I prefer reading on my phone than I do the newspaper nowadays, but I still love having Newsday waiting in my driveway every day. When I lived in the city and commuted into Manhattan, I used to have a ritual of buying a “New York Newsday,” to remind myself of my Long Island roots.

David Draiman, the lead singer of the metal band Disturbed--yes, they did that Grammy-nominated cover of “Sounds of Silence”--had once planned to be a cantor or even a rabbi. But he was also rebellious, kicked out of three Chicago yeshivas, and, as a teenager, blew up a rabbi’s van. I’ve been thinking about him a lot during these “Days of Awe.” I imagine that the yeshivas that didn’t kick him out (and maybe those that did) now proudly claim him as their own.

My colleague Gordon Firemark used a phrase recently that I think could be a mantra: “Reframe Adversity.” He and I just finished teaching an online pilot program for other attorneys who want to be the “go-to” experts in their field, and seek to leverage 21st century tools to reach clients. We know we have tapped into an important issue--not just for lawyers--that can be summed up as “the art of turning lemons into lemonade” through personal introspection.

There is an ancient story of an old man who looked too feeble to be planting a tree, but, nonetheless, he planted a carob tree, which takes decades to produce fruit. It was pointed out that he would never live to see the literal fruits of his labor. He replied, “When I came into this world, there were already fully-grown carob trees; as my forefathers planted these for me so I too plant these for my children.”

There is a video game that most video gamers have never heard of that I used to spend hours playing as a kid. It was called “Astrosmash,” it was the flagship game for the Mattel Intellivision game system, and it was a competitor to Atari’s “Space Invaders.” It was a missile defense kind of game where you shot falling meteors out of the sky. It started off slowly, but, as the game went on, it would go faster and faster and you would accrue more points, and increase in levels. It was immensely satisfying to improve, until there was so little room for improvement.

There is a level of sophistication to the data collection on the Internet that I think most of us cannot fathom. Incisive conclusions can be drawn by the amount of time between purchases or inquiries or any given number of "inputs" that are recorded. This is why I have to take a deep breath whenever a client or potential client or a friend tells me of an intriguing deal that "might make all the difference." I take that deep breath to imagine all the whys and what-ifs that might justify a great deal falling into a talented person's lap like manna from heaven. And then I think of all the why-nots.