Get Out of the Box and Discover Your Life

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, singular power of self-respect. Joan Didion
I remember the turning point clearly, even the intersection I was in when the epiphany occurred. I was Chief of Staff at the hospital where I practiced and was headed for a staff meeting. As usual, the surgeons and internists were jockeying for power, and I had received several calls to put a number of really petty items on the agenda. For some reason, on this particular day, I was being assaulted with guilt-laden feelings from every side: “I am not a good Chief of Staff because I can’t keep everybody happy. I’m not a good doctor because I can’t heal everyone who comes to me. I’m not living up to all the expectations of family and friends. And I can never live up to the expectations that God has of me. I’m not a good son because…” Then I just exploded, and the words came flying out of my mouth: “THERE IS NO ONE ON THIS PLANET WHO KNOWS MORE ABOUT WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING THAN ME! Why have I spent my whole damn life trying to please people who can never be pleased? They aren’t living in my shoes, and they don’t have any more intelligence or savvy than I do. I know they think that what has worked for them will work for everyone, but that is just stupid! They are just putting themselves up as authorities on all these subjects, but they are no better authorities than I am. They’re just arrogant idiots…” And the soliloquy went on. How I had let myself come to this surprising thought process amazed and somewhat frightened me since I had been the ultimate pleaser all my life. I’d had it. This was my tantrum, my response to irrational thinking and trying to live up to everyone’s expectations but my own.That day changed the direction of my life. My initial reaction to my own outrage was terrible guilt since my religious upbringing had taught me that God, and God-like authority figures, wanted only obedience without question. But after the guilt came unbelievable freedom – the freedom of not having to live up to other people’s expectations, the freedom of being able to evolve on my own path, not someone else’s. And then the guilt rushed back in. Why was I being so rebellious? It took several years of bouncing back and forth before I felt more freedom than guilt, but the process of cutting through my chains had begun. When we analyze the pain, inner conflict, self-hate, familial stress, and anguish that occur in our lives, we come up with many reasons for these negative feelings. “My kids just won’t do what I tell them to.” “My parents don’t understand me.” “I don’t want to be in the military like my father was.” “If I leave my church, my family will disown me.” “My wife just does not understand what she needs to be doing in this relationship.” These are, of course, only a tiny fraction of the situations that can cause great grief and stress in our lives. But seldom do we ever really come to the core issue of our misery. What is it that causes any society to be so full of unchallenged ideas? What is it that creates so many sealed premises (unevaluated thought processes) on so many topics for members of that society? Where do the memes that surround us come from? Why do we become disappointed with people so frequently, and why are they disappointed with us? Why do so many people live their lives unfulfilled and frustrated? So many questions to answer. Please consider this as one of the major causes of the societal dysfunction that exists around the world: Most people on the planet spend most of their time, energy and passion trying to live up to the expectations of others! These expectations are passed on unquestioned from generation to generation. Those who question these expectations become the outcasts, the troublemakers, the rebellious and the sinners. But those who do not question the need to live up to the expectations of others become the conflicted, the unfulfilled, the shamefully guilty and the frustrated. When I first saw the bumper sticker QUESTION AUTHORITY, I was young and still filled with the indoctrination of my upbringing. I thought, “Now there’s a rebellious hippie type in that car.” Later in my life that same bumper sticker evoked a cheer of “Right on!” * * * * * In 1961 psychologist Stanley Milgram created an experiment to see just how far people would go in inflicting pain and injury on others when instructed to do so by a perceived authority figure. He designed a machine with switches and voltage labels that he called a shock generator. Nearly a thousand people (the study subjects) took part in his experiment. The study subjects were going to play the role of a teacher and they were told that they were going to test the effect of punishment on a person’s ability to learn. The study subject was to ask a learner (in a separate room) to answer questions. Whenever the learner got the question wrong, the study subject was to shock the learner with ever-increasing voltages. At some point the learner would scream in pain and beg the study subject (the teacher) to stop. But the study supervisor would say in a neutral tone, “Please continue.” Before the test, it had been mentioned that the learner could have some minor heart problems. Even when it appeared that the learner might be suffering some heart-related symptoms or might even have been knocked out, many of the study subjects (“teachers”) continued at the insistence of the supervisor. Two out of three study subjects administered 150 volts or more to their learners (more than comes out of your wall plugs)! It turned out that the shock generator did not actually deliver any shocks, and that the “learners” were just actors who could scream really loudly. But the results of his experiments led Dr. Milgram to conclude, “I would say, on the basis of having observed a thousand people in the experiment, and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that, if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium sized American town.” Fifty years later, psychologist Jerry Berger repeated the Milgram experiment, wondering if people had become more compassionate. In 1961, 65% of study subjects (teachers) were willing to go up to and past the 150-volt shock. In 2011, 77% administered shocks exceeding 150 volts. But Dr. Berger took the experiment one step further. He added a second “teacher” who, like the learner, was also in on the experiment. As the two teachers reached higher voltages, the study subject (teacher #1) would begin to be hesitant about continuing. When the supervisor said, “It’s imperative that you continue,” teacher #2 (who was in on the experiment) would say to teacher #1, “You’re right, it wouldn’t be right to continue the shocks.” In every case where this was done, teacher #1 said, “That’s it. I’m not continuing.” Understanding the power of one person standing up and decrying the madness is vital if we are to dam the stream of cruelty before it becomes a raging river. One interesting side note is that, when the test subjects were asked who would have been responsible for damaging a learner’s heart, some said that they would have personally carried a lot of the blame. But most pointed at the test supervisor and said, “He would be. He was in charge of things. I trusted him to know what was right.” One of the most horrific and absurd rationalizations that people give for carrying out inhumane behaviors is that they are “just doing their jobs” – i.e., just following orders. We often erroneously assume that people considered authority figures must know what they are doing or telling us to do, or they wouldn’t have been given that position. This is an unacceptable excuse for our bad behavior and a complete rejection of personal responsibility.