Pardon my introspection

A few weeks ago, some inner-city kids came to my office for career day. It was pretty typical stuff...lunch, chitty chat, blah, blah, blah. At one point we broke into small groups of maybe six attorneys and six kids to let them ask questions. Overall, pretty boring fare. Boring, that is, until one kid raised his hand.

His question was, "Now that you're a lawyer, what goals do you have for your life?". Whoosh. All the smug superiority of the lawyers was gone. What ARE our goals?

Here sat these six kids, with the whole world to dream about, totally convinced that they were all going to be professional athletes or actors or doctors, so wide-eyed and optimistic and sure. And there sat the lawyers, dumbstruck. Silent. Thinking. Blank. We're done, right? We've all gone to college, and gone to law school, and we have nice jobs and cars and houses...that's it right?

No joke, not a single lawyer could come up with anything except, "Maybe someday I'd like to have some kids." What happened to all that ambition? When did we stop wanting to learn and grow and accomplish things? When did we wrap up our life to-do list?

Ever since that day, that kid's question has been rolling around in my head. What are my goals? And in some silly, small way, I think that's what this triathlon is about. It's a goal. It means I'm not done. It means there are more good things to come in my life. It means that I'm still striving. And frankly, there's a lot of comfort in that. If the life I'm living right now is my pinnacle, then I picked too small a mountain.