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[Bits and pieces of books that I want to be able to remember.]

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Sunday, October 27, 2013

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

Eventually, we became friends, and as we did, our conversations often edged into bigger themes that were written between teh lines of the daily procedures: the explosion of misdemeanors that seemed more symptomatic of social ills than evidence of criminal natures; the crudeness of the tools the system wielded against complicated problems.  p. 203

I don't view prosecutors and defense attorneys as natural enemiles, however common that view is both within and without the legal profession.  The two simply have different roles to play in pursuit of the larger purpose realizing the rule of law.  Though the roles are oppositional, their very existence depends on a shared acceptance of the law's judgement no matter the passion of either side for a desires outcome...neither the accused nor society is served unless the integrity of the system is set above the expedient purposes of either side.  p. 204

I have followed my mother's approact to family, refusing to limit myself to accidents of birth, blood, and marriage.  p. 229

Sharing was not my style; my problems were mine to deal with...inside I remained very much alone....It was not until these years after the DA's Office, as I started making more purposeful strides toward the person I wanted to be professionally, that i could begin to dream of reshaping the person I was emotionally, too.  My faith in my potential for self-improvement, which had been teh foundation for all my academic and professional success so far, would not be tested in more inaccessible regions of the self.  But I was optimistic: if I could help fix your problems, surely I can fix my own.
     I'd always believed people can change; very few are carved in stone or beyond redemption.  All my life I've looked around me and asked; What can I learn here?  What qualities in this friend, this mentor, even this rival, are worth emulating?  What in me needs to change?  Even as a child, I could reflect that my anger was accomplishing nothing, hurting only myself, and that I had to learn to stop in my tracks the instant I felt its surge.  Learning to be open about my illness was a first step and it taught me how admitting your vulnerabilities can bring people closer.  Friends want to help, and it's important to know how to accept help graciously, just as it's better to accept a gift with "Thank you" than "You shouldn't have."
     If there's a measure of how well I've succeeded in this self-transformation, it's that very few of my friends--even those who have known me the longest--can remember the person I was before undertaking the effort.  Such is the nature of familiarity and memory.  They also swear that they've always known about my diabetes and claim memories of seeing me give myself shots long before I ever did so openly.  But there is not better indicator of progress, or cause for pride, than the thaw in relations with my mother. 
     I wouldn't suffer the same lack of examples as my mother.  Friends would show me how to be warm, and I would learn by allowing others a chance to do for me as they had let me do for them, until no one remembered a time when it was not that way.  As I learned, I practiced on my mother--a real hug, a sincere compliment, an extra effort to let down my guard--and miraculously she softened in turn, out of instinct long dormant, even if she didn't quite know what was going on.  Opening up, I came to recognize the value of vulnerability and to honor it... p. 279-281

If you helf to principle so passionately, so inflexibly, indifferent to the particulars of circumstance--the full range of what human beings, with all their flaws and foibles, might endure or create--if you enthroned principle above even reason, weren't you abdicating some of the responsibilities of a thinking person? 
     There is indeed something deeply wrong with a person who lacks principles, who has no moral core.  There are, likewise, certainly values that brook no compromise, and I would count among them integrity, fairness, and the avoidance of cruelty.  But I have never accepted the argument that principle is compromised by judging each situation on its own merits, with due appreciation of the idiosyncrasy of human motivation and fallibility.  Concern for individuals, the imperative of treating them with dignity and respect for their ideas and needs, regardless of one's own views--these too are surely principles and as worthy as any of being deemed inviolable.  p. 300-301