The Dark Side of Independence

This comes with a warning. It’s not the post one would expect for a Fourth of July celebration. For me, “independence” has become a bad word. I mean, as women in our country, what has “independence” brought us…certainly not freedom, not the freedom we all need and desire? More women than ever before are working harder, longer hours, for less pay.

Don’t get me wrong. We are blessed. We are a great nation. Our independence is the basis of all creative expression which, initially, made us a planetary leader. But this same independence also created disasters, both personal and global.

Independence is a necessary and masculine quality. We all must leave the nest, so to speak, to discover our own potential, to develop our unique internal gifts, to become self-sufficient…but in the U.S. we’ve gone over the deep-end. Somewhere, along the way, we’ve left interdependence, responsibility and community on the wayside. Like all feminine qualities, they are so devalued that we’re suffering the consequences. We have, in fact, been suffering the consequences for generations, but it is only now that we’re at the point of no return.

Now that we no longer sit at the top of the economic world, we no longer have the highest number of well-educated individuals, we no longer have the greatest amount of resources at our disposal (because we’ve already used them up, turned them into non-biodegradable rubbish, and discarded them), what do we have? We have our creative expression, our freedom of expression. Because of this, I am hopeful. We still have a major role to play in creative solutions to the multiple problems that face our planet. Despite my faith being shaken by the inability of even our top scientists to come up with a viable solution to the gulf spill, I still believe that we hold this ability, this opportunity, and this responsibility. We must be the ones to come up with solutions, solutions for all the disasters we’ve participated in creating. We have no other choice.

So, what does all of this have to do with women, with the feminine? As women, we’ve learned how to act independently. We’ve learned this so well we’ve forgotten the importance of interdependence. We live in a society that has also forgotten. And here’s the key. If the problem is a predominance of independent action, then the solution is interdependent action. We forgot responsibility. We forgot the results of our excessive push forward. The answer is solutions that come through creating community efforts, taking into account the consequences of each action, acting in a responsible way. And this type of action is second-nature to most women, to most mothers and some fathers. How do good mothers make decisions? Without thinking, they first answer the question, how will this affect my child, our family? Mothers make extraordinary decisions and changes both during pregnancy and beyond that they would never make for themselves. They quit smoking, they eat healthy foods, they change jobs, they change their lifestyle, they let go of all that is non-essential, they look at the bigger picture, they see how every decision, every action, affects their child’s future.

This Independence Day I challenge us to celebrate our interdependence. I challenge us to accept the responsibility that came with the incredible freedom we’ve been given. I challenge us to make our decisions the way a mother would. I challenge us to value our women and children, our earth, our world.

Happy Interdependence Day, Everyone!

Responsibility and the Greek Crisis

Many friends have been asking for my POV about the current situation in Greece. I am speaking about the financial crisis and not about the recent deaths.

I’ve been hesitant to address the demonstrations, because I haven’t been clear about what to say or how to say it. The situation is complex, but everyone rushes to simplify it by assigning blame, typically to one party. If we can just blame someone, anyone, find our scapegoat, then we do not have to take any personal responsibility. A lot can be learned by observing how each political party/person/country is reacting to a situation such as this.

I watched the same thing happen after Michael Jackson’s death. A respected doctor (I won’t name this person), was oh-so-quick to blame MJ’s doctor. And, apparently that wasn’t enough, because this same physician went on to blame a whole slew of “doctors of celebrities.” This person was on national news, within minutes of MJ’s death, blaming an entire group of individuals. I was furious. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that MJ’s doctor or these doctors are not to blame or that they do not carry any responsibility. We have a legal system to sort that out. It angered me that this type of quick finger-pointing (that the media adores, by the way) relieved everyone else of any personal responsibility.

Yes, of course there are crooks in this world. There are billions of bad decisions made on a daily basis. Some individuals are malicious and corrupt. But, still using the example of MJ, by so quickly attaching blame to one party, we lose the opportunity to address the other important issues, such as, in this case, the nature of addiction, how the public fails their celebrities, or the long-term effects of emotional and physical abuse.

I so wished that this popular physician had addressed these areas, in front of millions of viewers, because we are in great need of healing.

We’re also in great need of taking responsibility—responsibility for our health, our actions, our beliefs, and our choices.

And so it is the same with the current crisis in Greece. I’ve lost track of who (sounds like a Dr. Seuss book) is on the who’s who list of responsible parties: Papandreou’s administration , Karamanlis, Goldman Sachs, the United States, the European Union, the Greek police, the Greek people, the demonstrators, the anarchists, the government workers who did not strike… Who is asking the bigger, harder questions? Most are content with scapegoating one group, one party, one county. But when we take each issue and ask the real questions of why and how, we begin the process of unpeeling the gigantic onion. As we go through the layers, the stench fills the room and our eyes burn. Impotent tears stream down our cheeks. They cannot clear us from our contribution to this mess.

Please don’t take me literally. Perhaps there is no way that you are personally responsible for what is happening right now in Greece. But, this doesn’t matter if you are American, because many of our decisions affect the rest of the world anyway. It has only been recently that we’ve had a taste of our own medicine. Prior to this financial recession, many of us had no clue as to the effects that our economic and environmental decisions have had on those outside of our own city, state or country. Ask a person from a small European country like Greece, and they won’t hesitate to share this information with you.

The time has come. We can no longer ignore own responsibility, whether it’s our health, our spending habits, our lifestyle choices, our parenting skills, or our environmental practices, we all carry multiple responsibilities that affect our fellow inhabitants of this earth. Time to pay up, literally.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is there any area of your life for which you have recently claimed responsibility? How have your actions affected our global companions?

Who is Responsible for Michael Jackson's Death?

Because Michael Jackson’s death has affected us all, I’m going to deviate from my usual posts to share my thoughts. Many individuals have asked me, in my role as a physician, to comment. His tragic death (and life) has brought up many important controversial issues.

First, let me be clear: I am not condoning any irresponsible or criminal behavior on the part of a physician. If these medications were not prescribed responsibly then, of course, this needs to be addressed, as it should be in any situation in which doctors are prescribing irresponsibly. When a person is addicted, they will use extreme means to obtain the addictive substance, and anyone with power or money will be more successful in obtaining these substances.

1. Michael Jackson was misunderstood by many. He viewed the world differently from others. We need to be very careful when judging another human being whom we do not understand. I would go so far as to say that we probably shouldn’t be judging him at all. But it is clear to me that he suffered from being misunderstood. It is also clear that he was dealing with both emotional and physical problems that were not treated by addressing the underlying causes. Conventional medicine is limited in diagnosing and treating underlying causes. This needs to be acknowledged. Addictions are also extraordinarily difficult to treat, and, when treated, relapses are the rule rather than the exception. Also, perhaps most important, the individual needs to want to heal (or be forced by those around him to seek treatment).

2. This leads me to the next point. Did Michael choose treatment for his addiction? Did those closest to him fail in getting him help? These are loaded questions. It is near impossible for someone who is addicted to “choose” treatment. It is equally difficult for others to enforce treatment, especially with someone so independently powerful and isolated.

3. So who, ultimately, is responsible? The doctors who filled his prescriptions? Michael, himself? Michael’s friends and relatives who were unable to recognize that he needed help, or recognized this need but were unable to intervene? What about those making career-related demands? How about society as a whole? What about all of the people who misunderstood him? And those who may have abused him emotionally or physically?

I feel that the issue of responsibility is too complex to blame any one person. If we look deeper, we will probably find many responsible. I was surprised by the extent of Deepak Chopra's anger. I have no reason to doubt his allegation that this is a common occurrence between celebrities and their doctors, and, as a physician who can’t remember the last time she wrote a prescription for a narcotic, I certainly understand his anger. I can’t help but notice, though, that his anger seems personally charged, and this makes me ask the question of whether or not he personally feels responsible for not being able to help Michael. I heard the same anger in the Jackson family attorney’s voice when he said that he had “warned” the family. I understand this all too well. Patients frequently expect me to take responsibility for their health. We each need to start taking responsibility for our own health and choices, rather than passing off this responsibility to others.

The chronic pain management situation has become almost schizophrenic. As physicians, we, in the past, have been so hesitant to prescribe narcotics that many patients who truly need them have been undertreated, and their chronic conditions have worsened. This has become so common that the State of California now requires all physicians to take a twelve-hour course about chronic pain management and end-of-life care. I hope that the outcome of this “investigation” of Michael Jackson’s death does not have the undesired effect of decreasing access of these medications to those who are in true need. I also hope that his death will bring more attention to finding viable solutions to addiction and chronic pain.

Lastly, I hope that Michael Jackson has finally found peace. We honor him, and we will miss him.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this.