no exception.  I picked the worst possible job market to graduate into.  I placed all of my eggs in the clerkship basket, had a couple of near-hit interviews, but have ultimately come up short.   Thus, a mere matter of weeks before my law school graduation, I do not yet have a job and face a six-figure debt monster looming on the horizon.  It's enough to make one panic and struggle, wrestling against forces beyond either our understanding or control to find solutions both desperate and drastic.  This is also accompanied by intense psychological turmoil, complete with the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth.

As I am caught in this latest undertow, I can hear the muffled sounds of fellow swimmers also caught by the waves..."Join the pity party!" they invite me with bloodshot eyes as they swim in three-piece suits, a rescinded job offer in one hand and a bottle of self-medication in the other.  As I float on through the turmoil, I remember that I have been here before.  And both times, I survived.  So I turn to my fellow sufferers and sternly reply, "No thanks."  As my friends and colleagues struggle themselves further into the depths of the waters, I take a deep underwater breath, close my eyes, and let the Sea take me.  It's time to go recession surfing, and just ride this one out.

This is nearly blasphemous in the context of the Washington legal culture.  This is a city of striving; high-strung anxiety is as necessary as eating, drinking, and breathing to my peers.  It is the necessary primal emotion for survival in a dog-eat-dog ladder-climb to the top.  And in the context of what is going on now, it is understandable.  I have certainly experienced my fair share of it over the past few months as I struggle to find my footing in order to prepare to pay back Uncle Sam.  

But such anxiety is damaging.  We succeed when we focus, and we can only focus when we relax, because in the end, we have to come to grips with the difficult idea that some things are beyond our control.  This includes the decisions of hiring partners and judges, the reactionary decisions made in the halls of Congress, and the tight purses and harsh punitive actions of consumer creditors.  If, as the likes of economists from Adam Smith to Alan Greenspan have alleged, the market is guided by the force of an Invisible Hand, then it stands to reason that a hand we can't see is a hand that we can't understand.  I certainly don't get all of the nuances of why the world is crashing all around us, in spite of my best efforts to educate myself.  All I know is that none of it is worth sacrificing my sanity on the alter of frayed nerves and unmet expectations.

It is with this attitude that I enter the home stretch of my law school career, into the Maryland Bar Exam, and ultimately into the job market.  I can safely say that I have never faced anything scarier in my life; I also have to admit that I can do little to nothing to fix my circumstances.  So I've decided to forgo the struggle, to smile, breathe, and go easy, to relax and let the undertow have its way with me.  I will affirm within my spirit the prayer of serenity, to put my hopes, dreams, and curriculum vitae into the hands of my Creator with the unwavering belief that I will come out okay on the other side.

You can trust me.  I've been through this before, and I am still here.  Let the Forces of Nature do their work.  I invite you all to let go.

I'll see you on the beach.