Old Secretary: Remember What's Important

Life is what’s important. Your job is not your life. If it is, you’re in trouble. Life is precious, precarious, not promised and oh, so short. We’ve all heard the heart-breaking stories about attorneys whose work always came first, no matter what; attorneys who schlep their 6-week-old infants off to babysitters so they can get back on the partnership track; attorneys who miss their children’s entire growing up years because they have to work; attorneys who are embarrassed by their non-achieving, ambition-lacking spouses; attorneys who have no social lives or skills and whose entire identity teeters on their success or failure at work. You must have a life outside the office and that life needs to take precedence. Get this one thing right and everything else will fall into place.

Just this past Thanksgiving, one of my attorneys had a post-hearing brief due the following Monday. We worked on it all day Wednesday, but weren’t able to finish. When I got to work on Monday, I discovered that late Wednesday evening, she had e-mailed the arbitrator and the opposing attorney, asking for a two-day extension so that she wouldn’t have to spend her entire Thanksgiving working. Both of them had readily agreed and the opposing attorney, who had not been particularly pleasant or cooperative to that point, even wished her a Happy Thanksgiving! “Bravo,” I thought. “This woman has her priorities in order.” Get this one thing right and everything else will fall into place.

My motto has always been, “My job is what I do to pay for the things I really want to do.” Even though I once thought I wanted to go to law school, I decided against it because I didn’t want my job to become my life. Looking back over the last 30 years, I know I made the right decision for me. Because I had a job that wasn’t my life, I was able to involve myself in many situations outside of my job which have brought me a tremendous amount of satisfaction. Because I had a job which wasn’t my life, I was able to care for my husband during a near-fatal illness which culminated in a successful double-lung transplant. Staring death in the face reaffirmed my belief that work is not the “be-all” and “end-all” and, contrary to popular opinion, you cannot “have it all.” Life is about choices and compromises, about prioritizing and planning and pre-empting. Get this one thing right and everything else will fall into place.

One final story. I’ve known a divorce attorney for many years, a big, intimidating guy with a “win-at-any-price” attitude and an ego to go along with it. Several years ago he was watching television one evening and discovered that he couldn’t get up off the couch. His wife helped him crawl upstairs and get into bed, and a few hours later he was totally paralyzed by a rare disease which affected his entire nervous system. He spent several weeks in intensive care, almost a year in the hospital and many months in rehab. After he returned to work, he called me to tell me what had happened, explaining, “Of all the people I know, I knew you would understand.” He was so happy to be alive, to be able to walk and care for himself, to have come back to work. Both of us got a little misty as he described the humbling but incredible experience of having a wife who never wavered in her care for and commitment to him. Almost every time we talk, he reaffirms, “Cliff and I are two of the luckiest men on the face of the earth to have you and Bonnie!” In the blink of an eye, his priority pyramid tumbled, his life and retirement plans dissolved, work became a non-issue and the only things that mattered were staying alive and knowing that Bonnie was there. Get this one thing right and everything else will fall into place.

What do I wish you knew? If I could pick only one thing, it would be that you put your job in its proper place, that you come to the realization that the life you have away from work is immeasurably more important than the life you have at work, that you understand that time spent with your spouse or significant other, friends and family is the time that really matters. The things you can buy, the fancy house you can live in, the stunning vacations you can take, the magnificent retirement you can plan, all these fade into nothingness when compared with the joys and rewards of time well spent with those you love. While you may not be the managing partner’s favorite pet, I promise that people will respect (and envy) your choice. And, from an old secretary’s somewhat jaded point of view, someone who’s happy at home, who’s at peace with his Maker, whose priorities are in order, who treasures his family and friends . . . that someone is truly a joy and a pleasure to work for!