"Realize that the most noble thing you can do is to give to
others. The sages of the East call it the process of 'shedding the
shackles of self.' It is all about losing your self-consciousness and
starting to focus on a higher purpose. This might be in the form of
giving more to those around you, whether this means your time or
your energy: these truly are your two most valuable resources. It
could be something as major as taking a one-year sabbatical to
work with the poor or something as minor as letting a few cars
pass in front of you in the middle of a crushing traffic jam. It might
sound corny, but if there is one thing that I have learned it is that
your life moves to a more magical dimension when you start
striving to make the world a better place. Yogi Raman said that
when we are born, we are crying while the world rejoices. He
suggested that we should live our lives in such a way that when we
die, the world cries while we are rejoicing."
I knew Julian had a point. One of the things that was starting
to bother me about practicing law was that I didn't really feel I was
making the sort of contribution I knew I was capable of making.
Sure I had the privilege of litigating a number of precedent-setting
cases that had advanced a number of good causes. But law had
become a business for me rather than a labor of love. I was an
idealist in law school like so many of my contemporaries. Over cold
coffee and stale pizza in our dorm rooms, we had planned to
change the world. Almost twenty years have passed since then,
and my burning desire to advocate change has given way to my
burning desire to pay off my mortgage and build up my retirement
fund. I realized, for the first time in a long while, that I had
ensconced myself in a middle-class cocoon, one that sheltered me
from society at large and one I had grown accustomed to.
"Let me share an old story with you that might really hit