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| "Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery;
For where a heart is hard they make no battery" | | |
| Be kind, first and foremost, to yourself… and spend time regularly to examine the choices you are making day-to-day, to ensure they're consistent with the trajectory you've set for yourself.
This is not to say that your life choices will be clear, or that life won't throw you some curve balls. We all get our share of difficulties. But a strongly rooted personal vision will make it much easier to keep things in perspective, and to endure life's inevitable temptations – and trials – with patience. A classic Eastern story illustrates just this kind of personal strength. It tells us that:
A farmer is out working in his fields when he finds a beautiful stallion which follows him back to the barn. A neighbor sees him with the animal and congratulates him on his luck in finding it.
"Lucky?" says the farmer, "Maybe. We'll see."
The next day, the farmer's son is riding the horse instead of working, is thrown from the horse, and breaks his leg. The same neighbor offers his condolences. "You were right. That horse was bad luck!"
"Maybe. We'll see."
A few days later, an army squad comes riding up to the farm. They'd been out on combing the countryside for conscripts when one of them was thrown from his horse, which then ran off. The old farmer led the men to their lost horse. The captain looked around at the farm, then at the old man with his bent back and said, "Surely you don't work this place all by yourself, do you? If there are any able-bodied men around here, you better tell me! Maybe the trip out here wasn't a waste of time after all!"
"It's just my son and myself. And he has a broken leg." The captain demanded to see for himself, but when he saw that the young man did indeed have a broken leg, and was in no shape to ride, they left him there on the farm, rather than taking him off to be cannon-fodder in the Emperor's wars.
Again, the neighbor marveled at his friend's luck, but the old man just shook his head and said, "Maybe. We'll see."
When you know who you are and have a plan for where you're going, life's inevitable ups and downs become lessons, rather than impediments, to reaching your goals.
Extracted from: http://www.niagara.edu/news2/news/Commencement%2000/GauntAddress.htm | | |
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| Extract from David Gemmell's "Legend"
"And what is a man? He is someone who rises when life has knocked him down. He is someone who raises his fist to heaven when a storm has ruined his crop - and then plants again. And again. A man remains unbroken by the savage twists of fate.
That man may never win. But when he sees himself reflected, he can be proud of what he sees. For low he may be in the scheme of things: peasant, serf or dispossessed. But he is unconquerable."
Fight on, brave knights, and achieve your destiny!  | | |
| Extract from Anonymous Lawyer
I've been meaning to write about Matthew Courtney, the London associate at Freshfields who died a couple of weeks ago after falling from a stairwell at the Tate Modern museum (news articles here, here, and here). I've probably received more e-mail about this story than about anything for as long as I've been blogging here.
All the stories hint at a possible suicide, caused by the stress of his job, but none of the articles make that seem certain. Apparently he'd recently complained to his firm about his workload, and people at the museum saw him go into the stairwell to take a BlackBerry call. It seems like it's completely possible the whole thing was an accident, but it's causing a series of articles in the British papers concerning the workload of young associates.
And perhaps it's about time.
I've resisted blogging about this incident for the past couple of weeks -- and to some degree resisted blogging here at all -- because it's hard to write over-the-top satire when the reality is that the work might be causing people to leap off stairwells. A number of the e-mails I received pointed to the "minute of silence" observed by the firm after Courtney's death, and how it's predictable that they couldn't spare more than a minute.
The practice of law certainly isn't alone as far as jobs that eat up more hours of the day than desirable, and cause undue amounts of stress, but there seems to be something about the law firm culture -- the billing of hours, the nature of the work, the lack of connection to the client and the overall picture of the case -- that makes a blog like this resonate with people more than if I was writing about the long hours put in by neurosurgeons. Perhaps that's not really the case.
Regardless, if Courtney's death can spark a real discussion of working conditions at firms -- based in reality, and not just the satire written here -- at least it will have done some good.
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I think for us Generation Y-ers, working long hours is a fact of life. Why you ask? Just look at the sort of lifestyle we're expecting - dining out, having the best gadgets (PS3s and ipods, anyone?), and.. being able to brag about our income to friends and family (c'mon, admit it!).
As graduates to be, it's seemingly impossible for us to work through a typical 9am-5pm day with such effectiveness so as to make loads of dough. Logically, the amount of salary you earn is correlated to the amount of revenue you generate for the company. Accordingly, a large number of firms may promote the idea of a work-life balance in the recruitment process, but.. once you sign on the dotted line, a different picture may arise. Then again, given the high living expenses in Sydney, is there really any other choice but to sign?
In your opinion,
1) Is there really such a thing as work-life balance nowadays?
2) Can work-life balance really be obtained as well as a high income?
3) If no to 2), would *you* choose income over work-life balance? | | |
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