What does it mean to be gracious? There are people you meet in life and you wonder how they are able to maitain their poise and grace in times of adversity... particularly I find grace in elders...

what does grace signify to me.... To me grace signifies the ability of the person to look beyond the present and at the big picture .... grace means you still keep your cool when you are being attacked... grace means you are the first one to complement an adversary on their success... grace means acknowledging a peer's superior success.... grace also means you are humble about your success... grace means you are secure in your own skin...grace means helping a friend through a crisis even if you are badly beaten down in life or even when you are really doing well in life without making the friend concious about it....

needless to say being gracious is a tough art... and I have observed more closely the lack of grace in mine and other peoples behaviour....so there are law schoolites who bitch about their peers - some of the bitching couched in very kind words 'yeah, for him to reach that level, it is superb'... or 'I have not heard anything great about this person'.... or 'well, you never know how much of all this is true'.....and as always there is the AMSS bashing which is a definite sign of lack of grace in a person (ofcourse I never tire pointing it out on this blog).....so I have heard laments like 'That is something that would never happen in my firm'... or 'well at least we have a fair chance in our firms'.... or the worst 'you dont need to know the law to be a partner in India'.... all of these ofcourse make me go through a range of emotions such as laughter, to anger to non-chalance....and I try to be very gracious in my approach (I said try - doesnt mean that I am always).... and when they talk badly about my firm I in turn talk highly about their organisation.... hoping to neutralise the insecurity that is driving the diatribe .... but most often such grace is wasted on really insecure people and hence they wind back to the same point....

at least you were gracious is what my friends tell me... and I sometimes wonder whether it is better to plummel the enemy to the ground with my bare acidic tongue or sit on a cloud perched high above ground with a halo around my head feeling very angelic and close to God....

Hmm... tough choice people....