Reflections on Finding Meaning in Life

Craig M. Wasserman ‘82, ‘86 LAW
prepared for Jewish Alumni Weekend, February 2009
When Rabbi Ponet first e-mailed me about today’s panel discussion his e-mail reached me on a train ride back from DC to New York.  I had just finished a meeting at NIH with Dr. Howard Fine, one of the Nation’s leading experts on malignant brain tumor treatments, to make sure that I was doing all the right things to fight the disease that I had discovered almost a full year ago that day.  So you can imagine that the rhetorical question posed for a panel discussion on “What Makes a Life Worth Living” struck me as a bit unusual especially for a Jewish alumni weekend.  After all aren’t we taught by the rabbis of the Talmud that to save a single life is to save the world.  If one life can be so powerful then, of course, any life is worth living.  But, of course, the question posed goes beyond the realm of the sanctity of life and of how blessed we all are by the life G-d has given us.  And while we all are aware, some of us more acutely, that our days on earth are limited and precious so the question is ultimately how do we best take advantage of the lives that G-d has granted to us — and best live each day and serve our highest purpose as best we can and find meaning and purpose and blessings in the lives we chose.

While I would have loved to be with you all today, I must send my regrets because my best and highest purpose today is spending the day with my family and taking my son to a special evening at Madison Square Garden tonight to honor two retired players and to honor my father who was a great Rangers fan and in whose seats Jared and I will be sitting in tonight.  But I don’t want anyone reaching for their handkerchiefs unless its to wave them in the air — which brings me to my main point.  First, we are all faced with tremendous challenges regarding how best to use the precious minutes and hours of our lives — 525,600 minutes in a year as the song Seasons of Love from Rent so beautifully reminds us.  And though we would all like to do it all we can’t and in the end our lives are measured by the choices we make.  If we choose wisely and if we give our families and our friends and communities the best that we’ve got so that the memories of each of us shall always be for a blessing then our lives will be filled with meaning and purpose.  So in the beautiful words of the Torah.  Lechi Lach (let us go out) to the land that G-d has shown us and let us be G-d’s blessings to the world and to our friends and families and the institutions we populate.

And let us remember the Robert Frost poems that remind us of the importance of the paths we choose and to move along when we find ourselves in the middle of the Snowy Woods for we all have many promises to keep and with G-d’s blessing may we all have many miles to go before we sleep.  Now there’s an area in which we all want to strive to be like Moses.

And back to those handkerchiefs…let us all also remember that as Yalies and especially Slifka alums as well we already have a joint degree in the ingredients to a happy and fulfilling and meaningful life.  We must simply remember that Where’er upon life’s sea we sail: let our watch-cry be, “For God, for Country and for Yale.  Live by these values and our lives will certainly have been worth living.

How do we do this in practice?  If you happen to be a lawyer or interested in a career in the law, it just so happens that I’ve already applied the Yale watch-cry to how best to meet the challenges and opportunities of a career in law.  See “Promises to Keep: Metaphors and Meta-Strategies for Corporate Practitioners to Raise the Bar in Achieving Excellence as Gatekeepers and as Lawyer-Statesmen, “For God” (High Ethical Standards and High Regard for the Responsibility of the Lawyer-Gatekeeper), “for Country” (High Regard for the Corporate Lawyer’s Duty to be an Active Citizen and to Emulate the Core Values That Make This Country Great), and “for Yale” (High Recognition of the Grand Tradition in the Practice of Corporate Law Both at Yale and Through the Giants from Yale and Elsewhere Upon Whose Shoulders We Are Privileged to Stand). ” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1134813.

B’Shalom,
Craig M. Wasserman