“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver said it beautifully. What do we plan to do with our lives, personally or in business? Going forward from today, what would you like your life to look like and how to you plan to meet and exceed those goals?
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver Life is not a dress rehearsal. That is it, for better or for worse. And, as author Annie Dillard tells us, how we live each day is how we live our lives. “Look to this day . . . ” advises the Sanskrit poem, “for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the realities and verities of existence, the bliss of growth, the splendor of action, the glory of power . . . Look well, therefore, to this day.” The moments we often consider the most critical – the day we entered law school, or passed the bar exam, or got married, or became a partner – are just that – moments. Yet each of those important days, and in every day, before and since, we have encountered all of the verities of existence – the highs, the lows and the many in-betweens.
The daily life of the lawyer is often rushed and stressed, filled with the “news of the hour and the crisis of the moment.” And whether we like to admit is or not, that stress is often intensified by near-constant preoccupation with “how we look” in any given situation. This can change, however, if we are willing to turn over the coin that reads, “what’s in it for me?” to the other side, which reads, “How can I serve?”
The legal profession was, and still is, “the noble profession,” notwithstanding many chinks in its armor. Even today, most first-year law students begin their training with joy and excitement, hoping to change the world for the better. Those attitudes can continue unabated in our professional lives if they are motivated by service, rather than personal gain alone.
By: F. Gregory Coffey
Maureen C. Kessler