In-House Counsel, Old People

I Grow Old. . . I Grow Old. . . I Shall Wear The Bottoms of My Trousers Rolled

In-house columnist Mark Herrmann tackles the topic of aging.

By  
on

dartboard pen inside straightYeah, yeah: I tried to come up with a catchy title for this column, so that tons of people would click through, read it, and thus make David Lat and the rest of the team happy.

But I came up empty. So instead, I chose a quote from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot.

Good morning, dear readers, to both of you.

Today, I’m going way off-topic at ATL, to talk about aging. (What the heck. It’s Christmas week, so no one is reading this anyway. And my title discouraged the few people who would have bothered to click through. I’m basically writing for myself. Oh, yeah: Hi, Mom!)

I wrote something at ATL a while back that mentioned what happened the year I started practicing law — 1983.

The commenters went wild. (Not that it ever took much to prompt that.) “Hey, Grandpa: Why are you telling us about the Stone Age? Hasn’t anything happened in modern history?”

It struck me that the commenters are both young and right.

Sponsored

In 1983, when one of the old-timers told me about what had happened in the year he started practicing law — 1953 — I had the same reaction. 1953? That’s the Stone Age. Cravath had nearly doubled its starting salary to $15,000 in 1968. And even that was ancient history by 1983. Why the heck would anyone care about something that had happened in 1953, for heaven’s sake?

Except, of course, that if you were alive in 1953, it undoubtedly felt a little more relevant.

It’s the same deal with other historical events. I learned about World War I from the history books: It had ended 40 years before I was born. So it wasn’t real, in a sense. But the Vietnam War . . . . That was on TV every night. That was real.

Forty years back from today takes you to 1976. So the Vietnam War is ancient history. A young adult entering the practice of law today wouldn’t remember the first Iraq War or the fall of the Berlin Wall. That person would learn about these things from the history books. So those things aren’t real, in a sense.

(The law department of my company held a conference recently at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam. I know that doesn’t mean much to most people, but the Beatles sang about it:

Sponsored

Drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton
Talking in our beds for a week
The newspapers said, “Say what you doing in bed?”
I said, “We’re only trying to get us some peace”

Christ you know it ain’t easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They’re going to crucify me

When a speaker pointed out that we were meeting at a spot that was prominent for an event in the early days of rock ‘n roll, and quoted these lyrics, the audience snoozed. No one under 40 had ever heard of “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and no one was very interested. (A few people over the age of 50 asked to visit the room in which John and Yoko had staged their bed-in. But that was a small minority.))

If you’re 60-ish now, born at the height of the baby boom, you’ve been alive for 25 percent of our nation’s history. (From 1776 to 2016 is 240 years. And you’ve been alive for 60 of them. Believe it.)

I read recently (in the New York Times, I think, but Google won’t let me find the article) about how growing old changes your perspective on things. You no longer count the number of laps that you’ve run, but instead focus on the number of laps remaining in the race.

For example, that article noted that, if you read one book every two weeks, then you read 26 books per year. Suppose, at age 60, that you have a life expectancy of 25 years — you might make it until age 85. Let’s do some more painful arithmetic: 26 books per year times 25 years equals a total of 650 books that you have left to read in your life.

If you’re planning to make your way through the 1,000 books that all educated people must read before they die, you’re already out of time. Think real hard when you make your next choice from the bookshelf. You’d be crazy to devote this week to something that isn’t worth the effort.

Talented friends were once going to achieve something great in their lives. They’re now thinking about retirement and wondering what happened. They were going to change the world, but the world seems unchanged.

And, of course, you’re ultimately judged by what you did with your life. In the words of another poet (this time, William Butler Yeats):

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Dance!

Do the dance you want to be known for.

Seize the day.

And certainly don’t waste your time reading stuff like this.

Unless you’ll click through and read the original Eliot.

Back to the law in two weeks. And happy holidays!

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now responsible for litigation and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

Topics

, , ,