Dealing with Loss

“ Merciful heaven!

What, man! Ne’er pull your hat upon your brows;

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not

         speak,

Whispers the o’er fraught heart and bids it break."

Macbeth, IV,3; Malcolm to MacDuff, who has just suffered a horrible loss

           A young lawyer recently asked me what advice I might have for dealing with losing a case.  We have all been there, investing many hours and sometimes years into a case, and yet failing to obtain the result we wanted for our client.  If the ruling was in the Tennessee Supreme Court, it could have been a result we did not want for the whole State.  I did not have much to say, other than to be grateful for the next case---for another chance at justice.  But another subscriber to this blog reminded me that loss causes grief, and grief must be felt. She looked to Shakespeare, as I often do, for some advice.  And Malcolm’s advice to MacDuff can be applied to any kind of loss.

               Whatever loss you may be dealing with in the present, or might experience in the future, don’t keep it in, but share it with your community.  That is why we have community: so we don’t have to bear all our losses alone.  Resist the desire to withdraw from the world, but don’t forget to feel the loss, and the grief that comes with it. You are no less of a lawyer for grieving a case you lost.