It may seem only a tiny little victory: running finally again my 9 km anti-clockwise circle of the ramparts of Bruges without a break. I started this excercise the day after the Royal Decree of my appointment on April 15th, 1987, and tried to hold on to it since, almost every day I’m not in Court.

However, I stopped almost for a year, and now after surgery, I understand why. So since August, I’m finally trying a come back, to my usual 12km/hour average. Still 10 minutes to catch up.

I wrote about the importance of sport for judges in my first blog of Sept. 1. It’s not just about keeping my asthma under control. Sport awakens your mind. Running, I’m not just ‘Zen’, but also thinking and writing most of the time. I come home with more and better ideas than I left with.

I talked about this recently with the mother of a top engineer at Microsoft (sorry my dear Apple): she told me her son discovered all his collegues participated in some sport, and finally he started wondering if he would have been recruited without some sport ‘credit’. Probably not.

Sport gets you down to some modesty (judges need this ;-). Lesson 1 indeed: you are not so fast as others. Running, you never look at the toes of those behind you, always at the heels before you.

Lesson 2: ‘back to basics’: rain is wet, sun is warm, winter is cold. Your cap is not an airconditioning, and your pull is no heating. This is real. Forget about comfort, and you’l better imagine people living without it. After 45 minutes, you’re home, but some people never are.

Lesson 3: It sharpens your spirit - at least mine needs it ;-) Law tends so often to drift into an imaginary world, that it becomes almost becomes irrelevant. Law should be a tool to shape a better society, but sometimes it looks more as a fable. More fog than view.

The more recent the law, the thicker the fog, but we need to move through it. Yes, sport helps.

Wat u vast niet gemist hebt - Ce que vous n’avez certainement pas râté - You didn’t miss this one did you ?

16 09 2010 A judge of 103 years in the USA: no lengthy trials !  (NY Times)

22 09 2010 De la magistrature à l’humanitaire (Paroles de juges)

A quote a day, keeps the doctor away ;-)

A poem I wrote many years ago running, April 2, 2000 to be precise.

No credit for me: it paraphrases my favorite ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot in 1917. So, it may seem really a bit of a blasphemy to this Nobel Prize Winner, but the intention was good. Anyway, you should read T.S. Eliot first, if - shame on you - you already didn’t.

So, with all due respect to my favourite poet, click here for ‘Love Song to my running shoes’.