I'M VERY DISAPPOINTED in Valerie Bennett. She has a callous disregard for the way things ought to be. A callous disregard for the fact that we live in a workaholic-materialistic society. She is jeopardizing my material well-being.
Ms. Bennett has had the nerve to apply for a job seven miles from home, to avoid what can be a four- hour commute to work in Washington should there be rain or rubbernecking. She wants to be close if her kids get sick, or even to have lunch with them sometimes. She gamely shared her story with me about how she wants a new job--and not in a crazy place where she is expected to work late every night. She wants to "see the sun go down from home." She is willing to take a demotion and therefore a cut in pay. She thinks it will reduce her blood pressure and headaches.
And I'm thinking, "I'll never see her again in the office, and then how will I pay my mortgage, my car loan, my cleaning lady, my kids' college tuition, etc., etc.?"
Why does she think she should be different from all the other patients who get up at 4 a.m. and come home at 6 p.m. in a condition best-likened to a wet rag? No energy to cook, just give the kids pizza for supper and throw them into bed. Clean up, do the laundry, fall into bed for an all-too-short night of restless sleep, then stumble out the next day to do it all again--flogged along by caffeine.
These are the people who seem to make up a large part of my practice--and who look at me as if I'm crazy when I tell them they need to make time to exercise, or to brown bag it for lunch instead of nipping over to Arby's for a roast beef sandwich and curly fries.
These are the kind of people who are my bread and butter--excuse me, bread and "I can't believe it's not butter." I don't want them to exercise or eat healthy. When it comes to the bottom line, where's the incentive for a doctor to get his patients better at all?
When more is not enoughWhat the Valerie Bennetts of this world don't realize, or won't lie down and accept, is that we're a materialist society, where you can't have too much stuff.
A materialist society founded on each and every consumer working hard enough and earning enough to maintain the spend, spend, spend cycle--and not taking money out of circulation by doing anything as timorous as saving it. (I do understand some people have got trapped on the treadmill through no fault of their own. Readers, note the tongue-in-cheek, humbug spirit at work in today's column.)
This cycle is eruditely described by English psychiatrist Peter C. Whybrow, director of the Semel Institute for Neurosciences and Human Behavior at University of California at Los Angeles, in his book "American Mania, When More Is Not Enough."
We need to accept where the "aggressive migrant temperament" with its adventurous, entrepreneurial genetic makeup has led us.
A philosophy of "craving and acquisitive behavior and a compulsive drive for more" is leading to a frenzy of overwork, Whybrow writes. In the words of comedian George Carlin, it's leading to "bigger houses but smaller families; more conveniences but less time; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; and taller buildings but shorter tempers."
It is leading to mega-corporations destroying community-based businesses. (What happened to Fredericksburg Hardware?) It has brought us unbridled corporate greed--as personified by the executives of Enron, and the drug or insurance company CEOs. And maybe by the sudden massive profits the oil industry has made this last quarter, though they claim they've been having such a hard time with all these wars and hurricanes.
In this era of the merchant, we are bombarded with the commercial message at every turn--on the Internet, the TV, the radio, by TV monitors in Wal-Mart, by public address systems at the gas station, at sports events. Everywhere. The shopping channel allows us to buy, buy, buy, without even leaving the couch. It's ready to victimize anyone in a shopping mode, like one patient who, in the course of a nervous breakdown in a manic episode, fell victim to the tune of $2,000 worth of trinkets.
Good for businessI shouldn't worry. There seems to be a never-ending supply of people coming through the office, too busy or too ground down to exercise or have energy to work on their health. Too apathetic to rise up and change the system--which reminds me of the "That's the way it is" response I got when I railed to other parents of the madness of my daughter's high school band bus not getting back from distant competitions 'til after midnight on a school night.
Those same schools will help to keep me in business. I can rely on them to perpetuate the trend, preparing our children for this "fast new world," as Whybrow puts it. Kids are coached in materialism by the culture of everyone having to have a new dress for each and every homecoming or prom, everyone having to have team pictures, class pictures, senior pictures, and a class ring, a smart new uniform for every sport, a car, etc.
The kids are coached in competitiveness, too. It's so essential to win in sports that they have to practice three to four hours a day, five days a week, and sometimes weekends as well. And the weaker players are never getting a look in, but only getting to sit on the bench.
Ulcers and headachesWe are, of course, advancing inexorably into another holiday season, where we have to fret about not only how to make enough money but how to spend it.
With "Black Friday" as the initiating "holy-day," we fall helter-skelter into another sacred season of consumerism worship, where our spending money can truly be seen as a religious sacrifice according to Dell de Chant. He's a religious studies instructor at the University of South Florida in Tampa and author of the book "Sacred Santa," and he likens us to cosmological religions. They see nature as the ultimate power in their lives so they sacrifice natural things like animals and crops. Money is the ultimate power in our lives, he claims, so we sacrifice that.
So, I can look forward to happy, and prosperous, holidays treating your blood pressure, your ulcers, your headaches, your panic attacks--providing there aren't too many Valerie Bennetts out there reforming their lifestyles and curing themselves.
DR. PATRICK NEUSTATTER can be reached at
Email: pneustatter@prattmed.com.