Not too long ago, a friend called me up. He asked me the kind of question I once asked my Mentor about practicing. Like me, that friend of mine was of the same vintage in terms of years in practice. In brief he had joined a friend's firm as a Legal Assistant after being partner in another firm.
Like me, he craved the stability of income which is of course something that is paramount once you have a family. Also like me, his chosen field is litigation. He had been out there doing his thing, having fun doing all sorts of cases and also like me he has problem coming back to a structured office existence. Exactly like me, he finds people passing by his room distracting as hell and finds it exasperating for a friend who is also the managing partner in his new firm to give instruction in a roundabout way as if wanting you to do something and yet not wanting to sound as to be bossing you around. But the long and short of it, he wants to know if giving up his independent existence is a mistake.
My first thought which of course I did not say out loud is: this sounds familiar. My follow up thought was: Darn it dude, I am not the Oracle of Delphi. But since he asked, I had to give it a go.
From what I know so far, a father and a husband has three chains that binds him, one being love, the second being responsibility and the last and final one being reality. All but reality are the ones a Man willingly binds himself upon. To discard love and responsibility in favour of a whim is to be in my eyes, a less of a Man.
At the same time, one cannot be living a lie by being someone who he is not, and this is where my Mentor's words rang true and I quote this from memory: Us litigators have been too long in the wild to be tamed. We have to do it our way or no way. To that I added: But if being tamed is what you have to do for the sake of your family then that is what you do.
Enkidu, the wild man of the Epic of Gilgamesh found his animal friends shying away from him for he stank of domestication and civilization but he did it nonetheless out of his love for Shamhat the temple priestess (we leave the argument whether a Woman is a civilizing aspect of a Man aside for the moment: Consider the Trojan War and Helen of Troy).
Is the proverbial domestication the logical conclusion after years of living free? I do not know. Maybe there is a middle way but I have not found it yet. To live free and yet not to worry about supporting one's family. I can only tell myself that, that wide open field is always there, if not in this world, in the next and no, I did not mean that line and that wide open fields from The Gladiator.
