The View From Up North: Find Your Kumbaya

What is the meaning of "Kumbaya," and what relevance does it have for lawyers? Columnist Steve Dykstra explains.

I was having beers the other day with a friend when he told me that Kumbaya, the spiritual, was written by an old lady in Vancouver. I said, “No freakin’ way.” He insisted it was true, so I did what any self-respecting professional would do when confronted with such a blatant mistruth—I pulled out my BlackBerry and dialed up Wikipedia.

Turns out my friend was both drunk and wrong. The origins of Kumbaya (also known as “Come By Here”) is still in dispute, but Wiki makes no mention of an old lady in Vancouver having any part in the composition.

My friend questioned the validity of Wikipedia. I told him we are blessed to have instant access to such a vast body of unimpeachable information. He called me an idiot and ordered another beer.

But, the conversation got me thinking about the message behind Kumbaya. Forget the religious implications, the song has taken on a secular meaning of seeking harmony or peace or hopefulness. In some cases it’s used cynically to represent people falsely agreeing to avoid heated debate.

I like the secular, hopeful meaning. To me Kumbaya means to seek harmony, whether that’s on the inside or the outside.

Lawyers often have tough lives. Whether you work for Seven Sister firms like Stikeman Elliott or Torys, or practice law for a private company, lawyers’ work is characterized by high stress. As a consequence, rampant substance abuse and far too many suicides are common to lawyers north, south, east and west. It’s not made better by tons of money. Often it seems worse.

What do you do to find some Kumbaya in your life? How do you find balance and harmony?

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I’ll tell you what I do, I write. I write this column. I write fiction. It gives me something intensely personal to focus on. I have kids and a company to run. I sometimes think it’s selfish to spend time on writing that I could be spending on my business or my kids. But, it’s my harmony. It’s something I look forward to. Yes, it’s selfish, but it’s mine. I don’t write with my spouse. I don’t write with my kids. Just me, me, me. And, I need it to keep my balance.

We all need it. We all need something that is intensely personal and, yes, selfish. That could be writing, painting, running, gardening, traveling, whatever. Check that, “whatever” does not include sucking back martinis every night or ingesting mood-altering brownies.

It’s so easy to get vacuumed up by lawyer life: unrelenting pressure, letters to write, documents to draft, briefs to review, clients to manage. In order to survive you must find your own Kumbaya. It is by definition selfish. Do not give into the guilt; the little Voice that says, “You’re never going to make partner, you lazy bastard, if you spend ten hours per week training for a marathon.”

That Voice is the real bastard.

Almost all lawyers are smart, educated, dedicated and hard-working. They’re problem-solvers; always up for a challenge and hard-wired to let nothing stand in the way of success.

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So, Kumbaya is now defined as thus: a selfish seeking of harmony achieved by finding positive, guilt-free activities that balance against the stress of practicing law.

Here’s my suggestion for how to achieve it. From now on you are your own client—we’ll call the client, Dr. Me (because you should have been a doctor, right?). You will now bring your intelligence, dedication and work ethic to bear for Dr. Me. The good doctor needs to achieve harmony in his or her life—how do you solve the problem, lawyer? Figure it out and commit to doing it. DO NOT LET YOUR CLIENT DOWN.

The Voice will fight you. Dr. Me needs you to kick the snot out of the Voice.

Partners may fight you. Dr. Me needs you to use all your intelligence and problem-solving skills to manage your evil overlords so they do not interfere with giving Dr. Me the best service possible.

You can do it. Dr. Me is counting on you. And you don’t let clients down ever, right?

We’ve all done the math. There’s 168 hours in every week. If you work 70 hours, that leaves 98 hours. If you sleep eight hours per day that leaves 42 hours for everything else. If you can’t find five to ten hours per week for Kumbaya, you aren’t trying hard enough. You aren’t dedicated enough. It’s actually lazy on your part to waste valuable time you could be using to bring some balance to your life. It’s even worse to hear lawyers complain about how tough they have it when they use all their skills to solve client problems and spend no energy or intelligence on their own personal development.

Winter is behind us and a glorious summer is just around the corner. This is a perfect time to commit to the newly defined concept of Kumbaya. Dr. Me needs to find balance and harmony and it’s your job, lawyer, to bring all your gifts to bear to solve your client’s problem.

That’s the View From Up North. Get off your butt and have a great, guilt-free, selfish week.


Steve Dykstra is a Canadian-trained lawyer and legal recruiter. He is the President of Keybridge Legal Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm that places lawyers in law firms and in-house roles throughout North America. You can contact Steve at steve@keybridgerecruiting.com. You can also read his blog at stevendykstra.wordpress.com, follow him on Twitter (@IMRecruitR), or connect on LinkedIn (ca.linkedin.com/in/stevedykstra/).