Story # 2 The Phone Call

Before I launch into story number 2, here is a brief recap of events leading up to this story:

1. There were many "ingredients" that went into the "recipe" (i.e., programming) that created Version I Michael Maddaus, the Michael Maddaus that was "like an abusive boyfriend that you absolutely adore but can never be sure won't slap you" version (see How To Get Some Perspective on Your Perspective for details).
2. The accretion of the ingredients in the recipe for the creation of Version I Michael Maddaus led me to become, unconsciously, a disciple of the Standardization Covenant, which posits, “know your destination, work hard, stay the course - and success - attaining wealth and status - will be yours! Note the word fulfillment is no where in sight.
3. My children all had, just like me, ingredients that went into creating a young adult version of each of them. I and my past were one part of the recipe. My lack of perspective on my perspective led to that moment at my desk when I put my hand on Sam's shoulder and said "you're going" when he told me he didn't think he wanted to go to the Naval Academy after having been accepted.

Well, the hollowness of the Standardization Covenant and lack of fulfillment caught up with me when I was in my fifties as I found myself burned out at work and generally miserable. There was a challenge I was facing, but I was completely unaware of what that hidden challenge was, and now thanks to the Learning Retrospectoscope, I now know what it was:

The Michael Maddaus who set out on the journey of his life was no longer the same Michael Maddaus that "arrived" at his destination.

There was an interesting study in mice that highlights an important principle related to this - fear drives us more than our desires. They tied a string to a mouse's tail and put the poor thing in a tube. Then, they wafted the smell of cheese in the front of the tube and measured how strong the mouse pulled to get at the cheese. Then they wafted the scent of a cat into the back end of the tube and measured how strong the rat pulled to get away from the cat.

The result? The mouse pulled hard to get at the cheese, but the critter pulled like hell to get away from the cat.

The moral of the story? Fear drives us more than our desires.

In hindsight, of course, it is pretty easy to see that fear was a massive driver in my life. Fear of being poor and of not being "set in life" - meaning a good job and money and a house and all that. It literally and absolutely never occurred to me to focus on my desires (and I don't mean ice cream and sex) since they seemed, at the time, impractical.

But the things that I found intrinsically motivating - my deeper desires - kept bubbling up here and there along the way like a thick soup on low heat. Occasionally, a desire bubble would break through the thick soup of my unconscious neurologic cauldron to conscious awareness, but running full speed on the treadmill of doing, doing, doing day in and day out kept me from noticing the bubbles. In my opinion, this is a ubiquitous and significant tragedy that so many of us endure in the name of the treadmill of success and doing, doing, doing.

A perfect example from my work experience. That abusive boyfriend comment and the underlying attitude driving it, though alarming, was, in fact, coming from a good place. I cared so much about the resident's growth and development that I (as many of you know by now) cobbled together a leadership program for them. I brought in a leadership coach, and we did the 360-degree and personality assessments. This was a side activity for me and one that did not pay money.

Looking back through the Learning Retrospectoscope, I wish I had made that small experiment and endeavor a much larger part of my career because I found it to be so fulfilling. I hope you ask yourself what desires are bubbling up from the thick soup of your unconscious neurologic cauldron that you may be missing or are ignoring.

So there I am, running full speed on the treadmill of doing, doing, doing, and over time, I am feeling more and more miserable, though I could not put my finger on what the hell was wrong. I felt as if I was sort of sinking mentally. Of course, I thought I was being weak, and I tried hard to pull myself out of it with my four surgical habits, which had, quite frankly, served me so well in the past:

1. The discipline habit to keep going no matter what.
2. The be strong habit, so you can pretend you're ok when you are not.
3. The self-sufficiency habit, so you can deal with struggles on your own without talking about them or asking for, God forbid, help!
4. And, of course, the fix-everything habit, so you can find a fix for every problem (emotional or otherwise) that comes along.

As I have noted in a previous newsletter, these habits were great, until they weren't.

Again, through the lens of the Learning Retrospectoscope, the lack of fulfillment and being fried was a huge part of the misery puzzle. But the other big piece of the misery puzzle was my relationship with my wife Lea. Over time, our relationship had drifted into a state dominated by transactionality and not connection. It is easy to see why. She was working as a high-risk obstetrician. We have all these kids, and I am working like hell. Our lives were like being in a raft in white waters.

The slow descent into transactionality led us both to be lonely and isolated from each other, and over time, we ended up being like ships passing in the night. In bed, Lea was a foot away, but she might as well have been in another room. I missed her. I missed us. But the gulf seemed so vast that I didn't even know where to start. Plus, I didn't even know how to talk about it all.

And, of course, whenever I thought about the fact that I was lonely, in a very deep way, for the two of "us," I thought I was being weak and kept pulling out the habits, to no avail.

The straw that broke my back was my back. I started having severe back and radicular leg pain that forced me to stop running. I remember my last run - I ran four miles and was bent over in front of my house in agony, and I realized that I would never run again.

After a 5-level lumbar fusion (the fix everything habit in full force here - through my contacts I arranged to have it done at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles and it was the most physically hellish thing I have been through) I got back to work after 6 weeks. But one day, after a long case, I could hardly walk from hip pain. I had no idea that both my hips were bone-on-bone.

I couldn't even bear to think about another surgery, so I saw a pain anesthesiologist and "friend" who injected both to no avail, so he wrote me my first prescription for 360 Percocets, all without having to ever go to clinic (this was in 2010 before the opioid crisis blossomed).

It was a perfect storm: unfulfilled and fried at work, I'm sick of operating (and had a lot of guilt about that), and I am disconnected from my wife Lea and lonely.

So, with all of this setting the stage, I found myself staring at a canister of 360 narcotic pills. I remember thinking that I could "manage" the pills.

Wrong.

Once again, that moment in time would be a golden opportunity to judge me as being weak or making a shitty decision. But that moment, like all moments in all of our lives, good and bad, are but a sliver of the concatenation of events that have piled up over time that led to that moment and that decision.

Well, 18 months later, I end up in Hazelden rehab center. Overnight, I went from full professor, endowed chair, program director of general surgery, vice-chair of the Department of Surgery, blah blah blah, to being just another miserable addict in rehab.

I was, to put it mildly, not happy to be there, and it turns out, no shit, that I was actually voted "least likely to succeed" by my fellow inmates.

It's one thing to be at the bottom of your medical school class. At least when you graduate you still are a doctor. But the bottom of your rehab class?

Not good!

Well, I made it through, and by the end of the three months, I was voted "most improved." For real.

So I walk in the door of my home after 3 months. Talk about uncomfortable and weird. I no longer had such iron-clad certainty about who I was. I felt like a ship adrift at sea without my old trustworthy Standardization Covenant compass and map. And imagine Lea and the kid's perspective. This force (me) had been gone for 3 months, and now he's back, but what to expect???

Anyway, it was hard for me and everyone involved, including my colleagues at work. But there was a deeper problem I knew I had to deal with: going back to work. I was a mess emotionally, physically, and spiritually, and every time I thought about going back to work, it was, as the author Derek Sivers says, a "hell no."

But how could I not go back and not be a surgeon?? My entire persona and identity was as a surgeon. That alone is a monumental issue, but there was an even deeper concern I had about not going back: I was genuinely afraid that my wife and kids would not love me anymore. I realize some of you may be rolling your eyes at this seemingly childish concern, but it was real inside of me.

Well, one evening, Lea and I were sitting on the porch talking about whether or not I should go back, and I mustered up the courage to say: "Honey, I am afraid that if I'm no longer this high-profile profile, successful surgeon that you and the kids won't love me anymore."

She looked up at me with surprise (more like startled), frowned, and said crisply - "that's ridiculous."

That was reassuring (sort of😦), but we still had a lot of work to do to rekindle the flame.

Now, while all this is going on at the home front, our son Sam is trapped at the Naval Academy and unable to help in any way. Plus, he is level 10 miserable and depressed, like nearly every one of the midshipmen. But Sam way more than others.

The deck was stacked against him "liking" the Academy:

1. He wasn't there because he really wanted to be there. He went because of me when I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "You're going."
2. His personality was not the right fit. From the moment he was walking and talking, it was clear (and now verified by his Big Five personality profile) that he is a deep, deep introvert. We all understood this without the personality profile - he hardly ever talked, and when he did, it was usually "yep, nope, or sounds good." He was perfectly happy (actually happier) when he was alone.
3. He was shockingly disorganized. His room was always a disaster, and within five minutes of cleaning and organizing it to my level of perfection, it turned into a disaster again (to this day, I still don't understand how people can be like this and not care about organizing the dishwasher or their sock drawer).

So, in essence, Sam is locked down and living in a massive dorm with 400 other midshipmen where extraverted behaviors are rampant and living in a small dorm room with 3 other roommates, all while being forced to be hyper-organized and detailed 24/7.

It was not a good fit for Sam. And he was just 17 years old when he started at the Academy.

Of course, part of life is learning how to cope and adapt to new and challenging situations, but a 9-year dose (4 years at the Academy and 5 of service after) is too much for someone with Sam's personality. It's a bitch to work so hard 24/7 to behave in a way that is not part of your biological personality - it's called emotional labor (article on this to download below) - and even short bursts of emotional labor are profoundly exhausting. Prolonged day-in and day-out emotional labor leads to depression, anxiety, decreased job performance, and burnout.

A small and simple example is that of an introvert giving a talk like Brian Little from Harvard (the Original Gangster of personality research). Brian was one of the most popular lecturers at Harvard. Students loved his classes. But he is a deep introvert, and each time he gave a talk, it was so exhausting that after, he would retire to a bathroom stall and sit for a while to decompress (check out his fabulous TED talk here). Deep introverts like Brian can make an effort and give a great talk, but afterward, they need to regroup and recuperate.

At the Naval Academy, Sam rarely, if ever, had a chance to regroup and recuperate.

Combine Sam's personality and the emotional labor required of him with the fact that he never wanted to really be there🙁.......no wonder he was depressed and miserable.

The only thing that kept him going was boxing. He was their star boxer, which was a big deal since boxing was a big deal at the Academy.

So, while Sam's toiling with emotional labor at the Academy, I went to Hazelden and am now back home, and we are all adapting to this monumental life reset or reboot if you will.

Ok, so Lea and I decide that I am not going to go back to work. We didn't have a plan for what the hell I was going to do, but like almost everything in my life, I figured I would figure it out.

It's July 2012, a sunny summer day, and I walk outside with my cell phone and call the department chair to tell him I'm not coming back. He was nice, said how hard the decision must be, and wishes me the best. I push the red end call icon, and in an instant, my 30-year surgical career was over. My entire life, as I knew it, is over.

I felt as if I had jumped off a cliff and was in a free fall to my death below. It was one of the most disorienting and frightening moments of my entire life. One minute, an academic thoracic surgeon; the next minute, a "nobody." Everything I had worked for for so many years, and my entire identity, seemed to have evaporated in an instant.

More on identity and becoming a nobody (a remarkably cleansing process) for another day.

So I became a househusband, taking care of my wife Lea, who was still working, and our two daughters, Maya (16) and Anne (10). There is a ton of good story stuff and things to share and learn from that whole experience - but that's for later too.

Over time, our lives slowly improved, and Lea and I were closer and more connected. But there was still work to do to rekindle the flame, so we decided to take a second honeymoon in Florence Italy, the place of our first honeymoon.

We’re even staying at the same hotel as our first honeymoon, the Torre di Bellosguardo.

We settle in, go out and eat a pile of pasta, and back at the hotel, love is in the air: Lea is taking a bath, and I’m lying on the bed staring at the frescos painted on the ceiling.

Then her phone rings. She walks out in her robe with her hair wrapped in a towel, grabs her phone, says, “It’s Sam,” and sits down at the desk and talks to him for 90 minutes while I’m lying on the bed listening.

Sam’s at the 2-year time point at the academy when anyone can choose to leave without penalty. We all know how much he hates the place and how depressed he has been, even though he is their boxing champion.

At this point, I've finally learned the first crucial step in learning to connect with someone in a conversation: keep my mouth shut with muscular patience. This, of course, applies to many circumstances in life, and I managed to keep my mouth shut for the entire 90 minutes. Hell, even if I wanted to say something, I’m so plagued with guilt for putting my hand on his shoulder that day and telling him, “You’re going,” that I didn’t think I could keep my emotions out of my thinking and any advice I might have had.

Plus, he never asked to talk to me. 

Their phone call ended without a decision. 

So why am I telling you this rather long story?

Because after the phone call, Lea and I are lying in bed in silence, and as I am looking up at the Italian frescos painted on the ceiling, I start to think about Sam.

Actually, I start to see Sam in his entirety, or as David Brooks says in the book How To Know A Person, to behold him - yes, to behold him and really see him for who he is, and not as I see him, for the first time.

I could see how, when he was young, he loved to be alone in his room for hours on end in silence, playing with his toys and monsters, and I could see how his room was always a disaster and how within 5 minutes of cleaning it up to perfection it turned into a pigsty.

And I could see how he loved to do anything physical: weight lifting, boxing, running, climbing Mount Denali, swimming, football - anything using his body.

And I could finally see how my past created an urgency for his life that must have been suffocating to him, even though he showed how much he loved and respected me by giving his high school graduation speech about me.

And I could finally see how hard it must be for him at the academy for the reasons I wrote about above.

I didn't know about this thing called To Behold then, but I sure as hell felt it at that moment in bed in Italy. It is a state of complete acceptance and even embracing someone for who they are, without judgment and free of the trance of me and seeing everything through the foggy perspective of my mental lens.

Here is a passage from David Brooks about Beholding his wife (italics and bold mine):

"One day, not long ago, I was reading a dull book at my dining room table when I looked up and saw my wife framed in the front doorway of our house. The door was open. The late afternoon light was streaming in around her. Her mind was elsewhere, but her gaze was resting on a white orchid that we kept in a pot on a table by the door.

I paused, and looked at her with a special attention, and had a strange and wonderful awareness ripple across my mind: “I know her,” I thought. “I really know her, through and through.”

If you had asked what it was exactly that I knew about her in that moment, I would have had trouble answering. It wasn’t any collection of facts about her, or her life story, or even something expressible in the words I’d use to describe her to a stranger. It was the whole flowing of her being—the incandescence of her smile, the undercurrent of her insecurities, the rare flashes of fierceness, the vibrancy of her spirit. It was the lifts and harmonies of her music.

I wasn’t seeing pieces of her or having specific memories. What I saw, or felt I saw, was the wholeness of her. How her consciousness creates her reality. It might even be accurate to say that for a magical moment I wasn’t seeing her, I was seeing out from her. Perhaps to really know another person, you have to have a glimmer of how they experience the world."

All I can add to Brook's beautiful experience of his wife is my belief that if you want to, you can learn to Behold others as a skill, even if you have not lived with them for 30 years. Just pause, and look, with your mind's eye and imagination, and get curious about them and about the chain of fortuitous concatenations and forces that led them to where they are at that moment.

Feedback with a thumbs up or down is greatly appreciated, or drop an email to me michael@michaelmaddaus.com.

Here is the article on emotional labor.

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