Reality will place limits on you... and that's okay. Perfection is an illusion anyway. Real world pragmatism - that is, taking the world as it is, not how you'd like it to be - isn't something to rebel against, it's to be embraced. I think a lot of people - lawyers included - think that if you can't get everything you want, you've failed, and that means you're weak. You haven't represented your client to the best of your ability; you haven't bent the world to your will. But that's a lie because that's not how the world works. What were my instructors really saying? Get used to imperfection. We lawyers can stand to internalize that a bit more and pass that knowledge on to our clients.