The Birds and the Bees and the TLC: What I Wish I’d Known When I Was a YLD Member
By Mark Scruggs
Bees are fascinating little critters. Their lifespan is only six weeks. In the spring, they gather pollen to store in their hives. As spring blooms into the summer, bees begin gathering nectar to make honey. As the weather becomes cooler in the fall, they gather sap to caulk the cracks in their hives to prepare for winter. The bees of summer were different from the springtime bees who gathered pollen, and the autumn bees know nothing of summertime and have never experienced a winter. How do they know what to do?
We humans are the same way. While we have some insight into our lives looking backward, we have no real understanding of what lies ahead. We can remember childhood when we knew nothing about the birds and the bees. Many of us were grossed out when we first heard about the mechanics of sex from older kids. Surely our parents did not do that. Surely they are not doing it now! We also remember the social awkwardness of adolescence and the angst of our teenage years. Today, as young lawyers, we remember those developmental stages well. Today, struggling with the time and attention demands of balancing our personal and professional lives, starting families and striving to get ahead in our careers, retirement is the last thing on our minds. While we have contemporaries in the financial world urging us to buy insurance products and invest for the future, the eventualities seem remote.
