Sometimes standing in someone's shadow isn't a bad thing

As a teenager, all I wanted to do was escape from my brother's shadow. To this day, whenever I run into someone who I went to high school with that is a few years older than me, I always ask if they knew my brother. And, they always do. My brother was cool; he was smart; he was popular. Teachers loved him (or hated him, but either way they remembered him); he was on the pep squad; he threw keg parties every Friday night; he got in to Princeton; his friends were beautiful; . It was a big shadow.

I somehow managed to be as close to the opposite as him as was possible without being a dumbass. Instead of sports, I was into the arts. Instead of hanging with the cool kids, I got cozy with the Goths. I blended into the crowd. I excelled at the things I was good at and ignored everything else.

Since then, I've moved on quite a bit. Somehow in the intervening years, my brother and I have become more and more similar. Similar patterns through college and law school (although at very different schools for both). Along the way, I've consistently turned to him for advice. He's helped with choosing where to study abroad, taking the LSAT, studying for law school exams, interviewing for summer associate positions, applying for clerkships, and now he's helping me with my post-clerkship job search. Through all of this, his advice has been invaluable. He gave me 1L outlines to teach me to outline and looked over my resume.

Last week he discovered that he had made partner at the law firm he's been working at. Its fantastic news, and we are all very excited. I'm just about to start my legal career and he is settling into his. I've become envious of the life (particularly the family) that he has, and I've come to realize that its pretty great to have someone breaking the trail in front of you, even if that sometimes means standing in their shadow.