A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe and … Today
Our law office phones have been ringing non-stop since the election just three weeks ago. President -Elect Trump made immigration reform the central tenant of his campaign and it, frankly, scared a lot of our clients. Along with a lot of other people, some of them the men and women who are fast becoming our clients.
There are a myriad of thoughts, speculation, outright guesses, and off-one’s-gourd-straight-out-fear-mongering about immigration all over the news and social media right now. None of it, even the most benign, are doing a thing to help or clarify.
We’re not going to add to that. The simple fact is, no one knows what President Trump and his administration will do and trying to guess at this point is like trying to guess who will win the Super Bowl. In 2019. But, we do have a few suggestions. The first and most important is to take a deep breath and … relax.
There’s a wonderful old BBC series (and not so wonderful 2005 movie) called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. They are adapted from a series of novels by Douglas Adams, novels that have garnered a significant, very devoted following over the years.
Briefly, it’s about Arthur Dent’s trails through, you guessed it, the universe. An everyday human swept up into the vast, unknown universe, he goes from adventure to adventure, some of them quite ludicrous, all of them bizarre, disorientating, unnerving.
Through it all, Arthur handles everything thrown at him with some initial … nervousness, but always seems to bounce back, take it in stride, adapt, move on. The reason is his traveling companion, Ford Prefect’s philosophy, one repeated over and over again across the novels: DON’T PANIC.
That’s our thought for the day – this is the time for all of us to follow Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent’s always handy advice: Don’t Panic.
No one knows what the future after January 20, 2017 holds – that may well include those about to run the government. This is the time to take a breath, count to ten, and calmly, with determination, prepare, get organized, talk to professionals. Get your house in order is a hackneyed expression, but one well worth remembering right now.
Early editions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe used to come with the Don’t Panic button in the picture. I wish they still did, we’d buy a few dozen copies of the books and give the buttons out to clients and friends.
Just as our friendly, deeply felt, reminder to breath and continue living well.
