When I was about 12 years old, I had some family living on the Louisiana/Texas border. It was about a mile from Toledo Bend Dam. About a half mile from the house was a spillway that had only water in it when the dam was releasing water to generate electricity. When we would visit the folks in Louisiana, I always went to the spillway and played. There was something almost mystical about that place. I loved it.
The dam was created to generate electricity. The water was released twice a day. A horn would blow 15 minutes before the water was released, which let us know when the water was coming. It allowed us to prepare. Our preparation consisted of standing in the middle of the spillway and waiting.
The spillway was as wide as a football field with earthen walls no less than 15 feet high. The water first arrived in small rivers shooting forward. The rivers led the way for all of the water being released. As the rivers multiplied, they began to take up more and more of the spillway bed. Islands began to form in the areas not yet covered with the oncoming water. We amused ourselves by jumping from island to island. As the water continued to conquer the spillway, it became harder and harder to find a place to stand. To make things even harder, you needed to be on the north side of the spillway when it was over so you could get back from whence you’d come.
The early decisions were easy: Lots of places to jump and not much consequence resulting in the decisions made. At least none that could be seen or foretold. It only took a couple minutes for the water to cover the spillway floor. The jumping between islands was quick at first. As the seconds passed, there were fewer choices and the ramifications were far greater and readily apparent. If you got on the wrong island, you were soon wet and fighting the oncoming water. If you made all the right choices, you could be on shore and dry. Truth be told, it was fairly easy if you were conservative in your choices, but it was certainly a lot more fun when you took some chances. The real trick was to find a happy medium combining just the right amount of safety with the perfect amount of thrill.
After I got done with the Bar Exam in the summer of 1994, a friend and I from high school took a road trip. Not being from Little Rock, I found myself longing for many of the memories and places of my youth. I decided to visit this place in Louisiana. I no longer had any family in the area, but I always wanted to go back to see the place I held so dearly in my memories. It was a long drive, and the first lesson I learned was that I should have taken my car rather than Patti’s Mazda Miata. The romance of the long drive in a convertible far exceeded the reality of the long cramped drive.
Once we got there, I found that much had changed since I had been there 15 years before. There had been considerable growth in this once desolate place, and we were forced to park our car and make our way to the spillway on foot. The walk seemed much farther than I remembered. As we made our way through the brush, I was surprised to see a covering of foliage complemented with full-grown trees in the middle of the spillway. There was no water and it did not appear that there had been any in quite some time. I could not believe my eyes. My friend was not impressed. We drove to the dam only to find out that the spillway was now known as the old spillway and was no longer used.
They say you can’t go back. Maybe they are right.
I thought about that trip the other day while I was pondering the direction of my life. I realized that as my life goes on, there seem to be fewer and fewer directions in which I have to go. Much of my life and its general direction is pretty much settled. I have a wife, family, and career. I also realized that while the number of my choices has diminished, the choices I have to make now are far more important than those made when I was younger. Sure, I can jump anywhere I want, but the choices no longer only affect me, but also my family and people I work with every day. One of the tricks to life seems to be finding the balance between living a comfortable life and living a life of excitement. They do not have to be mutually exclusive, but they do have to be balanced against each other.
I have come to realize that you can’t jump on every island all of the time. At the same time, you can’t sit on the bank and watch the world go by. The point of this might be no more than you have to stop and smell the flowers. But, on the other hand, if you are not steadily moving, there are a lot of flowers you might not get to see in your lifetime.
Again, I guess it all goes back to balance. Which, of course, is very important when you are sitting in the CHEAP SEATS.
Bill James is a co-founder of the James Law Firm with offices in Little Rock, Conway and Fayetteville, Arkansas. His primary area of practice is criminal defense. He can be contacted at Bill@JamesFirm.com