In the late summer of 2010, I found myself in the process of applying to law school. It had been a challenging journey up to that point, a step-by-step advance that required no small amount of determination and patience to complete the prerequisites necessary to study law in the United States. However, before I got to the point of sending off more than 20 applications to universities all over the U.S., I had one final step to complete: The Personal Statement.
In case you're not familiar with it, the Personal Statement is a short essay in which a prospective student must describe what makes him or her unique from all other applicants. It is meant to tell Selection Committees something about you that is not already apparent in your résumé, and to sell them on selecting you out of the crowd. When I say the essay is short, I mean "2 pages, double-spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman font" short. About 850 words. That's right, 850 words that could greatly affect the course of your life.
Needless to say, this stressed me out a bit. Two double-spaced pages to decide my scholastic fate? I enjoyed writing (and still do), but this presented no easy challenge. I quickly got my hands on anything I could find about the finer points of Personal Statements. I bought stacks of books from Barnes & Noble and browsed pre-law discussion forums on the internet ad infinitum. I read dozens of impressive Personal Statement examples by people who were now attending Harvard, Yale and Stanford. I tried different ways to emphasize the highlights of my own background and articulate my reasons for studying law that went beyond reading Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird or watching John Grisham's Runaway Jury. I asked for feedback from professors and friends who had already been to grad school and, predictably, began receiving so many contradictory comments that the whole process became an exasperating headache. That's when I decided to just be myself. Do it my own way. This decision made things a lot easier.
I decided to write about my worldview, and how people I've met along the path of life have shaped it. This is obviously impossible to do in a 2-page essay, so I had to pick just one story, one snapshot, as an archetype for my whole life. Almost immediately, I thought of a man I had met under a very unique set of circumstances in 2006. His story was extraordinary, and even 4 years later, I still found myself grappling to comprehend its full meaning. This essay seemed as good a time as any to talk about him. You see, the world is a crossroads of millions of stories, mine being just one among many. Oftentimes I have found that just listening to and sharing the story of a fellow human being - their true-to-life, impossible, painful, dirty story - is something that brings deep meaning to this strange and mysterious phenomenon we call "existence."
Further on below, I will explain the details behind this story. But for now, I present to you the final version of my Law School Personal Statement, in full:
Sunset at the Old Mandalay Palace in Myanmar / flickr
Once I met the King of Burma and his name was Tennessee. We did not share a pot of tea on the lawn of the old Mandalay Palace, as an audience with Burmese royalty might suggest. Neither did we collide on a busy street in the city of Yangon, as happenstance might orchestrate. Rather, I found Tennessee in a rainforest, near a town called Mae Sod, somewhere along the border that cuts Thailand from Myanmar. I was unaware of his nobility until the day he showed me his “business card.” It was a wallet-sized photo of a young man wrapped in satin robes and seated on a white sofa, the words KING OF BURMA printed in yellow ink above his head.
Despite his claim to the throne, Tennessee is neither a king nor Burmese. He is a soldier, and he comes from an ethnic group known as the Karen. I met him at a refugee camp four years ago while traveling with a relief team through Southeast Asia. We were there to deliver medical supplies and help develop plans for the construction of a makeshift airfield. I thought we had come to aid hopeless exiles who were born victims of circumstance, but I was wrong. There was not a victim to be found among them. Instead, I found fighters. I found people who refused to surrender, and no one embodied their tenacity better than Tennessee.
Tennessee in his classic KNLA ensemble: bare feet & a bright white T-shirt. (2006)
He rolled into my life on the back of an old pickup truck with all the flair of a five-star general. A commanding officer of the Karen National Liberation Army, Tennessee has defended his people since the age of twelve. For more than three decades he has cheated death to make a living, and every detail of his persona accentuated this paradox. He wore an innocent white t-shirt that clashed with the AK-47 strapped to his shoulder. He spoke quietly, laughed loudly, and preferred high fives to handshakes. He loved country music and hated the Burmese.
For a week he escorted us through the muddy fields that defined his existence, every stop along the way a shrine to the man he had become. He took us to a village school where children learned to read, write, and sing songs of freedom. Tennessee was the hero of every boy in the classroom, and they smiled as he joined them in Karen hymns of patriotic reverence. He chuckled and grinned back at the boys as teardrops flooded his deep brown eyes. He loved the school, a place where laughter could still be heard above the sounds of war. Tennessee remained a boy on the inside, but the children reminded him of the innocence he lost the day he picked up a gun.
Karen children in a school hut. (2006)
The next morning he led us to a remote medical hut that housed pregnant women and dying soldiers. In a room where life and death lay side by side, Tennessee felt at home. He had delivered babies and witnessed the excruciating joy of childbirth, but on just as many occasions he had contracted malaria and fought to outlast his own extinction. Life and death were not just beginning and endpoints for him; they form part of what it means to be Karen. From creation to expiration – and every day in between – there is always a battle to fight.
On our last evening with Tennessee, he snuck us over the border to an outpost near the combat zone. We spent the night in hammocks and met the men that Tennessee called his “boys.” They were young and old, husbands and fathers, snipers and bodyguards. Some missed their wives while others were missing arms and legs. They all missed hours of sleep to stay up and talk with us. We laughed together as Tennessee told wild tales of ambushes, gunfights, and midnight raids. He was a father to these men, and his outrageous smile made them forget they were killers.
KNLA soldiers on patrol. (2006)
The little I left behind during my week with the Karen was a drop in the bucket of their existence, a band-aid for an aneurism. I walked away, however, with a revelation that changed my life. Tennessee taught me that the world must be engaged at point-blank range, face to face. He taught me that dreams can only come true when one steps foot on the battlefield of reality. He taught me to never be a victim, for all is lost the moment one surrenders to the status quo.
Today I stand face-to-face with my dream: to be a lawyer. My battlefield is law school, a land situated on the border of what I know and what I have yet to discover. I am ready to wage a war of ideas, a struggle of statutes, procedure, and legal precedent. It is only one battle amongst many, as I may go on from law school to negotiate contracts, mediate disputes, or perhaps even help a shunned ethnic minority find a home. Wherever the law takes me, I will chase my goals and remember the soldier who dreams to be king; for he taught me what it means to be a fighter.
KNLA commander by a morning campfire. (2008) / from Agron Dragaj's photo collection "Burma's Silent War."
Epilogue
I want to first say that essay was not meant to be a glorification of war, nor is it an endorsement of the KNLA or related paramilitary groups. Rather, my purpose in telling this story is to share the struggle of one forgotten man and his people. The inspiration I got from spending a week with the Karen was not due to the external militant conflict that surrounded them, but rather the inner resolve that each of them showed to survive and make something better of the life they had been given.
How did this encounter ever happen? From 2005-2007 I attended a unique gap-year leadership program in the United States that combined elements of academic training, physical fitness and worldwide humanitarian aid. Two summers in a row I traveled with teams on month-long aid trips to Mexico and Southeast Asia, and it was on one of these journeys that we somehow ended up in a KNLA refugee village with a man who called himself "Tennessee."
I suspect the correct spelling of his name was "Tin Nyu Si" or some other phonetic transcription of Burmese, but he spoke little English and knew we couldn't speak a word of Burmese, so he just kept it simple and said it like "Tennessee." (Note: due to his thick accent, some of the other students on the trip still believe his name was actually pronounced "Tennyson", as in Alfred, Lord. The full truth may never be known).
Tennessee really did carry around a wallet-sized photo of himself dressed in silk sheets, and he personally scribbled "King of Burma" at the top of the picture in case anyone was confused about its meaning. The photo was clearly of a much younger Tennessee, and it had suffered years of wear and tear from accompanying its owner through all manners of danger.
Why did Tennessee hate the Burmese and yet aspire to be their king? I encourage you to read up on the Karen people and their history. But to provide a brief explanation, in the years following the end of World War II the Karen attempted to live independently from what had formerly been the Kingdom of Burma. There was a strong ethnic divide between the Burmese and the Karen, which led to the Burmese violently antagonizing the Karen, and in turn the Karen rising up as insurgents. Ultimately, the Karen were unsuccessful in their offensive and they were slowly pushed out of Myanmar - but the government of Thailand would not take them in. Thus, for the past 65 years the Karen have lived on the hinterland between Myanmar and Burma, fighting for their lives and mostly forgotten by the outside world.
It is also true that Tennessee possessed an impressive collection of country music, and he would play it non-stop during the hours-long drives we had in his fleet of 4x4 trucks. While flipping through his CD case one day during one of these trips, we also found an audio Bible - an NIV Version, narrated by James Earl Jones. Tennessee insisted on playing that particular CD immediately. Let's just say it's a life-long memory to watch dense Asian rain forest passing by your window outside as Darth Vader reads to you from the Gospel of John.
I still try to keep up with the news about what is happening with the Karen, but sadly not much is reported, and my life has taken me on other journeys to other places. Nevertheless, as the statement says in the end, I will never forget the week I spent with Tennessee and his people, and I will never give up in my own personal fight to create a better world and leave behind a legacy that means something.
(cover photo by Antolín Avezuela)