Many times in my life I have stood up for someone whom I believed with all my heart.
Some of those were in a courtroom – as I stood alongside a criminal defendant who was wrongfully accused of a crime. Other times, this has happened in the legislative arena. Sometimes, it happens in filings with a court.
When I get to know these people’s stories, they aren’t just a plot line. Even when the narration seems like it would make a remarkable Netflix script, it is not.
The young man fighting to raise his son outside prison walls or the young woman who has a history of trauma and just wants to feel safe couldn’t be more real to me. I know their names, their histories, their families and their deepest secrets.
This week I learned in a phone call that one of them had passed away at a young age.
When I take these cases on, they consume my life. Years afterward I’ll look at my own children and remember someone else’s who passed away. I feel a combination of gratitude for the life I’ve been given, while recognizing with pain that I may never fully enjoy some moments without thinking about how someone else will never get to enjoy theirs.
The memories and the stories fade over time, but the emotions I feel when I think back on these people never do.
God calls some of us with thick skin to do big things, sometime hard things. I believe that to be true. Many of the cases I’ve been a part of, and the results I’ve achieved are almost unexplainable within the terms of human reason. I believe it had nothing to do with me at all.
The fascinating part about the human experience is how little control we really have in its outcome.
One thing is for sure though, I signed up for this. Some days, I wonder why I don’t make cupcakes for a living.
But on those days, I’m reminded of a scene from National Treasure, starring Nicholas Cage.
As he stares at our founding documents Cage opines, “Of all the ideas that became the United States, there’s a line here that’s at the heart of all the others.”
His younger colleague stares at him in a puzzled fog.
Cage reads from the founding document:
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
Written in the present tense as if timeless, the text warns its heirs that there could come once again a day when the corruption of the system is too rotten to salvage. Our founders not only anticipated tyranny, they predicted its proliferation; and prescribed a dose of duty to inoculate future Americans against it.
In the scene, Cage’s eyes dim. “People don’t talk that way anymore,” he says.
The younger colleague says, “Beautiful huh. No idea what you said.”
“It means if there’s something wrong,” says Cage’s character, “those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.”
My advice to you as you move forward this week: Take action. In all areas of your life. Love more deeply. Connect more genuinely. Have more empathy. But speak the truth and remember your duty. When it’s hard, difficult or sad, dig in – the human emotion lets you know you’re getting to the truth of this life and experiencing her for all she’s worth.
Cowboy State Daily columnist Cassie Craven is a University of Wyoming College of Law graduate who practices law in Wyoming. She can be reached at: longhornwritingllc@gmail.com
