My friend Peter sent me a link to a talk by Viktor Frankl that TED have put in their "Best of the Web" collection. I'd never encountered Frankl before but in the space of four minutes he packs in more than I've heard other speakers take hours to communicate. Watch and listen to Frankl.
Frankl's talk chimes with what I was trying to convey when I referred to Clive Stafford Smith's questions to students: How much time do you devote to what you want to do in your lives? They would gain by listening to Frankl. (Note too how he refers to taking up flying lessons at 67 years old!) The jobs in Big Law we know are enervating despite the high salaries, which themselves are becoming mythical. It is time for both the educators and the students to revise ideas of career and vocation and make them connect with a sense of self and worth and meaning. It was Frankl, after all, who coined the term Sunday Neurosis "referring to a form of depression resulting from an awareness in some people of the emptiness of their lives once the working week is over." Of course, the Blackberry has cured that...
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