Courage and Nick

Reading this column about courage and looking at the reader comments got me thinking about how courageous Nick is, in his un-ostentatious, determined way.

In the past couple of years, he displayed three particular instances of courage that profoundly impressed me. The first was when he started the job in Seattle: as some may know, the previous lawyer in that position couldn't handle the job and just disappeared one day, leaving the firm in a really bad position. They called Nick and said "Can you be here in four days?" Nick thought about it really hard and finally said yes. He knew it would be a very tough job, but he took it anyways. Times were already tough then, and getting worse.

I think it took courage to take the job, and even more to stick with it: he was often put in situations where he had absolutely nothing but his own fortitude to rely on. Imagine the kind of courage it takes when you have to appear at a proceeding you've never even seen done, with a case you know is pretty weak... it's maybe your first or second week on the job and nobody can even tell you exactly what is going on in the case. But you show up anyways, and stand (or sit) in front of the tribunal and the opposing lawyer and they're looking at you and you know they know you're about to lose the case, but you argue your facts and you argue your law and you do your level best and you don't back down - because it is your job.

That's how it was for Nick. He gave those clients such better representation than they deserved, I think, and he did it pretty much singlehandedly. He worked harder than he was paid to work, because he firmly believed in his duty to his clients. He didn't choose his clients (I suspect he didn't even like most of his clients), but he was their lawyer and he gave them everything he had.

It also took courage to quit that job. He stuck with it for a year, as I tried and tried to find work and the unemployment numbers crept up and up, but at the end of the year he decided that things were not right and that he should quit. He knew that if he quit he might never get another chance to be a lawyer (the economy being what it was); he knew that he might not find any work at all, as I had not for the past year or more. But he nevertheless made the decision to resign: to him, was a choice between being moral or being employed. He followed his moral compass. That was courage.

It was courage when he proposed to me, too. He had just quit his job - both of us unemployed in a hopeless economy, he had no idea what kind of future we'd be looking at. We had never even mentioned the idea of getting married, not even obliquely - for all Nick knew, from all I'd said, I never intended to get married to anyone. But Nick changed that, and it took a great deal of courage on his part - certainly, courage when he asked me out the first time (back in law school, years ago), got rejected, stayed friends and asked me again after we knew each other better. Courage - and faith - to stick with me even though I had only bad things to say about marriage and long-term relationships. And incredible courage to risk everything on my answer to a single question, asked on bended knees...

So when someone asks, Courage - what is it? - I think I know the answer. It has something to do with commitment to what is true and right and good, a commitment that manifests in the way one lives one's life and the choices one makes. Well, at this point I should be pretty familiar with it - Nick demonstrates it every day.