The Journey Home

The Journey Home

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This weekend is the coda to a year that was equally painful, transformative, and educational.? It was one of the most difficult years to experience, but it was one where, stepping back, I felt like I learned and grew the most.?This uninvited journey of personal development started last November when my mother was suddenly hospitalized and then passed away very quickly.? Over the next couple of months, my relationship with my dad was transformed, as my siblings and I had to help him adjust to a new reality and the two of us found a way to have a more genuine connection and resolution to the issues of the past.? Then, in June, he died as well.? A year ago, I could not have imagined that my life would have changed as much as it did in 12 short months.? This weekend my family again gathers from all over the country to lay my dad to rest in a national cemetery in Colorado.? There is a surreal quality when a chapter of your life definitively closes as this one does this weekend.

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Of all the lessons from this year, three stick out the most profoundly.? First, the events above have highlighted for me the importance of family and taking time to develop personal relationships.? As professionally ambitious as we may be as prosecutors and as mission-driven that we may be to change the world, there? is an incredible abundance in the life that rests close to home.? It is in the love we give and receive from those around us.? In part this is the family to which we are born or marry into, but it is also the family we choose.? Consider your colleagues for example.? We spend nearly a third of our day with our coworkers, closely rivaling the amount of time we spend with our relatives.? That’s over 2,000 hours a year in a setting with individuals we come to rely on and very much build a life around.? The shocks of this year required me to lean into those work relationships extensively to get through this ordeal.? And there was not a moment when I was disappointed.? I had a coworker drive hours out-of-state to teach a class on my behalf on a subject they had never taught before, just to enable me to stay with my family in Colorado to deal with a crisis.? Another colleague offered to take over one of my jury trials, and my entire office came together to provide my family with food when we were too busy and stressed to cook.?

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A lot of what I have written about over the last two years has focused on the incredible opportunities we have as prosecutors to impact the world around us.? But as we are counting our blessings and professional assets, may we never forget the second family we have with our coworkers.? We have tough jobs.? As prosecutors our work makes incredible demands on our time, energy, and emotions.? We are exposed to the worst part of humanity, we walk with victims through a difficult and painful journey, and we make financial and other sacrifices every day of our life.? Thankfully, during that stress we have this incredible resource to make the journey a little lighter.? There may be moments when we get on each other’s nerves because we all have our idiosyncrasies and difficulties.? We may work, think, and express ourselves in fundamentally different ways.? But we are still a family, committed to the same cause.? May we find gratitude in that.

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The second powerful lesson this year has been the importance of remaining focused on purpose and the bigger picture in life.? There is a Japanese artform called ukiyo-e, a word that has also become associated with the idea of not, “sweating the small stuff.”? Sometimes in life it can become tempting to get emotionally overwrought when things don’t turn out the way we want.? A perceived slight can get blown out of proportion or we spend hours worrying about things that simply don’t matter in the grand scheme.? It can also be easy to give into the temptation of chasing after things that we think we really care about, only to discover at the end of the day that it was an illusion.? When confronted with the end of life it highlights that the time we spent arguing with loved ones was really a wasted opportunity.? I read this morning the following thought by Dr. James Hollis that seems to sum it up – “A very effective instrument when in the face of blockages and difficult choices is to ask the very pragmatic question, ‘does this choice enlarge me or diminish me?’ I submit we usually know the answer to the question immediately.”? Most of the petty disputes and worries we engage in life simply diminish us.? They do not enlarge our experience of life.? All of this brings home the importance of seizing the day, truly considering what we want our lives to be about, and pursuing life with greater purpose.? Simply put – make today count.? Or, as J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

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The final lesson that I saw emphasized over the last year is how we can struggle through difficult moments and incredible grief and still walk away from the experience with value and growth.? Don’t get me wrong, I wish that many of the events of the last year didn’t have to happen.? Nor am I someone who argues that everything in life has a silver lining.? But I do maintain that no matter how difficult the experience is that we are having now, we retain the ability to choose to extract value from it.? It doesn’t make the sorrow or pain less, but it imbues the suffering with purpose.? In the death of our loved ones, we can choose to experience a greater appreciation of life.? And in our grief, we can reflect on the compassion and love of those around us.?

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Not a day goes by where I am not grateful for being part of this remarkable profession.? Have a great week my friends.