Legally Rambling (10/3/2009) Between the soccer game, laundry (Yes, this lawyer does laundry) movie night, and general tomfoolery that visits my house when my sons are home (Ok, so I encourage the tomfoolery!), the gaps in my day today were filled with thoughts of "home." Maybe author John Ed Pearce has it right - "home is the place where you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to." Perhaps it's that I want my sons to have the same experience that I had growing up in a big Italian-American Family. I am truly blessed with that experience.
Now, I am not sure that people realize that work-life balance issues are so great in the lives of most successful lawyers. Perhaps its the hours that negate the time for "home." Perhaps it's that lawyers deal with conflict all day long and yearn for that peaceful place to - well - not be a lawyer ("home"). A place to get out of the fire. I mean at times dealing with conflict in a family law case, or contested probate really makes me wonder whether these clients ever experienced the concept of "home" and if they did - what happened?, and more importantly can they get it back? It kind of scares me. If you practice long enough, you have to wonder if Robert Frost was really wrong. I mean, is home "the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in"? Or is the concept of "home" just an ideal for us all.
But then again, after thinking about work-life balance issues and case conflict, Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell's comment comes to my mind, "So uh, you, uh, never know...what... what events are to transpire to get you home." We are all in fact on God's pocketwatch. In one way or another I suspect we all get home. Ramble on!
Now, I am not sure that people realize that work-life balance issues are so great in the lives of most successful lawyers. Perhaps its the hours that negate the time for "home." Perhaps it's that lawyers deal with conflict all day long and yearn for that peaceful place to - well - not be a lawyer ("home"). A place to get out of the fire. I mean at times dealing with conflict in a family law case, or contested probate really makes me wonder whether these clients ever experienced the concept of "home" and if they did - what happened?, and more importantly can they get it back? It kind of scares me. If you practice long enough, you have to wonder if Robert Frost was really wrong. I mean, is home "the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in"? Or is the concept of "home" just an ideal for us all.
But then again, after thinking about work-life balance issues and case conflict, Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell's comment comes to my mind, "So uh, you, uh, never know...what... what events are to transpire to get you home." We are all in fact on God's pocketwatch. In one way or another I suspect we all get home. Ramble on!
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