To be concise is to be brief. To be clear is to express something we have a thorough grasp of in an easily understood way. To be cogent is to be persuasive. These are the three qualities I constantly aspire to with my work. On the rarest occasions when I achieve all three qualities, I haven’t just produced a piece of legal work for the client, I have produced legal art. It’s art because the …
My father once recited Rudyard Kipling’s If to me. I loved it and resonated with every line in that poem. But some of those lines I hold fast to. One of them is: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same:” Because of that line, whether it is a personal win, a loss, a success, a failure, an achievement, something to be proud of, or something to …
For a long time now, I have not been discerning about whom I teach. The gifted, talented and brilliant naturally find equally competent teachers who wish to mentor, tutor and grow with them. Not so for those who lack such qualities. I used to think there was a sense of unfairness about the whole thing – the brilliant became more brilliant, whilst the rest i.e., the mediocre, the less talented, the stupid, the ‘unawakened’, were …
Extrinsic success is the acclaim, awards and accolades society bestows on us. Or discretely purchase, for the less scrupulous. It is the laudatory honours that commemorate our societal or communal contributions or supposed contributions. It is the approbatory prose declared about us at official events. Extrinsic success is corporeal. It can be seen, heard, felt, and smelt. If we need to remind ourselves just how successful we are we need only turn to the medals, …
These days I don’t like saying that I am taking a vacation or going on holiday. Two reasons. Firstly, these days, there is the expectation that if we go on vacation or a holiday, we are necessarily going somewhere. Taking a vacation means vacating our home to some other place, regular or exotic. Going on holiday serves as an escape from the daily and domestic. The further away we are from our home, the more …