Careers
Psychotherapist Tells Lawyers: Embrace the Rock
Posted Oct 23, 2009 7:21 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A psychotherapist and professional coach notes the travails of Sisyphus, doomed to push the same rock up the same hill day after day, and says many lawyers see parallels to their own law practice.
“At this moment, we all have a sense of our rock, of the suffering of the world, a suffering that seems to have no point,” Dallas area psychotherapist James Dolan writes for Texas Lawyer.
“Lawyers I speak to often express an acute sense of the absurdity of law practice; that it seldom has to do with right and wrong, with mending grievances, making a better world or helping those truly in need. They complain that it is more often a peculiarly isolated competitive business, logging billable hours or working alone through monstrous documents or meaningless research related to arcane forms of litigation.”
It would be easy “to develop a sense of futility and the absurd in this world,” Dolan says, but he encourages lawyers to consider how they would feel about their life if given a death sentence or fatal diagnosis. At that point, they may see their daily struggles in a different light.
“We each have a rock that is our daily struggle, and for lawyers it is the complexity and imperfectness of law practice,” Dolan writes. “There is no human free of his rock. Like a Buddhist, we can accept suffering as a given and transform it into something beautiful. And we must each learn to bless our rock, for without it and all of its obvious difficulty, we would only invent another.”
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Comments
DP
Oct 23, 2009 7:55 AM CST
Seriously? His professional advice is to just fall into line and look on the bright side of things? Clearly his psychotherapy services are not intended for anyone who has enough of a brain to be anything more than a lemming…a rock-pushing lemming.
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friedtoad
Oct 23, 2009 9:11 AM CST
“Your life sucks, get used to it”.
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Daver
Oct 23, 2009 9:40 AM CST
Continue a futile, endless existence of pain and suffering. Thanks for the advice doctor. What’s his next piece of philosophy, “Turning One’s Frown Upside Down Whilst Being Bludgeoned”?
I wouldn’t even have that much of a problem with him using the Buddhist rock but to try to link it to Sisyphus just highlights how pointless it all is.
What /if/ I got some sort of fatal illness? I’d stop worrying about student loans for one. Of course I’d still have no money or health insurance, so I’d be in the same crap boat.
Buck up little campers, that rock will crush us eventually. Hopefully.
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Esq.
Oct 23, 2009 9:49 AM CST
I would think that if faced with a death sentence or fatal diagnosis, most of us would jump off the gerbil wheel of billable hours, climbing the ladder, and keeping up with the Joneses, and start living each day like it counts.
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Plum
Oct 23, 2009 10:34 AM CST
Sisyphus was dead when he received this labor. He was in Hades for crimes against the gods and this was his punishment. My law practice is not a punishment. What a telling remark from Mr. Dolan.
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P
Oct 23, 2009 11:06 AM CST
Wow. If that many lawyers are miserable, maybe the legal industry should start reforming itself. Wishful thinking, I know. Which is why I left and went back into academia. Instead of embracing the futile rock pushing, I stepped aside and let it roll down the hill. Now I don’t HAVE a rock. Much better that way.
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Been There
Oct 23, 2009 11:11 AM CST
“Clearly his psychotherapy services are not intended for anyone who has enough of a brain to be anything more than a lemming…a rock-pushing lemming.”
Well, I think that can be said for a whole lot of psychological “services.”
To Mr. Dolan: Sorry I couldn’t make your little lecture, but I was too busy making a living for my family, having family time with my wife and kids, doing pro bono work, visiting sick friends, playing my electric guitar, and generally having a life.
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AndytheLawyer
Oct 23, 2009 11:14 AM CST
If you pause to embrace the rock that you are trying to push uphill, it will crush you as it rolls downhill. Perhaps psychotherapists do not know this, but every child who has ever seen a Wile E. Coyote cartoon does.
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