Sunday, April 01, 2007

Your Mantra

A week ago, one of my favorite people asked me to give her a mantra. Of course, that conversation is privileged, confidential, attorney work product, and not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence, so no need to share it here. It reminded me of Jeff Goldblum (in, sadly, one of his greatest roles) in the movie Annie Hall. Jeff is seen only for a split second while on the phone at a party as the movie takes a slight detour to California. He speaks to his unseen confidante and says urgently, "I forgot my mantra." And then he is gone. Sadly, shortly after I mustered the strength to share a mantra with my friend, so was she. Think about it: if you were speaking with a friend with whom you shared a deep connection, and you were asked to, on the fly, create a pearl of wisdom that would follow her around as she went about her day, that would be nestled somewhere in her mind for the foreseeable future (if only a few hours) - what a moment! What a tragic honor! I don't remember the last time I used that much of my brain for anything, including my dissertation or when I tried to locate my dentist's office in midtown.

It's kind of funny how people, usually not thinking about it this way, desire a personal mantra, because what they want is the antithesis of a mantra. A mantra has deep roots in eastern religions, and is used to focus thought and guide self-reflection. Whereas, a western mantra is more like a slogan, the incessant repeating of which builds confidence or serves the barely changed self in some other way. Actually, the mantra tends to encapsulate a sum of what the modern person believes, or wants to believe, or should believe, if only they didn't need a mantra. Sure a mantra in the modern sense focuses us as well, but the meditation is not of the quiet, searching form; it's more akin to how an archer focuses on her target before she releases the arrow. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Some people truly need that kind of focus.

And then there are the crackhead mantra utterers, like the guy sitting three rows down from me in my bar review course, who once a week (maybe more?) wore a T-shirt that blared from the back, "GET IT DONE."

Well, it's no Om Mani Padme Hum. This is an obviously motto-style mantra - all goal, no grounding. No multi-layered wisdom...or is there?

There's a mantra, so to speak, making its way around the halls of my law firm. I would love to provide attribution, but my friend who has shared it with a few others has already been told by one attorney to cease and desist. So we'll call him J. J is one of those kindred spirits, very highbrow without trying to be, a man whose job it is to help fix things when they break down at work, and in the process he winds up setting the occasional human being straight as well. His mantra is tongue-in-cheek, but as with the lotus flower evoked in the midst of certain Buddhist mantras, it is layered as well. It comes at minute 3:00 in this clip, but please substitute the word "billing" at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY

For now, I leave the unfurling of the layers to you. But there are dozens (hints: "second prize: a set of steak knives," "I'm here on a mission of mercy," the incessant use of the word "lead" - which in an onomatopoeic sense feels so simple and pure, stripped of the real-world machinations that generated them, or perhaps not? - and another, more vulgar word (the original Pulitzer prize-winning play used the latter 150 times which in the early 1980's in London was apparently a big deal).

Let's talk about something important.

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence