No question, it's a busy schedule you have. As a managing partner once said, "There is always the possibility for more billable hours." Certainly in private practice, that cloud of more potential billable hours always hovers over your head, but to some degree or other, through the years, we become accustomed to it. How you manage that pressure while maintaining a healthy life and happy family is a challenge for us all.

Is it fair to ask more of you? Maybe not—or maybe so. Pressure or not, challenges aside, we are essentially a privileged group. Better educated than most and, at least as a group, more prosperous than most, should more be expected of us? We suggest that, within limits, the answer is yes. So what is it fair to expect? Certainly civility in the practice of law and support for the justice system in which we all operate goes without saying. That should just be a part of what we believe and do every day. But there is more.

The book Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam, published in 2001, spoke of the loneliness of people today, especially in this country, and their detachment from others. It noted that the kinds of communities people used to set up and enjoy, such as bowling leagues and others, had fallen out of favor, and the result was a poorer community fabric with people who were unhappy. While the loss of bowling leagues may not tug at your heartstrings, there are other community activities, the loss of which should bother you. And as that better educated group, with presumably more wealth and possibly also more skills, we should think about the gaps, and potential gaps, and we should be concerned.

Some gaps need active participants. Someone needs to coach those soccer, lacrosse, baseball teams. Someone needs to support the gymnastic teams, ballet schools, educational art centers. But some activities don't need participation at that level, but do need your attention. Is your local orchestra, band, museum, theater company important to you? Would your life be poorer if it was not there? Do you assume that it will always be there? Would your children be missing something if they never saw a play, heard a symphony orchestra, pondered why an artist painted something the way she did, visited a library?

A corresponding question—when was the last time you visited any of those venues? Do you know what any of your local groups is doing right now? Is there an exhibit or performance that presents a new and interesting perspective about something in life today? Or one that reveals something about a time or event in history that you don't know about? Do you, in fact, extol all these institutions to newcomers to your neighborhood, but at the same time, can't remember the last time you visited any of them?

It is telling that in the concentration camps of World War II, populations in the direst of conditions put together orchestras and played concerts for their fellow prisoners. Not only that, in some cases, they composed music. They needed to do so to maintain some vestige of who they were. Something about music and art spoke to them even when their lives were hanging in the balance.

Isn't this what civilization is? Doesn't art, music, dance mirror our times, whether that mirror shows things we enjoy or things that make us uncomfortable?

So what are you doing this fall? Pick pumpkins, take walks and go to a concert or fair, and take your children. Is it too much to say that civilization depends on you doing this? Maybe not.