I had a very good 60th birthday being treated to a lunch, a dinner, two plays, a 3D IMAX movie, a book of Carole King piano music, a manual for how to use Quicken to wrap up this accounting project, and the first trick-or-treating I’ve hosted in years. I do hear people speak quite frequently about the wonders of the senior years, if only not for the aches and pains. I hear people my age speak frequently about their dreams for retirement and finally travelling, or getting truly serious about a lifelong hobby, learning a musical instrument, taking up a language, building a boat, or any number of other projects they’ve been waiting a lifetime for the freedom to tackle.
But I don’t see 60 this way at all. The fact is I’ve been chronically ill almost my entire life. Since 1989, the doctors had all relegated this phenomenon to the blanket label of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. And maybe they were right. But in 2007, two and a half years into this estate business, it was finally discovered that I had a severe case of sleep apnea.
I’ve always wished that Dad could have been here to see my recovery. But it was so serendipitous that I can’t help believe that he was the one who engineered it. I had been managing my CFS symptoms quite nicely for a number of years, nicely enough anyway to be a caregiver to my two elderly parents for the last nine years of my father’s life. But then, two years into all this executor crap and the significant stress that went with it, I felt the CFS taking over again. That was in November 2006 and in January 2007 at my semi-annual checkup with Dr. Markowitz, I told him about it. Even though he has been my doctor since 1993 and knows more about my insides than anybody, he asked me the same fateful question he had asked 14 years before that, "How are you sleeping?" It was the same question every other one of the more than two dozen other physicians I had consulted with since 1988 had asked. And I answered the same way I’ve always answered it. "I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. How do you think I’m sleeping? Lousy."
And it was true. Every morning since I woke up that fateful day in 1988 with this pain in my gut that never went away and was often so excruciating that I would scream at the top of my lungs, I was waking up feeling lousy, feeling like I had been hit by a train and that only by staying in bed for 10, 12, 14 hours could I feel like I could minimally function. And that’s the way life had been for 19 years.
So I once again made the statement to Dr. Markowitz. "I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. How do you think I’m sleeping? Lousy." And every time I had said this to every doctor I had said it to, the response was always the same, including with Markowitz. "Oh well, you’ve got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I guess that explains it." And they would send me on my merry way as there is no cure for CFS, and no treatment except bed rest.
And this is why I believe Dad was intervening. For the first time in 19 years, instead of dismissing my symptoms as the inevitable consequence of an incurable medical condition, Dr. Markowitz instead thoughtfully stroked his chin and after taking several moments to consider the situation asked, "Have you ever had a sleep study?" "What’s a sleep study? Never heard of them." And that’s when he spoke the fateful words that changed my life. "Maybe we’ve been going about this backwards all these years. Maybe the CFS is not causing your sleep problem. Maybe your sleep problem is causing the CFS."
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Eureka! Five months later after a lengthy sequence of tests it was determined that I had sleep apnea and had had it since my teen years. The tests they performed in the sleep lab showed that I had never entered delta sleep and that I hadn’t experienced delta sleep in 40 years. Delta sleep is the stage of deep sleep where your body does all its healing and recharging. So for 40 years, my body had not had a chance to heal and recharge. What had been happening is I would enter the dream state, which is the state you are in just prior to delta and just after delta, but then the lack of oxygen would force me for the tiniest fraction of a second to awake just enough to keep me out of delta. In other words, for 40 years I had never fallen completely asleep. For 40 years, my body had had no restorative sleep.
But how is that possible? No sleep for 40 years? Wouldn’t I be dead? No. The doctor told me that the human body is remarkably resilient so my body simply learned to adapt. My apnea had probably started when I was 15 so by the time I reached 35 in 1988, the damage was by then severe enough that my body finally just up and quit. All right already, I’ve had enough. I’m not doing anything else until I’ve had a good long rest. And that is why I woke up that fateful morning in January 1988 with that pain that would never go away and would often be excruciatingly painful, and would not allow me to function in any meaningful way. My body was quitting on me. 20 years without sleep was enough. So no, the lack of sleep didn’t kill me but it certainly did go a long ways toward explaining why I was always so exhausted, in so much pain, and why oh why for my entire adult life had I been so sickly and so prone to every little bug that came along.
Now, 20 years after that, 40 years of damage now had to be undone and I went through five torturous months before the effects of the C/PAP therapy finally began to kick in by August. But it would be several more years before I would be completely recovered. Now as I hit 60, it has been several more years. A few weeks ago I had my annual check up with Dr. Sak, my apnea specialist, and he declared me more or less cured. I certainly feel more or less cured. I’m 60 years old this week but I actually feel stronger and more energetic and full of life than when I was 20. In fact, I suspect I am stronger and more energetic than your typical 20 year old.
That’s why I don’t have the same perspective on turning 60 that so many others do, as with the old saying, "Ahhh, youth is wasted on the wrong people!" I’ve had my decades of aches and pains. And now I’ve had nearly a full decade of being an estate manager. It’s time for me to start living again.
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In declaring me cured, Dr. Sak asked the standard questions he asks all his patients. "So what now?" I had an answer all ready for him as I have not exactly spent the last 24 years ignoring plans for my future. My answer, "First I finish closing the estate which will be done in a few more weeks. Then I finish writing my book, which will take a few more months. Then I enter Oakland University and do their Financial Planning program. Then I start my new career as a financial advisor to retiring baby-boomers. Then if I am at all successful as a financial advisor, I will be using the connections I’ll be making to find investors to start making films again. And of course, as always, I’ll keep writing. I have the next forty years of my life all planned out. Yes, I’ll be starting my new career just about the time that most people my age are retiring. A little scary right?"
Sak was most impressed. He said that usually when he asks that question, he is greeted by blank stares, as the patient hasn’t given it any thought at all. Not only had I thought it out, I had done so quite thoroughly and was able to articulately it very concisely in the space of about 30 seconds. I did confess that I had some anxiety as to whether it was going to work out. My research has strongly indicated that the reason the CFP has a two year work requirement is because the course work alone does not prove you can do the job. Until you are actually on the job, you don’t know. That has to make finance a most curious profession since law, medicine, engineering, art – you name it – the coursework is self-vetting. It’s pretty hard to successfully get through law school and then discover you don’t like being a lawyer. And it has to be a pretty rare thing for someone to go through the rigors of four years of medical school, two years of internship and then a residency only to get out into clinical practice and discover they don’t like being a doctor. So finance seems to be unique. Doing well in school does not mean you’ll do well on the job. That makes me a little nervous.
Well Sak took issue with me on my conclusions. He assured me that there are doctors who despite the eight years of vetting get out into clinical practice and actually discover they don’t like being around sick people. Some actually decide they can’t stand the sight of blood even though the very first thing they do to you in medical school is give you a cadaver and have you spend months dissecting it.
I started thinking about it and decided he was quite right. Though it must be rare in medicine, it certainly isn’t in law, engineering or any number of other professions. I can’t tell you how many lawyers I know who hate the law and are only in it for the money. I can’t tell you how many engineers I know who are trying to get out of engineering and into acting or filmmaking. Then I recalled having the same trepidations when I was in film school. I remember as a 20 year old having lunch with my film professor just weeks before graduation from BU and confessing that my greatest fear was that I would wake up one morning, be 50, and still be trying to get a film gig. I told him my great fear was that I would not be able to hack the politics of the business, that I did not have the "chutzpah" that we’d been talking about for two years that was so necessary for success in this business. And my film professor answered my concerns as follows, "Welcome to the club. I still have those fears. Everyone does. And I’ll tell you something else. You think someday you’re going to get that magical phone call and offered a 3-picture contract with a major studio? Forget it, it’s never going to happen. You are going to go through your whole career wondering where your next job is coming from. Even after you’ve got your 3 picture contract and are making your 20 million dollar movies and winning your Oscars, never will you get to the point where you feel you can say, "I’ve made it." Never. It will always be a struggle and there will never be any certainty."
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I embarked on a film career and discovered, much to my surprise, that I not only could tolerate the politics but actually enjoyed it. And found I was good at it. I became one of a handful of students in my graduating class that could say five years later that I was employed and making films with a real production company.
The same thing in business school. Even starting the MBA program I had serious doubts that I was cut out for this and, once I started working, the doubts became even worse. Five years later I was reporting directly to a McDonnell-Douglas vice-president, senior management would not make a move without reading my reports first, and was regularly sitting in and consulted with at board meetings. I was doing better and making more money than most of my colleagues from the USC MBA Class of 1981.
In both cases, my instincts had told me that this is what I was supposed to do and that I’d be good at it. These instincts had been guiding me since I was seven years old for, even at that early age, aside from my childhood dream of the priesthood which quickly went by the wayside in 7th grade, I had known even then that I wanted to be a filmmaker and I wanted to be in business. And that’s what Dr. Sak told me I had to hold on to. My instincts would be my savior. They had never let me down before. If they were telling me now that financial advisement is where I needed to be, then that’s where I needed to be. Hearing him say that was probably the best birthday present I had.
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So yes! Turning 60 is a milestone in more than just the usual ways. It is neither the beginning of the Golden Years, nor of the Rust Years. It is simply a new beginning. Halloween began as a medieval superstition in which people believed that the devil came to earth that night to claim as many souls as possible before the saints came marching in on November 1st to take their loved ones to heaven. So they would dress in ghoulish costumes and makeup and decorate their houses with signs of devil worship in the hopes the devil would be fooled and pass them by. In a way, Halloween was a new beginning then too, since if you successfully passed muster and fooled the devil with your facade, you got a new lease on life and another year to make good. And that is how I feel. I’ve gotten a new lease on life.
I’ve written in past years about how some stroke of ill fortune had always historically fallen across my path on Halloween. This year nothing bad happened and that alone makes it unique. In fact, something good happened. I was on my way home from Ann Arbor in the rain and the idiot in front of me on Pontiac Trail suddenly slammed on the brakes for no reason. I had to slam on my brakes too on the slippery wet pavement and I could feel myself sliding right into a rear-ender. That’s when my ABS took hold and stopped the car, quite efficiently I might add. This was my first Halloween with the Saturn and the Saturn is my first car with ABS. I am now a firm believer and will never have another car without ABS.
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But it is not the primary purpose of this essay to talk about my birthday or Halloween. Rather, I’ve been meaning to write for weeks about a lesson I learned last month with regard to religion and politics. But what the hay? Isn’t Halloween itself all about religion and politics? After all, the medieval traditions that spawned the holiday were deeply rooted in religious superstitions and such superstitions were very much a product of the political culture of the times. Which is why this particular experience I had was particularly fitting.
In the news last month, the acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking gave yet another public statement expressing his views on the impossibility of a deity. He is a well known atheist if you define atheism as someone who makes a religion out of proving that God does not exist, as opposed to simply being non-religious. (I have no problem with non-religious or agnostics. These are people who are searching, which is probably life’s noblest endeavor. I do object to the arrogance of atheists who believe they have all the answers and mock those who believe differently.) He is a well known atheist who can only see a physical world around him and is incapable of recognizing even the possibility of any existence which cannot be proven through natural law. His kind have always amused me not only because they violate the tenets of their own profession with their absolute certainty over something that cannot be proven, but because they actually care. This is what I’ve always found hard to swallow about atheism. Why do they care if others choose to believe in a deity? (And why do religious care if others don’t?) Certainly if they are being persecuted for not believing, that is a good reason to care. But such persecution is so terribly rare in the modern world. (In fact, the persecution of believers by atheists is far more common.) They claim to be logicians yet they are basing their entire enterprise on the actions of a tiny percentage of people who abuse religion while ignoring the 99% who use it for personal enrichment and massive works of charity.
Certainly they and everyone else have the right to care when they see abuse. My objection is when people whose expertise lie outside of theology think it is their place to serve themselves up as opinion leaders against theology. So I wrote a letter basically saying just that, "Wouldn’t the world be so much better off if scientists stuck to science and religious leaders stuck to religion? Why do scientists like Hawking feel they have a place in speaking against matters of faith when they know nothing about faith? Why do religious leaders feel they can preach against science when they know nothing about science? The world would be a better place if people would restrict themselves to what they know. Faith is faith. Natural law is natural law. The two have nothing to do with each other and it is Hawking’s great flaw that he thinks they do. Faith is believing in things that natural law cannot explain. Why are atheists bothered by this?"
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I thought this was just a common sense statement that no reasonable person could argue with. How can anyone disagree that expert opinion should come from experts, not from hobbyists? Which is why I was so surprised at the firestorm of comments I received from people who shared Hawking’s perspective. Some read very draconian inferences into my comments as if I was calling for a government ban on scientists expressing opinions. Others expressed dismay at how I could see any wisdom in believing in something for which there is no evidence in natural law? They were expressing such an incapacity for objectivity that they were reading tons into my comments that weren’t there.
I thought my point was quite clear and simple. Certainly I never said anything remotely about banning opinion. Certainly scientists are citizens like everyone else and have every right to have opinions about anything and express them. My only point was to express these opinions not as scientists but as citizens, with no more weight than any other citizen, which is not what Hawking did in basically exclaiming as scientific law that there cannot possibly exist a deity since such cannot be proven. This is not scientific law but an opinion by an amateur no different than if the Pope were to declare a scientific law to be invalid. Such an action by a religious leader would also be not a statement of theological expertise but an opinion by an amateur into an area in which they lack qualifications.
Though the majority of comments condemned my position, I did get one fan. From ddokken69, "You now have another fan for that being the most plausible and most polite way of settling a hot potato such as science and religion that I have EVER read. POST OF THE DAY AWARD GOES TO.......................... mgrogie!!!"
But I learned my lesson. Even though the comment I made I considered beyond any logical reproach, there was plenty of reproach. I did not consider my position to be about either religion or politics but rather about a proper way to conduct public discourse. I was not calling for a restriction of free speech. I was calling for professionals to voluntarily exercise better judgment. Still, there were plenty of objections. Conclusion: Religion and politics really don’t mix, even when you’re not really mixing them. Even the hint doesn’t mix.
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So that was my lesson for this Halloween birthday. I began by talking about not having had a "trick" played on me this year. Reflecting back, that’s not entirely true. Since we’re on the subject of religion and politics as a Halloween essay, when I attended Mass on All Saints, I noted curiously that the recessional hymn was #666 in the hymnal. 666, the sign of the devil, in the hymnal for All Saints. Isn't that just too perfect! It is actually one of my favorite hymns but I never realized before where it fell in the book. "Seek the Lord" tells the story that "today is the day and now is the proper hour. Someday we’ll live in the house of God." How appropriate that Hymn #666 embodies the sentiment of All Hallowed’s Eve and All Saints. Too perfect.
Last year I reported that I went to breakfast on Halloween morning and received a bill for exactly $6.66. This year it seems I received the same sign. At least it was again a benign sign. How funny!
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