Fortunate

Is she making her own luck?

Anita pointed out the other day how lucky we are to be in the position we are in: living in a great city, earning enough to enjoy a comfortable way of life and two beautiful healthy children to share it all with.  I disagreed: I firmly believe you make your own luck - or at least, you take your own opportunities as life presents them to you. In other words, we are where we are primarily because of hard work, not chance.  In idle moments I sometimes trace back my own personal history to work out how I got to where I am (this isn't narcissism: I never expected even five years ago that I'd be living in Hong Kong and coaching high performing lawyers for a living - it is a genuine source of bafflement).  My path no doubt has much in common with many others: working hard to get decent high school and then A-level results led to the opportunity to get a decent degree from a great university, and then a fantastic job at a leading law firm. It was all looking quite conventionally linear until around 2011 when my career path started taking some unexpected twists and turns - all absolutely for the better as it turns out. But thinking in this way allows me to reassure myself that I'm in control - that I am making choices and that Anita and I should not be ashamed to take credit for the work we've put in and the sacrifices we've made to build the life we now live. 

But perhaps I'm missing the point.  The grades would surely have been harder to come by had my parents not instilled in me the value of hard work and perseverance and pushed me towards academic success. Taking things back a step, had I not had the good fortune to have been born into a democratic meritocracy in the late twentieth century rather than, say Bangladesh in the 1950s, things would no doubt have worked out even more differently.  Maybe I'm dancing on the head of a pin, or playing semantic games, but whilst I maintain that you make your own luck, I will concede that on a fundamental level I, like many of my generation born into western capitalist democracies in the late 1970s, am very fortunate indeed.  

This all came to mind because I was clearing some old draft emails at work and found the following. I recall drafting it some time in early 2012, obviously intending to post it on my blog, but for some reason never did. I have a rule never to work on my blog at work - I obviously felt strongly enough about this to make an exception. Anyway, here it is now, in un-edited form.

"Another ten years then. I guess that's it."
 Those were the words of Bonnett Taylor, currently residing in the Tower Street Adult Correctional Facility in Kingston, Jamaica.   He has already served 15 years of a life sentence for murder. He was 27 when he went into prison. This morning when I telephoned him I spoke to a 42 year old.  He'll be 52 before he has any chance of early release.   The phone call took place in the hallway outside Court Number 3 in the Supreme Court building on London's Parliament Square, where moments before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had, by a majority of four to one, dismissed his final appeal. We had reached the end of the road.
 We had tried to argue – unsuccessfully – that his conviction was unsafe.  That key evidence from a crucial witness was never made available to the jury at his original trial.  That in the absence of that evidence there was nothing to contradict the account of the only alleged eyewitness to the murder. That there was a real possibility that the jury, who convicted after only ten minutes' deliberation, might have reached a different verdict had they heard the missing evidence. That whilst that real possibility remains, the conviction must, by definition, be unsafe.  With the exception of one, the Justices disagreed, and at 11.07am I called Bonnet to tell him we'd lost. It was a call I don't want to have to make again anytime soon. I had no idea what to say, except that we tried our best, and that I was sorry.
 Did he do it? I have no idea. Maybe. Am I convinced he is innocent? If I am being honest, I can't be 100% sure. Am I convinced he's guilty? Absolutely not.  In the taxi back to the office I tried to think back to what I have done in the last fifteen years, a period which represents almost my entire adult life.  Or what I will do in the next ten years whilst Bonnett awaits his first opportunity for parole. What a charmed life we lead.
 One final observation: before hanging up, Bonnet thanked me, repeatedly, for everything I and the rest for the legal team had done for him.  I don't know whether I would have the presence of mind, having just been told that there is no possibility whatsoever of being released from prison for another ten years, to say thank you.