In Hinduism, it is thought that people pass through four stages of life (in college, I was originally was taught that there were three): Brachmacharya – The Student Stage, Grihastha – The Householder Stage, The Vanaprashta Stage and the Sannyasa Stage. In the first stage, one is a student, as the Stage suggests. One goes to school to learn. The second stage is also self -explanatory in the householder stage. One settles down, buys a house, raises a family. I think the third and fourth may have been blended in my college education. The third stage is devoting more time to a spiritual practice and in giving back to the community. The fourth stage is devoted entirely to spiritual growth. I learned about the third and fourth stage as the Ascetic Phase.
A devoted attorney becomes a law monk. We eat, breathe and live law. It directs our attention. It defines our pursuits and character. Thankfully, all our attorneys at the Firm qualify as law monks. They are a dedicated group of professionals. I don’t know if this is true in other practice areas but in family law, being a law monk is deeply satisfying. We get to do good work. We get to help people when they are in need.
In my role in the Firm, I get to be a kind of sage monk. I have the honor of receiving the attorneys as they come into my office to engage in the heady, complicated work of sorting out the family’s particular predicament and contemplating, calculating, plotting the ideal strategy to strategically accomplish our client’s objectives. This is deeply satisfying work.
I guess it is not a far stretch, then, that I am blending the deeply meaningful and satisfying work that I find in the Firm, in our Family Law practice with the spiritual work of the Vanaprashta/Sannyasa Phase. I am at that age. I am of that disposition. It is deeply satisfying.
It has to be peculiar to hear that I contemplate a family’s situation as I work through the needs and opportunities in a case. I find it helpful to not only know the specific details but also to back out to a more universal view to assess how this situation came to be and how it might be possible to work back out of it. Contemplating that, to me, is like Siddhartha in the famous book of the same name by Herman Hesse, as he observes, contemplates and learns from the ever flowing river.
There is much that can be done, should be done, in a family law practice that is right, well and good. There is much to be done that is as well assigned to a monk as to a family law practitioner. I am deeply satisfied to say that I fit very comfortably in that mold. I am deeply satisfied to occupy this stage in my life.