The stories we tell

According to the introductory page to the University of Toronto’s graduate program in Law and Literature, “Law and literature have much in common, too, as rhetorical activities based on narrative.”
The stories we tell

According to the introductory page to the University of Toronto’s graduate program in Law and Literature, “Law and literature have much in common, too, as rhetorical activities based on narrative.”

Meanwhile, at Harvard, eight professors gave a lecture series last Spring, providing law students “with a list of eight simple rules students should live by if they wish to be both ‘happy lawyers and human beings.’” Rule #1 from Professor John Manning, was “Don’t think you’ve got it all figured out yet.” Manning told the students his own career plans changed dramatically when he “discovered that he was instead drawn to broader questions about the integrity of the legal process.” Manning said, “Our profession is wide enough to accommodate many dreams, and provide many forms of fulfillment.” Doesn’t that sound a refreshingly positive view of the legal profession? Amidst the legion of changes facing lawyers, here is a law professor talking about dreams and fulfillment.

So what do you do if you are becoming dissatisfied with your legal career, want to reinvent yourself, but don’t know where to start? Perhaps you start by self-exploration, discovering your own story? How many of our actual activities (rather than rhetorical) are based on a narrative we tell ourselves about ourselves?

If you are mid-career, you will likely say that the story is full of commitments, which you cannot and would not erase and start over. But what would you do if you could? And then, is there a modified, realistic version that you can do. I feel like a bit of a hypocrite in this regard: I paid no attention to Dr. Wayne Dyer’s lessons while the “father of motivation” was alive. But after he died recently, I happened upon an obit column about him (aka, the story of his life). He was famous for saying, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”