Tear Away from the Dotted Line

I saw Tear Along the Dotted Line towards the end of 2021. Watching it, I took away a seed - the world has a dotted line for you to tear along for all of your life, even at the cost of much suffering to yourself. Go to secondary school, get a respectable degree, serve your country, get a respectable job, start a family, and on and on. It’s a dotted line in a piece of paper, and the success of your life is a question of how well you tear along the line. In that moment, it isn’t a measure of the height of your happiness, or the richness of your experiences, or how much joy you spread. It is a question of how well you tore along the dotted line. And I tore along it well. Well enough that in my final year of school, I was on a second class upper and had participated in many competitions. I had participated actively in student organisations. I had done many of the things I was supposed to do. But I was also frustrated. I was frustrated for many reasons, but primarily by my lack of agency. I was the proverbial dead fish that went with the flow.

I has been over a year since I graduated from my law undergraduate degree. Today is the starkest reminder, as the set of students a year behind mine saw their full results today. And I saw many of their excited posts. And I saw how many of them worked along side school, building amazing careers. Seeing that made me remember how I felt as I left school. The seed in my mind at my lack of agency had taken deep, deep, roots in me. And I had spent two years trying to remove those roots. I had failed.

Upon graduation, the question on my mind was “what next?” The dotted line answered firmly and clearly - the Nigerian Law School. I would spend nine months trying to get the first class grade I had failed to get in my undergraduate years. I would fail, having had a single B grade amidst a sea of As. I would have settled for a consecutive second class upper. And then I would serve my country. Hopefully, the service would be in a law firm on the Island. And on and on. It was so predictable. A great course, but not the one I wanted. My father had died two years before. He had made every real decision for me before then, leaving me unable to decide what I wanted for dinner. On the other side of my grief was my confusion. No, side by side my grief, because grief persists.

I now write this sitting, while my friend lays a couple of feet from me. He spent the last nine months in law school, while I spent mine working as a software engineer. Nine months ago, I often tried to remind myself that I made the better decision. That going to law school wouldn’t have led to a better outcome for me. And often, I found myself unable to measure where my software engineering career is headed to where my law career would have been headed. These days, I don’t think much of what my life could have been. It’s useless to me. And this isn’t because I made the right choice. It’s helpful to me to consider that I didn’t make this choice because it was the right one, but it is the right one because it is the one I made. I loved studying law, and would likely have loved practising it, but I love building software even more. And building software is what I want to do.

When I chose to forfeit my opportunity to attend law school, there was some kickback. Friends told me it was a bad idea, especially since I seemed to do well at law. Family implored me to reconsider. I’ve spent most of my life taking the path of least resistance. I have been frustrated by this, and was most frustrated by it last year. That frustration at my lack of agency is likely why I didn’t go to law school. I was also scared that I was making the wrong decision. But my frustration was greater than my fear, and here we are.

You likely use software I build daily. My contract role was converted into full time employment in February, and then I got doubly promoted in September. My work is hard, but exciting. All of these make me want to say I made the right decision. But if I worked on obscure software, earning less, and maybe even moving through temporary jobs, would I think it’s the wrong decision? I think not. I can give many reasons why not. And you can perhaps also provide counters. But living with this decision, even though it has only been a little over a year, has thought me that conviction might be more important than the specific direction. As long as I chose productivity, in something I had strong conviction in, the specifics of what I was doing were largely irrelevant. And knowing that, the only thing left is what I really wanted to do. Many of the other reasons were merely excuses to do what I wanted to do.

Today, I implore you to not shy away from tearing away from the dotted line. But not unreasonably. The dotted line is the culmination of what society decides is the optimal path for most people. There is often virtue in an undergraduate degree. Few professions will pay better than lawyering. Starting a family early will bring great joy to most people. There is no shame in diligently tearing along the dotted line. But when you are filled with conviction for your cause, do not shy away from tearing away from the dotted line. I recently read - you are not your cohort, neither are you the mean of your peers. The context of this reading was preaching for greater agency. And I wholly agree. Most times, it’s fine to stick to your herd. But sometimes, if you hope to get the life you dream of, you may have to step out of it.

Tear Along the Dotted Line has a sequel - This World can’t Tear me down. I’m yet to see it. But I do agree that with enough conviction, you can forge your own path.