Opinion: My everyday decisions are a legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life
The best thing about my Supreme Court internship in 1999 was getting to watch every argument. And of all the big personalities on that court — the brash Antonin Scalia, the brooding Clarence Thomas, the stately Sandra Day O’Connor — I was immediately drawn to its smallest member. I’ve always been sensitive to energy, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s was singular: equal parts rarefied intellect and unvarnished humanity. She related to struggle, marriage, parenthood, prejudice, religion and loss in a way that allowed her to empathize with the litigants she represented and, later, whose cases came before her. Her written opinions are windows into what heart and mind, when operating in concert and at their highest levels, can do.
After watching her on the bench and listening to her ask the one question, time and time again, that cut to the core of the matter, my interest deepened. I began to read about Ginsburg. I talked about her with family and friends — a lot. I never met her, saw her give a speech or even wrote her a letter. But she has been a pillar in my life since 1999 and will be, I believe, until I die.
When I was accepted to Harvard Law School, I was nearly too intimidated to go. But I thought of Ginsburg and enrolled. I spent 10 years sure I’d disappointed her by leaving corporate law to be a mother, wife and writer. But soon after the media announced her death, as I tried to focus on Rosh Hashana Eve Zoom services and the Shabbos candles on my table, it hit me: my path from corporate law to family to writing and rejoining the workforce, while winding and divergent from Ginsburg’s, is my own. I chose and choose it every day. That’s what she worked for. That’s what it’s all about.
Ginsburg influences how I partner with my spouse and mother my sons; how I work and choose what’s worth working for; and what’s important and what’s not. She’s there when I decide when to speak up and when to listen, what to accept and what to vigorously oppose.
When I read Debbie Levy’s “I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark” to my young children, they intuited that Ginsburg worked for truth. Witnessing their revelation, their elemental certainty of this fact, affirmed that there is still good in the world.
Yet I feel overwhelmed by evil. So, despite everything Ginsburg gave us and all her body went through, I fell to my knees and asked, “How could you do this? How could you leave us now?”
As cerebral and grounded as she was, Ginsburg affirmed my belief in a higher power. That she was put on this earth when she was; endured the bigotry she did; lost a mother whose genius was stifled by the shackles of her time; occupied the tiny frame that perhaps made her palatable to the conservative male senators who confirmed her; married a man who treated her as an equal; had in-laws born before women won the right to vote, yet encouraged her legal pursuits and helped her disguise her pregnancy while she worked; that she beat so many serious illnesses to see this turbulent time. This is not coincidence. It is synchronicity, karma or something more.
So, why now? One friend posits that the universe needed reinforcements — that she can work bigger and better from the other side. Another disagrees, “She did her job. Now, it’s on us.” Maybe we’ve collectively forgotten how to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, and so Ginsburg — like Rep. John Lewis shortly before her — resolved to force us to remember.
Thermodynamics teaches that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. A light as bright as RBG’s cannot go out. So I believe Ginsburg herself will answer the question, why now? We just need to open our broken hearts wide enough to hear her.
Emily Wolf is a recovering lawyer and writer. In 2009, she moved from Chicago to Houston, where she lives with her husband and two young sons.
