The Valley Viewpoint

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom of the Southern District of Florida recently warned that judges and members of the legal profession must do a better job educating the public about the judiciary’s essential role in American democracy.

Her comments followed the release of two reports raising separate but closely related concerns: increasing threats against judges and a growing willingness to defy court orders.

Both should trouble every American.

Our constitutional system depends upon three independent branches of government. Courts do not command armies, control police departments or hold the nation’s purse strings. Their authority ultimately rests upon something far less tangible but every bit as important: public confidence in the integrity of the judicial process and respect for the rule of law.

When court orders are casually ignored because they are politically inconvenient, the damage extends well beyond any particular case or administration. A judicial order cannot be treated as binding only when we agree with the judge who issued it. There are appeals, motions and established procedures for challenging decisions believed to be legally or constitutionally wrong. Defiance is not one of them.

At the same time, defending judicial independence must never be confused with shielding judges from legitimate criticism or accountability.

Judges exercise enormous power over people’s property, freedom, families and futures. They must explain their rulings, follow the law, respect constitutional protections and remain accountable when judicial authority is misused. Lifetime tenure was designed to protect federal judges from political pressure—not to place them beyond scrutiny.

That distinction matters.

Threatening a judge is never acceptable. Criticizing a judge, questioning a ruling or demanding transparency is not a threat to democracy. It is part of democracy. Public confidence cannot be commanded from the bench; it must be earned through fairness, consistency, restraint and openness.

Judge Bloom is right that the legal community must educate the public. But that education cannot consist solely of lectures about why courts deserve respect. It must also include an honest discussion about the responsibilities that accompany judicial power—and the safeguards available when that power is exercised improperly.

Americans should understand that an independent judiciary protects everyone, particularly when government becomes overreaching or politically motivated. Courts have often served as the last line of defense for unpopular individuals, minority viewpoints and citizens without political influence.

But the judiciary must also understand something about the American people: trust is not strengthened by secrecy, arrogance or the suggestion that judges are above criticism. It is strengthened when courts demonstrate that the same rules apply to everyone—including those who wear the robe.

We should vigorously defend judges against intimidation and violence. We should insist that lawful court orders be obeyed unless overturned through the appellate process. And we should be equally forceful in demanding transparency, due process and accountability from the judiciary itself.

Those principles are not contradictory. Together, they are the foundation of the rule of law.

A free nation needs independent judges. It also needs judges worthy of that independence.

There was a time when Americans worried about an imperial presidency.

Perhaps we should also be asking whether we are witnessing the rise of an imperial judiciary.

That question has once again moved to the center of American politics because of U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, the Massachusetts federal judge who has repeatedly intervened in President Donald Trump’s effort to impose new requirements on mail-in voting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Talwani has blocked portions of the President’s executive order.

She has blocked the Postal Service from implementing portions of the administration’s policy.

And now the Trump administration has gone back to the United States Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow the new Postal Service rules to take effect.

But beneath the political arguments over Donald Trump and mail-in voting lies a much larger question.

Exactly how much power should one federal district judge possess?

The Easy Answer Isn’t Good Enough

Whenever a federal judge blocks something a president does, supporters of that president inevitably complain about an “activist judge.”

Democrats did it when Republican-appointed judges blocked Biden administration policies.

Republicans do it when Democratic-appointed judges block Trump administration policies.

That doesn’t get us very far.

Judicial review is not judicial activism.

Federal judges have both the authority and the responsibility to determine whether presidents are acting within the Constitution and laws enacted by Congress.

If a president exceeds his constitutional authority, we should want a federal judge willing to say so.

That principle must apply regardless of whether the president’s name is Trump, Biden, Obama or anyone else.

But there is another side to that constitutional equation.

Judges have limits too.

And that is where the Talwani controversy becomes considerably more interesting.

One Judge Versus the President

Consider what has happened.

President Trump issued an executive order seeking significant changes involving mail-in ballots.

Talwani concluded that portions of that order exceeded presidential authority.

Her central constitutional argument is hardly frivolous.

The Constitution gives states significant responsibility for conducting elections while giving Congress authority to alter certain election regulations.

It does not explicitly assign the president an independent power to rewrite election procedures.

Talwani therefore concluded that the president could not simply create powers for himself that the Constitution had assigned elsewhere.

That’s a serious constitutional argument.

But something else should make Americans uncomfortable regardless of their political affiliation.

A single unelected federal district judge can issue an order capable of stopping an elected president’s policy from operating far beyond the courtroom in which the case was brought.

Think about the enormous power contained in that sentence.

One judge.

One courtroom.

A policy affecting an entire nation.

That doesn’t automatically make the decision wrong.

But it should make us ask questions.

Who Is Checking Whom?

We constantly hear about checks and balances.

Congress checks the president.

The president checks Congress.

The judiciary checks both.

But our discussions increasingly seem to stop there.

Who checks the judiciary?

The obvious answer is the appellate courts and ultimately the Supreme Court.

And the Talwani litigation provides an interesting illustration of exactly that process.

Talwani previously blocked portions of Trump’s executive order.

The Supreme Court subsequently lifted one of those barriers, concluding that the states’ challenge at that stage was premature.

Importantly, however, the Supreme Court did not definitively declare Trump’s underlying policy constitutional.

The Postal Service subsequently finalized its rule.

Talwani intervened again.

And the administration is now back before the Supreme Court.

That distinction matters.

It would be unfair to say that Talwani is simply defying a Supreme Court ruling that declared Trump’s policy lawful.

The Supreme Court hasn’t done that.

But the continuing judicial ping-pong illustrates something increasingly common in American government:

Major national policies can spend months moving between a president, a district judge, an appeals court and the Supreme Court before anyone knows what the law actually is.

That is not an insignificant problem.

The Presidency Isn’t the Only Institution Capable of Overreach

For years, conservatives have complained about judicial activism.

Liberals have often responded that what conservatives call activism is simply judges enforcing constitutional protections.

Sometimes they’re right.

But liberals should consider the opposite scenario.

Imagine a Democratic president wins the White House.

So, what am I writing about now?

Guitars and pens.

At first glance, they may not appear to have much in common. But both are tools—tools for expressing thoughts and feelings that might otherwise remain buried somewhere inside us. I’m fortunate enough to own both, and I use them as best I can to give voice to whatever happens to be moving through my mind on any given day.

The English alphabet contains only 26 letters. That’s all—26 simple letters. Yet, arranged in the right order and placed in the right hands, they have given the world its greatest literature.

A Jesuit once told me to read the classics because there simply wasn’t enough time in one life to make it through everything worth reading. He was right. The world of literature contains nearly everything about the human experience, and it stubbornly refuses to leave anything out.

I have read like a man on fire for most of my life because some extraordinary English teachers introduced me to the dazzling beauty and power of language.

Because of them, I rode beside Don Quixote, danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and helped lasso a steer in Lonesome Dove. I confronted the horrors of slavery in Beloved, wandered the streets of Dublin in Ulysses, imagined a hundred stories from The Arabian Nights and watched a baseball change everything in A Prayer for Owen Meany.

I have laughed aloud while reading Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinions—not always because the subject was funny, but because of the sheer wit and brilliance of his language. I have been humbled by the blazing intellect of Charles Krauthammer’s columns and reminded that a carefully chosen sentence can challenge an idea, change a mind or remain with someone for a lifetime.

Words eventually carried me beyond the page and behind a microphone. They allowed me to introduce myself to listeners while filling in for the great Tom Sipos on Hudson Valley Live at WKIP. Later, they gave me the privilege of hosting my own morning show on WKIP, where every day began with a microphone, a blank page and the opportunity to connect with people throughout the Hudson Valley.

Today, those same words continue through The Valley Viewpoint. Publishing it has given me another microphone of sorts—a place to write about our towns, our schools, our politics and the people and issues shaping the Hudson Valley. Radio taught me the power of speaking directly to a community. The Valley Viewpoint has reminded me that the written word can carry that conversation even further.

None of that happened by accident.

It began with teachers—magnificent men and women who found me when I was still a boy and handed me the precious gift of the English language. They taught me not simply how to read and write, but how to think, question, imagine and communicate. I cherish them, praise them and remain forever grateful for everything they gave me.

Find your voice, and you may also find courage, truth and even a little of God’s justice.

Music offers much the same gift.

I have always believed people would find more pleasure in their daily routines if they occasionally burst into song at significant moments. Life might not become easier, but it would certainly have a better soundtrack.

Music is one of the great unifiers. People who disagree about almost everything can still hear the same song, tap their feet to the same rhythm and sing the same chorus.

It is also one of life’s great rememberers.

A song can return us to happy times and sad ones, to lost loves, old friends and younger versions of ourselves. Years may pass, and then a familiar melody suddenly plays somewhere—a car radio, a restaurant or a grocery-store aisle—and an emotion we thought had disappeared rises quietly back to the surface, often accompanied by a knowing smile.

So, guitars, pens and my voice.

They carried me onto the airwaves at WKIP, through the pages of my blog and into each new edition of The Valley Viewpoint. They are the tools I have been given. I may not always use them perfectly, but I use them honestly and to the best of my ability.

And I’m very glad I do.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for reading. And, whenever possible, keep singing.

“Ed’s a great guy. I’m just not sure about his politics.”

That sentence says more about where we are today than it probably intended.

Apparently, being a “great guy” is no longer enough. Character, kindness, loyalty and how someone treats other people all come with a political asterisk. Before deciding whether a person is truly worthy of our respect, we first need to inspect the bumper sticker, check the voter registration and review a few Facebook posts.

There was a time when learning someone’s politics was simply one more thing you discovered about them. It sat alongside where they grew up, what they did for a living, how they raised their children and whether they believed the Yankees could still find a way to ruin a five-run lead.

Today, politics has become a personality test—and apparently a background check.

Mention whom you voted for, and some people immediately decide whether you are intelligent, compassionate, trustworthy or even worth knowing. One political opinion becomes enough evidence to convict the whole person.

If you voted for one candidate, you must hate certain people. If you supported another, you must be naïve, radical or hopelessly out of touch. If you question either side, everyone becomes suspicious because independence is no longer considered thoughtful. It is treated as disloyalty.

We no longer ask, “Why do you believe that?”

We announce, “I know exactly what kind of person you are.”

Except we don’t.

A political label tells you almost nothing about the entirety of a human being. It does not tell you whether someone stayed up all night beside a sick child, quietly paid a neighbor’s electric bill, donated to a community project, cared for an aging parent or showed up when a friend’s world was falling apart.

It does not tell you about the hardships that shaped that person, the experiences that changed them or the private acts of kindness they never posted on Facebook.

Politics certainly matters. Elections have consequences. Public policy affects our families, schools, communities and country. There are beliefs and actions that deserve to be challenged forcefully. But disagreement is not a license to erase someone’s humanity.

Increasingly, we do not debate ideas—we diagnose the people who hold them.

Conservatives are dismissed as cruel. Liberals are dismissed as foolish. Moderates are accused of lacking courage. People are unfriended, excluded and written off, not because of anything they personally did, but because of the political tribe others have assigned to them.

It is intellectual laziness dressed up as moral certainty.

Judging millions of people by their worst political stereotype is no different from any other form of prejudice. It saves us from the difficult work of listening, understanding and accepting that decent people can examine the same facts and reach very different conclusions.

Some of the finest people I have known disagree with me politically. They are still generous, loyal and honorable. They love their families, worry about their communities and want a better future for their children. We may disagree—sometimes loudly—but their politics do not cancel their character.

And mine should not cancel mine.

Too many people now confuse political agreement with moral goodness. They assume anyone standing beside them must be virtuous and anyone standing across from them must be dangerous. History should have taught us to be more careful. Every political movement contains principled people, opportunists, hypocrites and fools. No party has secured exclusive ownership of wisdom or decency.

Yet social media rewards the quickest judgment and the harshest insult. It encourages us to perform outrage for people who already agree with us. Nuance does not travel very far online. Anger does.

The result is a country filled with people shouting about tolerance while practicing remarkably little of it.

You do not have to surrender your convictions to respect another person. You do not have to remain silent when you believe something is wrong. Strong disagreement can be honest, necessary and even healthy.

But there is a difference between challenging what someone believes and declaring that the belief represents the totality of who they are.

Perhaps we should begin judging people by more than a yard sign, a bumper sticker or the box they checked in a voting booth.

Judge them by whether they keep their word.

Judge them by how they treat people who cannot do anything for them.

Judge them by whether they accept responsibility when they are wrong.

Judge them by their kindness, courage, loyalty and willingness to stand beside others when standing there is difficult.

And before deciding that someone’s politics makes them unworthy of respect, sit down and listen to the story that brought them there. You may still disagree when the conversation is over. You may even disagree more strongly.

But you might also remember that there is a human being behind the label.

“Ed’s a great guy. I’m just not sure about his politics.”

I can live with that. I am far more concerned with being a good man than with passing someone else’s political purity test.

In a nation increasingly determined to divide everyone into opposing camps, recognizing one another’s humanity has become a quiet act of rebellion.

It may also be the only way we ever find our way back to being neighbors.

A neighbor who recently welcomed twins was walking through my neighborhood over the weekend. Naturally, I stopped to ask how they were doing with their new babies, including their son. As we talked about the exhaustion, excitement and enormous responsibility that come with bringing children into the world, I found myself thinking about what children truly need from their parents.

The greatest gift a parent can give a child is not money, a beautiful home, an expensive education or a life protected from every disappointment.

It is self-esteem.

A child who believes in their own worth carries something into the world that cannot easily be taken away. They may stumble, fail, face rejection and endure heartbreak, but somewhere within them remains a steady voice saying: I am still worthy. I still matter. I can get back up.

That voice is first learned at home.

Children begin to understand themselves through the eyes of their parents. Before they are old enough to form their own opinions, they study our faces, listen to our words and absorb how we respond to their mistakes. They learn whether they are lovable by how they are loved. They learn whether their thoughts matter by whether we listen. They learn whether failure is survivable by how we treat them when they fall short.

Self-esteem does not come from telling children they are perfect. They know they are not, and neither are we. It comes from teaching them that they do not have to be perfect to be loved.

It means praising effort while still allowing struggle. It means correcting behavior without attacking character. There is an enormous difference between saying, “You made a poor choice,” and making a child believe, “You are a disappointment.” One teaches responsibility. The other can become a wound carried for a lifetime.

Children need boundaries, discipline and accountability. But they also need to know that a bad grade does not make them stupid, losing a game does not make them a failure and disappointing us does not mean they have lost our love.

A healthy sense of self-worth also cannot be built by removing every obstacle. Children need opportunities to solve problems, accept consequences and discover their own strength. If we rescue them from every uncomfortable moment, we may unintentionally teach them that we do not believe they can handle life without us.

Real confidence grows when a child can say, “That was difficult, but I did it.”

Parents will not always get this right. We become frustrated. We speak too quickly. Sometimes we repeat the very patterns that hurt us when we were young. But we can apologize. We can admit when we were wrong. In doing so, we teach our children another valuable lesson: love does not require perfection, and mistakes can be repaired.

One day, those twins will grow up and leave the safety of their home. Like every child, they will enter a world that will not always be gentle with them. They will meet people who question their abilities, dismiss their feelings or make them doubt their worth. Their parents will not be able to stand beside them for every interview, every heartbreak, every failure or every lonely night.

But their parents’ words can.

The encouragement they receive, the patience they are shown and the unconditional love wrapped around them can become their inner voices. Long after they have stopped reaching for their parents’ hands, they will still reach for what they were taught about themselves.

If we have done our job well, that voice will remind them:

You are capable. You are worthy. You are loved. And even when life knocks you down, you have everything within you to rise again.

That is not simply a gift for childhood.

It is a gift that lasts a lifetime.

And I hope my neighbor is getting some sleep—although with twins, I suspect “sleeping through the night” is currently more of a charming family legend than a realistic parenting goal.

If you’ve followed my posts on the law, you already know my concerns about the federal judiciary run deep. I’ve written about the hypocrisy of calling lawyers “officers of the court” while expecting them to remain silent when judges overreach, constitutional guardrails are ignored and accountability disappears behind the authority of the bench.

Now, zoom out from any individual courtroom and look at the federal judiciary as a whole.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts is trumpeting its latest “fix”: multifactor authentication for PACER. PACER is the public-facing service through which people search for and access federal court records.

Behind PACER is CM/ECF, which stands for Case Management/Electronic Case Files. It is the federal judiciary’s online system for managing cases and allowing attorneys to file legal documents electronically. In other words, it is the digital backbone of the federal court system.

This is the same system that charges the public to access court records, hides filings behind paywalls and has now proven incapable of adequately protecting the information entrusted to it. CM/ECF was hacked. Not theoretically. Not hypothetically. Hacked.

And the response? A text-message code. Multifactor authentication.

It is a bicycle lock placed on a vault that has already been looted. Cybersecurity experts have been blunt: MFA alone will not stop sophisticated attackers. It is like giving the Titanic more life jackets after the ship is already underwater.

The deeper problem is the arrogance of a federal court system that claims transparency while placing barriers between the public and its own records. It preaches integrity while its infrastructure crumbles. It calls lawyers “officers of the court” while too often expecting obedience and silence in the face of judicial overreach.

The breach of CM/ECF is not merely an information-technology failure. It is a metaphor for the judiciary itself: fragile, compromised and pretending to be secure while anyone looking closely can see the cracks.

When the official records of the Republic—filings, evidence, confidential information and sealed motions—can be stolen or compromised, the integrity of the entire judicial system is placed at risk. The public is asked to trust an institution that too often treats accountability as an inconvenience and transparency as something to be carefully rationed.

The pattern is unmistakable: the federal courts appear increasingly concerned with protecting their own authority first and serving the public second. Every new “fix” becomes another patch on a ship whose underlying problems remain unaddressed.

So, when you hear the phrase “officers of the court,” remember that it should represent a commitment to justice, integrity and the Constitution—not unquestioning loyalty to an institution that refuses to confront its own failures.

Until the federal judiciary embraces genuine transparency and accountability, the phrase will sound less like a badge of honor and more like a punchline in a system that has been compromised—both digitally and morally.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed a law earlier this month that fundamentally changes how the Commonwealth regulates abortions performed after 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Supporters call it the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act. They say it protects the relationship between a woman and her physician and ensures that families facing devastating medical circumstances do not have to leave Massachusetts to receive care.

But the language of the law deserves a much closer look.

Before this legislation, Massachusetts permitted abortions after 24 weeks only under specifically defined circumstances: to preserve the life of the mother, protect her physical or mental health, or respond to a lethal or grave fetal diagnosis.

Those limitations have now been removed.

Under the new law, an abortion after 24 weeks may be performed simply “based upon the professional judgment of the physician.” It also provides that no medical-review process may override the judgment of the physician and the patient or the patient’s healthcare proxy.

In other words, Massachusetts no longer has an explicit gestational limit written into its abortion law.

That is not political exaggeration. It is what the legislation says.

Supporters understandably object when opponents describe this as allowing “abortion until birth.” They argue that abortions late in pregnancy are rare and generally involve heartbreaking medical complications. That may accurately describe most of these cases.

But legislation should not be judged solely by how its supporters say it will ordinarily be used. It must also be judged by what it legally permits.

If lawmakers intended this change to address unusual and medically complex pregnancies, they could have expanded the existing exceptions. They could have added language covering catastrophic fetal conditions that fall outside the previous definitions. They could have created a careful process that protected women facing tragic circumstances while still recognizing that a viable unborn child deserves some protection under the law.

They did not do that.

Instead, they removed the specific legal standards and replaced them with the professional judgment of the physician performing the abortion.

That raises an unavoidable question: Where is the line?

At 24 weeks, we are not discussing an abstract collection of cells or the earliest stages of pregnancy. We are talking about an unborn child who may be capable of surviving outside the womb with medical assistance. As medical science advances, that point of viability continues to move earlier.

Surely that reality deserves moral and legal consideration.

The Massachusetts House passed the bill by a vote of 121–35. The Senate approved it without a recorded roll-call vote. Governor Healey signed it on August 10.

Regardless of where someone stands on abortion, legislation this consequential should not move through government without a full and honest public discussion. Voters deserve to know precisely what was changed, why the existing medical exceptions were considered inadequate and why lawmakers chose to eliminate explicit limitations rather than carefully revise them.

This issue is often forced into two opposing political slogans: either you care about women or you care about unborn children. That is a dishonest and destructive choice.

We should be capable of showing profound compassion toward women and families confronting devastating pregnancies while also acknowledging the humanity of a viable unborn child. Those principles do not have to be enemies.

The most difficult circumstances demand thoughtful laws, careful safeguards and moral seriousness. They should not become the justification for removing every clearly defined boundary.

Massachusetts has now placed enormous authority in the hands of individual physicians while withdrawing the explicit protections that previously existed after 24 weeks.

Supporters call that trusting doctors.

Others will see it as the state abandoning its responsibility to protect viable unborn life.

But whichever description one chooses, the effect of the law is no longer in dispute: After 24 weeks, Massachusetts has erased the line.

And when government erases a line this consequential, every citizen has a right—and a responsibility—to ask what remains on the other side.

I have officially begun a two-week fruit challenge, thanks largely to the robust—and by “robust,” I mean nearly impossible to resist—support of my friend Randi.

Randi is a passionate believer in the power of fruit. I am now reasonably certain she is either on the payroll of the National Fruit Growers Association or quietly preparing to open a produce stand.

Her argument is simple: eat more whole fruit, eliminate some of the processed carbohydrates and pay attention to how my body responds. My argument was also simple: “But fruit has sugar.”

Apparently, this was not the brilliant scientific rebuttal I thought it was.

So, for the next two weeks, I’ll be eating considerably more fruit while closely monitoring my blood sugar, energy levels and any sudden desire to swing through the trees. This is not a crash diet, and I am not expecting to be transformed into a completely different person. Although, if I emerge two weeks from now with perfect blood sugar, boundless energy and the ability to fit comfortably into pants I wore ten years ago, I may have to admit Randi was onto something.

After the first full day, the early results were encouraging. There were small blood-sugar spikes after eating, but the numbers returned quickly to stable and consistent levels. One day is hardly enough to declare victory, but it is enough for Randi to begin drafting her “I told you so” speech.

And honestly, she may deserve the opportunity to deliver it.

There is something wonderful about having a friend who cares enough about your health to share what she has learned, answer your skeptical questions and keep encouraging you until you finally agree to try something different.

Two weeks seems manageable. It is long enough to learn something but short enough that I should survive—even if, by the end, I never want to look at another blueberry again.

So, the challenge is underway. The fruit bowl is full, the blood-sugar monitor is ready and Randi is standing by to supervise the experiment.

I suspect she has already purchased a small trophy for herself.

Most of all, I want to thank Randi for her encouragement, patience and unwavering belief that this challenge was worth trying.

When someone asks me, “Do you think you make a difference?” I feel a little embarrassed.

But depending on how the question is asked, I can also feel hurt.

Sometimes it sounds less like a sincere question and more like a challenge: Do you really believe anything you do matters? In that moment, the question can make you doubt yourself. It can cause you to look back over the years and wonder whether the work, the worry, the advocacy and all the times you showed up for other people meant anything at all.

That hurts because most of what I have done was never about receiving applause. I did it because I cared. I did it because I believed someone needed to speak, someone needed to listen and someone needed to show up.

For years, I have used the radio, my writing and whatever platform I have been given to talk about the issues affecting our communities. I have asked difficult questions, challenged people in positions of authority and spoken up for those who sometimes feel that no one is listening.

Did any of it make a difference?

I hope so.

I hope an interview helped someone understand an issue a little better. I hope something I wrote caused a person to stop, think or see another side. I hope asking an uncomfortable question forced someone in authority to provide an answer. I hope telling someone else’s story helped that person feel seen.

My work with the law has given me other opportunities to make a difference. Sometimes it has meant helping someone find a job. Sometimes it has meant listening to an employee who was struggling, guiding someone through a difficult moment or simply treating people with dignity when a workplace decision affected their life.

But the older I get, the more I realize that the greatest difference we make may have very little to do with our jobs, titles or public accomplishments.

It may be found in answering the telephone when a friend needs to talk. It may be in checking on someone who has been unusually quiet, sitting beside a person who is hurting or reminding someone that they do not have to face a difficult moment alone.

I have tried to do those things for my friends, for the people I love and, most importantly, for my daughter. I have not always gotten everything right. None of us does. But I have tried to show up. I have tried to listen. I have tried to speak when something needed to be said and remain present when there were no words capable of making things better.

Maybe that is why the question can hurt so much. It reduces a lifetime of caring to a moment in which I suddenly feel required to defend it. How do you prove that you made a difference? How do you measure the value of a conversation, a friendship, a word of encouragement or simply being there?

You cannot put those things on a résumé. There is no award for the private moments when you helped someone carry something heavy. Often, the only person who knows what your presence meant is the person who needed you.

The question also embarrasses me because I do not want recognition for caring about people. I do not want kindness to sound like an accomplishment. These are simply the things we should do for one another.

Still, I cannot deny that other people have made an enormous difference in my life. Friends who called at exactly the right moment. People who believed in me. Listeners who encouraged me. Colleagues who trusted me. Those who loved me enough to see beyond the person I showed the rest of the world.

Most of them probably have no idea how much their presence mattered.

That makes me wonder how often the same is true in reverse. Perhaps something I considered small became important to someone else. A conversation I barely remember may have helped another person through a difficult day. Something I said on the radio or wrote in a column may have reached the one person who needed to hear it.

So, do I make a difference?

The question still embarrasses me, and sometimes it hurts more than I would like to admit. But I hope the answer is yes.

Not because I believe I have changed the world, but because I have tried to make my small corner of it a little more honest, a little more compassionate and a little less lonely.

Perhaps that is the real measure of a life—not how many people knew our name, but whether someone’s burden became a little lighter because we were there.

One of the things I remember from my Jesuit education is the idea of accompaniment—walking with someone, being present, and not allowing another person to face something difficult alone.

As I’ve gotten older, I think I understand that lesson differently.

For me, the ministry of presence can be very simple. And sometimes, it isn’t particularly glamorous.

It means making sure Claire doesn’t have to go to a doctor’s appointment alone. I can be there. I can sit beside her. Sometimes, that’s enough—and it’s the least I can do for someone I love. 

It also means being willing to accept help.

I’ve recently found that in a new friendship with Randi. She’s been helping and encouraging me with my diet and making better choices. It would be easy to say, “I’ve got this.” But sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we need someone to walk beside us. And I’ve learned that accepting help is just as important as giving it.

It means helping a blind friend who lives on a fixed income when his landlord suddenly wants to charge him for upgrading the cable TV connection in his apartment. Maybe it’s just a cable connection, but to him, an unexpected charge matters. So we challenge it.

And that brings me to something else I’ve learned over the years.

The only real fun in practicing law is not letting people push other people around.

That’s really what I enjoy about it.

I don’t particularly care about the fancy arguments, the long documents, or the occasional 47-page email that could have been three paragraphs. What I like is stepping in when someone is being taken advantage of and saying, “Wait a minute. That’s not right.”

Maybe that’s another form of accompaniment.

Standing beside someone when they need someone to stand beside them.

You don’t always have to fix everything. You don’t have to have all the answers. Sometimes you just have to show up.

The older I get, the more I realize that presence doesn’t have to be dramatic.

It’s a ride to the doctor.

A phone call.

A friend checking in.

Helping someone challenge an unfair charge.

A little encouragement when the diet isn’t going particularly well.

Someone sitting beside you.

Someone saying, “I’ll go with you.”

Or sometimes simply being willing to say, “Yes, I could use your help.”

The Jesuits taught me a long time ago that we are not meant to walk through life alone.

I think I’m finally beginning to understand just how true that is.

Sometimes we walk beside someone.

Sometimes someone walks beside us.

Sometimes we help.

Sometimes we need help.

And sometimes the greatest thing we can do is simply show up.

I’ll be there.

That may be the ministry of presence.

And if it occasionally involves fighting over a cable bill, helping a friend make better choices, or making sure someone doesn’t get pushed around, well…

that’s not a bad way to spend a life.

I was going through some old newspaper columns today when I pulled out one I had been saving for years. The story had appeared on the front page of both the Detroit Free Press and USA Today.

The headline read:

“Study: 25 Percent of Americans Have No One to Confide In.”

I stopped and read it again.

No one to confide in.

Is there a lonelier sentence than that?

According to research published in the American Sociological Review, the average American had gone from having three people with whom they could discuss important matters to just two. Even more troubling, one in four Americans said they had no one at all.

The sociologists offered many of the explanations you might expect. People live in the suburbs and commute to jobs in the city. We walk around with headphones covering our ears. We retreat behind televisions, computers and smartphones.

But we cannot blame the machines for everything. After all, we are the ones choosing to disappear inside them.

I think the problem may begin much earlier—perhaps as far back as high school.

Many of the people we consider our closest or lifelong friends entered our lives when we were young. Stephen King captured that feeling perfectly in The Body, the story that later became the film Stand by Me:

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12.”

There is a reason that line stays with us.

When are the strongest friendships formed? Usually not while we are racing from one scheduled activity to another. They are formed while riding the bus home from a game, lying in the grass, kicking a can down the street or sleeping on the floor of a friend’s basement. They grow during long conversations, shared secrets and those uncontrollable fits of laughter that leave everyone gasping for breath.

Friendships may be photographed at parties, reunions and celebrations, but they are forged in much quieter moments.

Some of the guys I knew when I was 13 are still men I can call today. The friends with whom I shared midnight pizza and endless conversations in high school are still people I can confide in more than half a century later. We did not realize it at the time, but all those seemingly ordinary hours were building something that would last a lifetime.

A trusting friendship needs room to breathe. It needs time when nobody is competing, accomplishing or staring at a screen. It needs hanging around, listening, laughing and sharing even the boring moments.

Perhaps that is something parents should remember when deciding what their children must accomplish—especially during the summer. There is value in allowing young people to slow down, wander a little and spend unstructured time with the kids who live nearby.

Those kinds of summers may not produce diplomas, certificates or trophies.

They may produce something far more valuable:

A lifelong friend—and someone to confide in when life becomes difficult.

Sometimes the most important lessons have very little to do with the law.

In a recent Law.com reflection, an attorney recalled an encounter with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. When Scalia entered the room, the assembled lawyers remained seated. He noticed.

After looking down for a moment, Scalia expressed his disappointment. These attorneys, he observed, had sat there “like bumps on a log” rather than rising to greet an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. He then added that, in his day, he automatically stood whenever a woman entered the room.

His criticism was blunt. It was also about far more than whether someone stood up.

Scalia was talking about respect.

We have become increasingly casual about the small gestures that once helped hold society together: standing when someone enters the room, looking a person in the eye, offering a firm handshake, holding a door, addressing an elder properly and allowing someone else to speak without interruption.

None of these customs requires us to surrender our independence or pretend that every person deserves our agreement. They simply acknowledge the dignity of the person standing before us.

You could disagree with Justice Scalia’s judicial philosophy and still rise when he entered the room. Respect was never supposed to mean ideological approval. It meant recognizing the office, the institution and the human being.

That distinction has become increasingly difficult for us.

Today, disagreement is often treated as permission for contempt. Political opponents are not merely wrong; they are evil. Public officials are not questioned; they are shouted down. People routinely say things online that they would never have the courage—or the indecency—to say while looking someone in the eye.

We have confused informality with equality and rudeness with authenticity.

The lesson Scalia offered those lawyers was not really about etiquette. It was about discipline. A good lawyer must know how to control the room, but first must know how to control himself. That means listening carefully, respecting the court, understanding tradition and recognizing that professionalism is revealed in the smallest moments.

The same is true outside the courtroom.

Character is demonstrated when there is nothing to be gained from showing courtesy. It is saying “thank you” to the person clearing the table. It is putting down the phone when someone is speaking. It is treating people with dignity regardless of their job, politics, education or usefulness to us.

Justice Scalia’s words may sound old-fashioned to some. Perhaps that is precisely why they are worth remembering.

Not every tradition deserves to survive simply because it is old. But the customs that teach humility, gratitude and respect should not be discarded merely because they require a little effort.

Sometimes getting yelled at makes us defensive.

Sometimes, if we are willing to listen, it makes us better lawyers—and better people.