Why I am here

I posted this blog on myspace a short while back and thought I would move it here as well.

Why I am here
I have this friend named Tom. He is lawyer in N. Alabama & a pretty successful one too. He has a wife and two fantastic kids. Tom has a brother named Tim.
Tim was in a car accident when we were kids. He was hurt pretty bad and had health problems every since. He occasionally has seizures. A good guy all the way around though. He helped me move one time.

Years ago Tims family sued the car manufacturer because the truck they had bought their son did not have any side impact protection. The case went through several appeals. Finally the court found for the car manufacturer. The reasoning was simple:
If Tim’s family wanted more protection, they should have spent more money and bought a better vehicle.
Wow! Think about that. Follow the logic. That is the kind of decision that people who have always had money make.

I met Tom in college. He became one of my very best friends. We came from similar backgrounds and had a lot in common. Because of the things that happened to him when he was young (lets say he had some legal troubles of his own as a kid) and because his family got the short end of the legal stick on Tim’s trial, Tom decided to become an attorney.
This was not an easy task. No one expected him to make it, certainly not the local establishment. He didn’t come from the right family. They didn’t have money. They wrote him off as never amounting to much. Tom was like me. We come from humble backgrounds, no white collars. No fairy tails. No princess and princesses. No castles in the old country. No senator’s sons. No southern mansions or graceful plantations. No. Just men who came home at the end of a day with dirt under their fingernails and sweat soaked shirts. Tom was not part of the old guard and certainly not part of the good old boy system that permeates so much of southern small town law.
But he struggle through it. Tom graduated from a prestigious law school.

Tim’s struggles created a drive in Tom to become a lawyer. Tom was the one (along with another good friend) who after some trouble in my own life drove me to make the decision to go to law school. So in some strange way, Tim is responsible for me being where I am at today.
Your life is like the threads of a giant spider web, a tiny vibration can be felt very far away. A thing that seems so trivial in your life may affect a person so far away in such a huge way, and you will never know it. In other words: You do not know how the events and decisions of your life will affect a person who your life comes into contact with.

Tom’s wife called me late last night. Tim died. He had a seizure and aspirated in his sleep.
I hurt for my friend Tom. He loved his brother very much. Even though Tim was older, Tim looked up to him.

So Tim, this is what I promise you
I will pursue this thing to its end with a renewed vigor.
No life is wasted, because you have the power to affect other people. And in the end, that is what it is all about.