Jurisprudence

Higgins' Law:

Sooner or later, one way or another, everybody leaves.

I spent eleven years working as a legal assistant and the last three as a journalist covering local, state and sometimes federal levels of jurisprudence, and if there's one thing I've learned in that time, it's this.

With few exceptions, laws are badly written. That includes my own.

Under scientific method, a law cannot be established unless it first goes through the evolutionary process starting as a hypothesis and advancing to becoming a theory.

No one could disprove that gravity existed even after Newton established his theory that, "What goes up, must come down." Hence, we recognize Newton's Law for what it is today, a fact.

Judicial law, however, is not always created in the realm of fact. It's more the product of speculation, estimation, assumptions and politics, and they often overextend the bounds by which they were created to maintain.

I wasn't all that old when I put my theory together. Having bounced around from place to place so much as a kid, I got used to the understanding that any friendships I made were temporary at best. When I came out to Portland 25 years ago, I planned on this being just another momentary stop before I went back home or wherever else I would end up next.

I didn't plan on staying here or making any friends. When I went back to college five years ago, I had the same mindset. I would just go to class, keep my head down and just follow my own rules, which were all linked in some roundabout way to my law.

The reason it exists is because knowing relationships can be so fleeting, especially when they seem to be with people I grow to love so much that it makes it all the worse when faced with the unpleasant fact that they can and do leave. I use it to remind myself to be ready when it inevitably happens, whether it be through death or some other reason.

The problem with laws, however, is that they often become so rigid and black and white, that they offer no room for flexibility or a change of perspective. Either something is in line with the law or it's outside of it. They are also usually overreactions to specific situations. Not everyone in my life whom I care about left. Many are still there. A few who did leave have actually come back, and a few who I walked away from, I brought back into my life.

I had to learn that on my own the hard way, more than once. In my travels, I've seen how brutal and indiscriminate laws can be.

Maybe it's time I retire this one. I'd like to. I want so much to have some level of permanency in my life that it no longer applies.