Enter the Xave-verse
In another life, I may have really liked lawyering with you
The results of the 2022 Bar exams were released last Friday to the jubilation of the 3,992 who passed the grueling four-day test and to the heartbreak of 5,191 others who did not meet the average score of 75% to make the cut. This means that only 43.47% passed the Bar, which was significantly lower than last year’s 72.28% passing rate, but was still among the higher passing rates in the past few years, as ABS-CBN News’ Mike Navallo observed.
Of those who passed, I count many who are acquaintances and friends. Two of them used to be my classmates at the University of Santo Tomas. Others were some of my closest companions during my extremely brief stint studying law at the University of the Philippines. It is my hope, like 2022 Bar chairperson Supreme Court Associate Justice Alfredo Caguioa’s, that they “will find the most humane meaning and the noblest purposes behind this success.”
That success I reflected on as I covered the announcement of the Bar exams results remotely on a bus to Taguig from Lucena City. In an alternate timeline, where the subatomic particles that make up our universe spun ever so slightly in a different direction, I could have been one of those who passed the Bar now waiting to take their oath and sign the Roll of Attorneys. Other scenarios include, but are not limited to, being one of those who did not pass, or not having yet taken the Bar exams as I have been delayed in law school.
I could not help but ask myself: Where would I be now had I not taken to heart the advice of our constitutional law professor, Atty. John Molo, that the best place to change things in our country is not in law school but outside of it? Would I be in a better place had I not remembered my interaction with former deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte, who told me that the country needs more journalists than lawyers? Would my present (and future) be far less precarious had I decided to just stick my head into the teetering pile of Supreme Court rulings that we were assigned to read instead of watching Spotlight that one gloomy day when I decided that pursuing a career in law was not for me? To be clear, I do not regret foregoing legal education to chase stories as a journalist. It’s just that I feel there is this nagging need to imagine a present where things are wildly different.
In the Oscar-winning film Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, one version of Evelyn Wang was the worst possible iteration of herself. This made her unhappy, but was made to realize by Alpha Waymond that this allowed her to be a great receptacle for the skills of all her other versions in different universes as she is practically a blank canvas. In our non-fictionalized universe, I would like to imagine that while the Xave here is probably not the worst iteration of myself, I am very much like blank canvas Evelyn. Becoming a journalist allowed me to see, experience and learn things which I might not have been able to had I chosen a different path.
But certainly, these could have also happened for me elsewhere, including in legal practice. I just hope that the other versions of Xave are happier than I am now. I hope they are tough, stubborn and give people hell. Most importantly, I hope they made a choice that benefitted them in tangible and intangible ways and let them sleep soundly at night knowing that they have done no one wrong as they have strived — no matter how clumsily — to do everyone right.