Career vs Love: Which Would You Pick?

While browsing through Penelope Trunk’s blog, I came across this interesting post on how crazy her life became when she started writing 2 columns, a blog and started publicity for her book.

And boy, could I relate. At the height of my law school “career,” I was a debater with the St. Thomas More Debate Society, a rising editor of the Ateneo Law Journal, a columnist for the Sunstar Davao, and had a then new and budding relationship with the girl of my dreams. This was on top of the already heavy load of being a law student. I had a “career” and the love of my life, all at one time.

Yeah I went a little crazy around then. I started sleeping less, never even bothered to communicate with my family anymore (who all started wondering where I was always disappearing to), always studied at the last minute, ate tons of fast food (because well… they were fast to get and eat. Thank you Jollibee.) and was irritable everyday.

The quality of everything I was doing suffered. Lousy arguments when debating, stupid editing mistakes were made, haphazard studying, missed dates with my dreamgirl, the works.

The worst was when I had to stay overnight in school to do the finishing touches on an issue of the Law Journal. It was Valentine’s Day. I postponed our special date to the next night, only to realize that I had completely forgotten to get her a gift.

Her tears at dinner made me feel guilty for a long long time.

I want to say that was the turning point. That I realized I had to change my ways and focus on my relationship. Unfortunately, I didn’t. I kept at it.

I had become a workaholic, and enjoyed having all the responsibilities and the perception that I was a rising law student and someone meant for greater things (turns out I really wasn’t, but you would be surprised at how far self-deception can get you).

I enjoyed how I was supposed to be a future great lawyer and have a grand career in the legal profession. I enjoyed the great lawyer idea so much, I wound up neglecting my dreamgirl.Even then, her tears weren’t the turning point.

Mine were.

The turning point was when my dreamgirl wanted out of the relationship. There were lots of tears then. Much of it mine. My world came crashing down. My crazy life went crazier. Because of other controversies in my life, I even wound up leaving the Law Journal. Worse, my studies suffered greatly as well.

To make a very long (and oh so tragic) story short, I realized that there were other things more important that one’s career. I realized how the stress of my life and waayyy too much work had changed my priorities, and even changed the way I looked at things.

I realized that I had chosen my future career as a lawyer over the love of my life. I wound up with almost nothing in the process.

To coin a cliche, it is only when something is gone that you learn to appreciate it.

I’m not sure how though, but my dreamgirl and I did manage to get back together. But it took a lot of hard work and a lot of changes in my life in particular. It also took a lot of patience and understanding on hers.

She saw that a life in the law (such as mine) demanded a lot, but that if we worked together, we could have a wonderful life together.

So we got back together, and in fact, we are already in the midst of planning our future together. I’ve slowed down and focused on only a few things now.

But best of all, I saw how much I love her, and that if ever I would be placed in a position to choose between career and love again, I would choose love in a heartbeat.

Sometimes when I’m with her, I steal glances at her face when she isn’t looking. And I think to myself that I’ve been lucky. Lucky in what? Why, in love of course. Yes, I know that’s a cliche too, being lucky in love.

So? That’s the way I feel. I can only hope she feels the same way too.

Choose Love.

(I’ve posted this article in the Employee Evolution blog, where it received a lot of feedback and comments. Jason Unger links to that post here, as does the Newly Corporate Blog. I had previously written a post on How to NetworkWithout Really Trying for Employee Evolution, and you can see it here.)