If you think the purpose of the bar exam is to allow you to become something else, you have missed the mark. The purpose of the exam is to bring you closer to who you already are.
Michelangelo famously said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
In these days leading up to the test I hope you are relinquishing layers that obscured the perfect part of you that you already possess. That means letting go rather than adding on and unfolding perfectly as you were created to be.
Part of that means letting go of whatever you feel impeded your access to your dream before this moment: the story, the defense of loss and any notions of inadequacy. What you need most now is not to add another thing, but rather to release anything that no longer serves your plan and reconnect with your own powerful potential.
Whatever value judgment you place on what went wrong before, just know it has all been lining up perfectly for you, and it has all been leading you right here.
There’s an idea bound up in the intelligence of nature, just like Michelangelo’s statue, that everything necessary for growth and progress is already contained in the coded DNA of every being.
A seed needs no instruction on how to become a flower; instead, it needs the perfect conditions for its unfoldment. The acorn does not ask for help to become an oak tree, and the egg does not require instruction on how to mature into the bird. And you, who have been “trying” so hard to get to the last place, on this first part of your lawyering journey — first part I said — only need to return to the quiet but persistent part of you that informed your first desire, and that is your will, your talent and your incredible raw self-belief.
I don’t know about you, but I could not avoid that voice on my path, even against all practical realities, telling me at each step to take the next one. And that voice is the truest and most faithful part of you. How could that voice be wrong?
If there is one thing I have learned as I have shadowed so many of you over the years on this journey is that it happens perfectly, without your interference, if you just keep stepping in the direction of your desire — and if you are ready.
The whole world of possibility will open for you the moment your desire recouples with the that purest part of your possibility. It’s the part of you that did not ask permission to apply to law school, whose hand went up in the scary first days of that first year, to try yourself out in the contest of wills, who left the hallowed halls of law school as a proven entity, after what had been just a thought, that was nurtured into a reality. And if you think you see yourself in this essay, you are right.
In these last days before the exam, which always feels so eerie and almost sacred, I hope that you continue to chip away at that marble, at what has been covering your greatness, until the angel is set free. Know that I will be with every one of you, awaiting your unfoldment.
