Reopening the Gift
ABA President Bill Bay. (Photo courtesy of Thompson Coburn)
Several years ago, I was cleaning out the basement and came across an old Erector set from my childhood. I was never very handy with a screwdriver (and have not improved with time), but the old set brought back fond memories.
A few days later at a local store, I came across something very similar to that old Erector set: a kit to build a metal version of the Millennium Falcon, the Han Solo-piloted starship made famous in Star Wars. Maybe 12-14 inches across. You know the story.
That kit found its way under the Christmas tree as a gift for my son. The pictures on the box looked cool. Inside the box were lengthy instruction books with small pictures and many arrows. Many, many, many bags of small parts. Over 1,000 parts to assemble. Special tools to use for assembly. I know what you’re thinking: It’s a perfect gift for an 8-year-old and his father to “do together.” That’s what I thought too.
We opened it and worked on assembling a few parts in no particular order. We took a break for the day. We didn’t return. It stayed in the basement. For months. My son stopped asking me to work on it and lost interest. It went back in the box. Unassembled. I gave up.
Eventually, guilt overwhelmed me, and I decided to do something. I reopened the box, sorted parts and read the instructions. I worked diligently. My son helped. Really. It took several weeks.
Along the road to full assembly, there were many roadblocks and detours:
• Confusing or contradictory instructions.
• Missing parts.
• Things that had to be taken apart to do some other step first.
• Things that had to be improvised.
In the end, the completed model was a thing of beauty. And in the hands of a boy who understood the limitless possibilities of imaginative play inspired by Star Wars, it was wonderful. It all happened because I decided to reopen a gift that I gave up on too soon.
I have many unopened gifts and unfinished projects in my life. Maybe you do too. Don’t let your profession and the American Bar Association be one of them. If we want our profession and our bar to be all we envisioned when we graduated from law school, then it’s time to get that box off the shelf and reopen it. It’s too important a gift to leave unassembled.
It took time and a sense of purpose to build that model, and it takes time and resolve to participate in the ABA and professional activities—time away from work and the routine of daily life. And what can I promise if you commit to doing your part with the bar? Some instructions may be wrong. Some pieces may be missing. Some items probably won’t fit. Some things will be done and then have to be redone. There may be frustrations, detours and delays.
But just imagine what the end product—our profession and our bar—will look like if all of us simply open the box and complete our parts: involvement in the important work of our sections, commissions and centers that serve our profession, the public and furthering the cause of justice.
The model my son and I built looked great, brought him joy and has stood the test of time. That’s what we are doing at the ABA—assembling parts and giving life to a vision of a place the profession can call home. But there’s one more important thing: If we all resolve to do our part now, then in the future, when the ABA is in the hands of others (maybe like your children), the possibilities will be endless.
Let’s resolve today to reopen the box. The gift we have been given. We can make our bar and profession better. Welcome back to your home: the American Bar Association.
Follow President Bay on Twitter @ABAPresident or email [email protected].
