Thanksgiving

About 10 years ago, I wrote a column in the local King County Bar Journal about gratitude and well-being – directed (of course) at lawyers.  I happened upon it today as I was going over old files and thought I ought to post it.  I like its message and it certainly isn’t limited to lawyers:
Lincoln

GRATITUDE 

On October 3, 1863, our country was in the middle stages of a horrific civil war.  Unlike recent involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq, which touched families selectively, in that time, almost every family experienced the devastating loss of a young and vital life.  A hundred and fifty years ago, people weren’t talking about the costs of war in some theoretical sense – that crushing weight was shared universally throughout the entire society.

 And yet it was on that date, amidst this cultural trauma, which today we can scarcely imagine, that Abraham Lincoln issued of all things a “Thanksgiving Proclamation.”  He noted that, despite “a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict.”  He went on to observe that the economy was still robust and the country was growing “notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and battlefield,” and that “the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.”

 Perhaps most remarkable about this proclamation is that it came from the pen of a man who was frequently crushed by depression during most of his adult life.  But then, Lincoln seemed to understand so much on a basic intuitive level – he’s not on the five dollar bill for nothing, after all.  He saw that relief from despair may be obtained through gratitude.

 Turning to our own special plight, while we lawyers certainly cannot indulge in the conceit that our experiences mirror those at Antietam or Falujah, many of us are challenged to our core on a daily basis by the demands of the work that we do and the environment we create.  Martin Seligman, Ph.D., professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania and past-president of the A.P.A., has something to tell us about the causes of our professional unhappiness and the way out of it.

 In his recent book, Authentic Happiness (despite the rather “sweet” title this is a powerful and rigorously researched work), Seligman first describes a number of the qualities of thought which are endemic to the practice of law that seem to make us prone to pessimism and unhappiness.  These observations are consistent with a wide array of research conducted over the years at U.W., Johns Hopkins and under the auspices of the A.B.A.  These have been touched upon in past columns and I won’t belabor them here.  If you are interested, I do recommend you to the “Work and Personal Satisfaction” chapter in Seligman’s book for a particularly trenchant discussion of the challenges faced by attorneys.  For the moment, let’s take as a given that lawyers experience a depressing downward pressure on their mood and life-outlook from their education, training and practice.  Now for a way out.

 Gratitude is not a habit of mind for lawyers – nor is it a habit of conduct.  Yet, Seligman’s research has revealed, quite clearly, that a deep sense of personal well-being comes with attendance to gratitude.  This is a two-step process.  The first is simple realization of those circumstances and people for which we are deeply grateful.  It is suggested from various sources, both spiritual and secular, that we would be well-served by taking a set time out of our routine to acknowledge to ourselves what and who we are grateful for – and not only the object, but the reason. 

 For example, I am blessed to have my eleven year old daughter in my life….because when I get home from dealing with the toxicity of conflict for a living, she’s there with our beautiful golden retriever and she is so beautifully open, intelligent and fresh.   I am invariably transported to a finer place and as I sit here right now and look at her picture on my desk, I feel myself relax. 

 We so often take our health and physical well-being for granted.  I remember a moment five years ago when I was on a ladder, arranging some boxes in the attic of our home when the ladder slipped out from under me and I fell flat on my back from ceiling height.  I should by all rights have been seriously injured – but all I got was a bruise on my arm.  I don’t know what force protected me that morning – perhaps it was God almighty;  maybe it was dumb luck –  but there’s not a week that goes by that I’m not grateful for my health and moments of good fortune such as that.

 As I write this, my wonderful wife is soon to be leaving for a two week trip to Italy with  her best pal.  I’m looking forward to being Mr. Mom for a while and having alone time with our girl, but I’m going to miss the warmth and sweetness of my baby’s loving company. 

 While all of these thoughts tend to lighten the load on a daily basis, there is one more powerful step which brings the power of gratitude home.  That is the expression of gratitude.

 I went through a period when I was lazy and didn’t express my gratitude to my life’s partner.  Over time a hard-to-pinpoint coolness developed inside of me. I actually was very aware that in my preoccupation with work and striving that I was failing in the fundamental task of expressing my gratitude for the love in my life.  When I finally “snapped out of it” and began to attend to these gifts, I swear it felt like the windows were thrown open to a stuffy room and warmth began to fill our home.  This warmth not only filled our environment, the actual practice of experiencing and expressing gratitude felt healing for me, internally.  Recently, the incessant stresses of this professional calling are less wearing.  Renewal is easier.

 So here’s a suggestion.  In three weeks, those of you who are fortunate to be sitting around a table on Thanksgiving with people who have touched you, express your gratitude – openly and unabashedly.  What the heck.  If you can’t get away with that kind of behavior on Thanksgiving, when can you?  Let each person who touches you know that you are grateful for their gifts. Describe those gifts, simply and clearly.  See how it makes you feel.  My bet is that you’ll think you just gave yourself an enormous holiday gift.

Leaving the Law

leavingWhen I was 29 years old I left the practice of law for a while.  I had lived for a time in Washington D.C. and decided that becoming a bartender was the way I could find work anywhere I wanted to live, so when I followed a woman I was involved with back to the Bay Area, I enrolled in the Golden Gate Bartending School.  I recall to this day with great fondness, old Mac McLaughlin hiking his chubby body onto a bar stool with the San Francisco Chronicle splayed out before him, ordering various cocktails which I made from liquor bottles filled with colored water.  I’d make my Manhattans and Mai Tai’s while Mac would keep up a constant banter, “So, Mr. Joe, what do you think of that People’s Temple thing, there?   That’s sweet vermouth you need…”  When I had my private practice for many years afterward, I hung my Diploma from Mac’s school along with my other sheepskin on the wall.

Upon my graduation from bartending school, I went looking for jobs and, predictably, experience counted for a lot in a fairly tight market.  I finally landed a job in a bar which was attached to an old, institutional Italian restaurant, “Bellini’s” on Telegraph Avenue right on the border of Oakland and Berkeley.  It was a pretty dicey area and a pretty dead bar, but on those few nights when we had a nice crowd in, the concentration required to keep all the orders straight was a Zen experience – hours passed by in seconds.  To this day, I cannot hear “I Will Survive,” by Gloria Gaynor or “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” by Rod Stewart without being shot back to that dark, often empty, bar and the mindnumbing number of times the owner put those songs on the jukebox.

One Friday night, on a particularly busy night in the bar, the front door swung open and in walked a guy dressed in jeans, a sweater, and with his entire head covered in gauze.  Gloves covered his hands and when he sat down at my bar, the conversation level dropped to a whisper.  He pulled out a steno pad and pen and wrote, “A beer please.”  I asked if domestic was ok and he nodded his assent to that question and, also, whether he wanted a Bud.  He introduced himself as “Mickey” and wrote that he had experienced an allergic reaction to painting his apartment and couldn’t talk and his wife had told him to get out of the house and go to a bar after being cooped up at home too long.  I asked him how long he was going to look like The Mummy and he wrote “No Mummy Jokes!”  Mickey was a delight and his company brightened my night.  About an hour into his visit, he wrote me the question: “Where did you go to high school?”  When I told him, he asked if I knew a particular woman with whom I had gone to high school and law school.  Suspicion flooded my system as I looked into those eyes and asked, “Who the f*** are you?”  He shrugged, said he had to go to the bathroom and when he emerged, bandages unrolled, he turned out to be one of my dearest friends from law school who lived in Santa Barbara.  Steven Faulstich wanted to come see me as a bartender, but didn’t want me to know it was him, thus no voice and no face.  Definitely one of the greatest things anyone has ever done for me.

As the weeks went on, and I would say to patrons of this neighborhood bar that I was a lawyer, but had decided to try something else, these working class people looked at me in disbelief and even some disgust – finding it incomprehensible that I would take this incredible opportunity to be a lawyer and just piss it away.  It got me to thinking and, out of respect for these people as much as for any other reason, I returned to practice for another 8 years before I finally went back to school to earn my Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy.  Still, it took me another 10 years to fully disconnect from the practice, as I had great anxiety about what else I could do – having more experience in a field for which I was temperamentally ill-suited than for anything else.  Slowly, as I gained experience and confidence in my writing and therapeutic work, I was able to fully detach and have since enjoyed the happiest years of my life.

My experience is certainly not unique.  Now and again I read of others who have made this transition.  The most recent is a wonderful column by Bob Markowitz in the New York Times  entitled “Abandoning the Work I Hated.”  Enjoy – and for all you disaffected lawyers out there, take hope!

Remember the McDonald’s Coffee Case?

Back in the 1990’s a New Mexico jury awarded Stella Liebeck more than $2.8 million against McDonald’s because she spilled hot cocoffeeffee on her lap.  This has been brought up to me many times over the years as proof of the dangers of frivolous personal injury suits.  “She sues because she is burned by hot coffee?  Ridiculous.”  A new documentary is on Netflix called Hot Coffee which explores the case and its aftermath.  I invite you to take this short quiz to see what you know about this case:

1.  Stella Liebeck was: (a) A 16 year old girl (b) A 32 year old mother of 3 (c) A 79 year old widow.   Answer

2.  When the accident occurred, Stella was: (a) Driving (b) In the passenger seat of the moving car (c) In the passenger seat of a parked car.  Answer

3.  The temperature of the coffee was: (a) Over 180 degrees F. (b) Around 120 degrees F. (c) Around 150 degrees F.  Answer

4.  Stella Liebeck’s injuries were mainly: (a) A painful rash on her thighs which lasted for a month (b) Third degree burns on 6% of her body (c) Painful blistering on her thighs and buttocks: Answer

5.  The case went to trial because: (a) McDonald’s offered to pay her medical bills, but she thought they should pay punitive damages (b) McDonald’s offered $250,000 but she wanted $1,000,000 (c)  She asked for payment of her medical expenses and lost income (about $160,000) but McDonald’s offered only $800.  Answer

6.  Had McDonald’s been given any notice that hot coffee may be a problem? (a) About as much notice as you and I have that hot coffee is hot (b) A couple of people over the past 5 years had been burned (c) McDonald’s had received about 700 complaints of burns from excessively hot coffee.  Answer

The point is:  READ ON