ELEMENTAL FORCES
There are days when we believe ourselves confined to a world of procedures, deadlines and signatures.
And yet, if we listen more carefully, we live more quietly, more secretly in a world of earth, water, air, and fire.
These are four ancient forces, not dusty archaic notions but true compasses.
Four ways of standing upright: earth, which anchors; water, which soothes; air, which clarifies; and fire, which drives us to act.
I write these lines as one draws a furrow, not to add yet another sentence to the surrounding noise, but to rekindle an obvious truth our time too often forgets : creativity begins the day we accept to look beneath the surface of things, beyond the ordinary, all the way to the invisible.
A law firm, at heart, is not merely a place of defense.
It is a place of transformation, where meaning is restored to reality with the patience of a craftsman and the attentiveness of a watchful guardian.
And when the law thus reconnects with its human dimension, it becomes less a constraint than a path.
Earth does not speak; it holds. It is anchorage, home, and foundation. It nourishes, protects, and reassures, a maternal, Yin force that prevents collapse at the first gust of wind.
In our profession, Earth bears a discreet name: stability.
It is the discipline of daily practice, the invisible framework of case files, the steadiness of a well-crafted sentence, and the calm of a meeting in which one allows the other to breathe before responding.
There is a simple idea that should be taught from the very first consultation: we live within an inner vessel.
A space that receives thoughts, emotions, and memories.
Yet nothing enters it raw; everything is filtered, and that filter is unique to each individual.
The client speaks. The lawyer listens. But listening is not merely understanding; listening is decanting.
The lawyer helps distinguish the essential from the incidental, the wound from its interpretation, fact from fear, and places truth on solid ground.
We begin the day immersed in files and sometimes end it reduced to dust.
That is why we must return to Earth, not as a mystical posture but as a hygiene of awareness.
Walking in nature, welcoming what enters the field of vision with gratitude.
Eating slowly, not to become poetic, but to become present again.
Feeling the heartbeat before sleep, not to analyze it, but to marvel at it.
What matters is not the action itself, but the shift in perspective that follows throughout the rest of the day.
When Earth has held, the soul asks for more than a foundation; it asks for movement.
Water does not argue; it flows. It is vital, fluid, indispensable.
If it guides, it is because it does not attack; it embraces.
Water is the great symbol of our emotions: a calm river, a raging wave, an inner sea that changes without warning.
Civilizations have always known this.
Water is birth and regeneration, purification and renewal.
Fountain, spring, torrent, river, sea, it can carry as easily as it can engulf.
Thales, one of the first thinkers to seek a primordial element, chose water not because it explains everything, but because it connects everything.
In a case file, Water is what overflows the text: grief, shame, anger, sometimes the tears we restrain because we fear they would create disorder.
Yet law without water becomes dry.
It cuts, but it does not heal; it decides, but it does not repair.
I am often asked, “What is the value of emotion before a judge?”
It is worth what it has always been worth: a human truth, to be translated rather than displayed.
A lawyer must not drown a case; he must irrigate it just enough for justice to understand that it is judging a life, not an Excel spreadsheet.
Our words carry a vibration. They can wound or soothe, harden or bring life.
Carl Jung might invite us to become like a river, to stop believing we are lost when we are simply learning to float.
One day, without warning, everything works, not because we calculate better, but because we align with the current.
After water comes breath : that which passes through, connects, allows speech, and allows silence.
Air is invisible and intangible, yet without it everything stops.
It is breath, thought, and communication.
It is prana, the universal vital energy absorbed through breathing, the force that connects body and mind and opens the horizon of freedom.
For the lawyer, air is speech, not speech that overwhelms, but speech that clarifies.
It is the art of advocacy without mistaking oneself for a celestial trombone.
A good advocate knows that a room can resonate without shattering the windows.
Air is also the ability not to be confined by mere survival. Animals, in order to live, narrow their field of vision.
We, creators, entrepreneurs, lawyers, must sometimes do the opposite : broaden our attention, gather details, and build a treasury of living material.
When awareness expands, we notice rhythms, cycles, and seasons, and we feel no longer isolated, but connected to a larger whole.
There is a truth that air whispers without sound: because you breathe, things change.
You stop trying to impress. You respect yourself. You no longer demand to be understood.
You become the space where answers emerge, not through force, but through presence.
When Air has cleared the way, something ignites, not to burn, but to transform.
Fire Is Energy, transmutation, the desire to Move Forward.
It is Light, Heat, Will That yang Force That Drives Us To Act, to Build, to live Intensely.
In a Firm, Fire Is Called Momentum. The Instant We Stop Enduring the File and Begin to Steer Bed.
To create is to see the entire content of the receptacle As Possible Material: We Select What, In The Moment, Feels Useful, Meaningful, Alive.
The Source Makes matter available.
The Filter Distills it. The receptacle Receives it. And often, all of this escapes our Control.
This is Fire's lesson: we don't command everything. We Do Not Force Life Into a plan.
We Learn to Recognize resistances, to Release Them One by One, Until We Become Fluid again.
Making Peace with Our Doubts Does Not Make Them Disappear; It Makes Them Harmless.
And when they stop poisoning us, we Choose better. We no longer demand: we Embody.
In law, there is a fundamental principle: the Free Choice Of counsel.
Allow me, here, a delicately vegetable market metaphor.
The Avocado, the fruit, shares its name with the solicitor, the lawyer. Coincidentally... richly instructive.
A Coincidence, perhaps. But instructive.
If It Is Too Hard And Too Firm, It is not yet Ripe. If it is Supple, it will taste good and it will open easily... to offer the right Advice.
But we do not choose a lawyer for his “shell.” We chooses him for his ability to transform reality… without crushing the human being.
When the four forces answer one another, a question arises : what unites them, what surpasses them ?
They used to say there were four elements : Earth, Water, Air, Fire. And that they lived sometimes in harmony, sometimes in quarrel because Friendship gathers them and Hatred divides them.
One day, they held a hearing, for even Nature, at times, requires a court.
Earth spoke first:
— Without me, everything collapses. I am the foundation.
Water replied:
— Without me, everything dries up. I am life.
Air whispered:
— Without me, you suffocate. I am breath.
Fire crackled:
— Without me, nothing transforms. I am the flame.
They went on, each pleading its greatness, when something strange occurred: a circular silence, pure, ageless, Aether, the quintessence, that fifth element certain philosophers placed in the heavens, governed by perfect motion, not by corruption.
Aether did not say, “I am right.” It said :
— You are all right… separately. But together, you make a world.
Then Hatred, offended, tried to set them against one another:
— Earth is heavy!
— Water is treacherous!
— Air is unstable!
— Fire is dangerous!
And Aether answered, without anger :
— Perhaps. But that is precisely why you need one another.
Earth learned not to smother.
Water learned not to drown.
Air learned not to flee.
Fire learned not to burn for nothing.
And it is said that, that day, an alchemy was born not the art of making gold, but the rarer art of making accord.
Moral
The less you cling, the more everything aligns. Stay available. For the most precious element is not the one that dominates it is the one that connects.
And in life as in law, the truest miracle is not to be right, but to remain true enough to awaken in others the desire to become better.
End and beginning.