Giving_back@60
On the occasion of my birthday, I celebrate today as a day of gratitude for many reasons – for the presence of friends and colleagues just to honor me, for the convergence of circumstances and events that have brought us here today, for the 60 years that Jopie and I are celebrating this year – Jopie’s last February , and mine last June 19.
In behalf of my wife, my children and myself, thank you!
Turning 60 means many things to many people. Starting last February, every time I take my family out to dinner, Jopie has been quick to open her purse; I still need to get used to the fact that she’s not paying for dinner, just fishing out her senior citizen card. She has become so enamored with her senior citizen card, she brought it out again one time at Mercury Drug when I was about to pay for Avodart, my prostate medicine. This morning, she already had my senior citizen card application form ready.
Indeed, being a senior citizen has its entitlements. Dr. Bengzon wrote about it in his 4-page handwritten letter to me which was delivered to my home on the eve of my birthday. Thank you, Dr. Bengzon, for having the elegance to write me a letter by long- hand. If you must know, I have kept all the hand-written letters from you and Dr. Sarmiento through all these years. When the story of The Medical City is retold and people celebrate your lives, I can auction those letters for the insights they provide!
At 60, there’s nothing that I appreciate more than letters of that kind, books that speak to the mind and the heart, gestures that seek to connect, opportunities that point to bigger things other than the ones that preoccupy us, and people who remind us that we can be a lot better than what we say we are.
Since this occasion is my initiative, I claim the privilege of indulging myself with a few words. Jopie always warns me that when I write as when I speak, I should keep it simple because people do not understand me. Well, people nowadays express themselves through emoticons and stickers; and more and more are losing the love for reading. Indeed, how can they understand what they do not read! If we don’t watch out, our world would get smaller and dull and lonely because we have lost the magic of thought and imagination.
The story behind this sculpture requires some capacity for abstraction, the ability to connect beyond what our eyes can see. But it is not only what we see that matters, it is what we listen to, if we listen at all!
Yesterday, before the veil was installed to cover the sculpture, I was having lunch at Café France overlooking the garden. There were 2 medical students having lunch as well; we could see the sculpture from there. I asked them what entered their minds as they looked at the sculpture. (The sculpture is of a stethoscope shaped like a question mark, with a big key planted into the stethoscope’s diaphragm). One of them answered, “ The key to my success as a doctor is to use the stethoscope properly”. Simple and shallow, but true! Indeed, success in the use of the stethoscope also depends on how well we clean our ears. How success is defined nowadays rarely transcends the physical.
What are the things that bog us down, scare us, or motivate us as we go through the ages? Before we can get answers, we first have to ask questions. We must admit that asking the important questions when there is so much noise is as difficult as getting the answers under the same circumstances. Just like many of you, turning a decade has been a big deal to me. At 30, I was hesitant at first and then relentless later, single-minded, focused and occasionally reckless; I was very physical. “Can I do it? Should I? Do I have what it takes to make something of myself? Of course I do! But am I sure?”
At 40, I was at my peak – a high-paying job in the corporate world, lots of world travel – business class, a country club membership, my 3 children growing up healthy and doing well in excellent schools, a loving wife who was doing well in her own career, a comfortable home, lots of friends, a respectable name for myself. Midway through that decade, I started to have doubts, as ambition, arrogance and the demand for authenticity created conflict. I became restless, I began to question many things – the need to aim higher, my capacity to pursue bigger things, the value of my work, the relevance of religion.
At 50, I had to set my priorities straight – an attempt to organize the questions in my head, to distinguish facts from fallacy, to appreciate harmony from noise. It was exactly 10 years ago when I finally decided to leave the pharmaceutical industry that I had grown so much in and learned and earned a lot from. Seventeen years of growth and affirmation, of confidence gained and comfort secured. What more was there to prove, what more did I need? Was I happy?
Ito na lang ba?
Ten years ago, I told myself it was time to go back to basics, to focus on being a doctor because I knew I would always be one, that I was a good one but could be better. After 17 years as a pharmaceutical executive, I had acquired a perspective that many of my colleagues in the medical professional never had the opportunity to acquire. I knew that my experience could make a difference in my practice. And so, 10 years ago, I left the business world to be 100% with Medical City. As a cardiologist. I was finally home and I thought that my restlessness would abate. In no time, however, I became part of Senior Management. Management AGAIN! And then slowly, being a doctor acquired a dimension that was different from what I originally planned for. Another stage to perform on, with far greater demands for leadership and bigger opportunities to make a difference.
At 60, things that were important before no longer spark excitement. We are more tolerant, more accepting, less inclined to violent thoughts – even when those thoughts do mischievously entertain. These past 10 years in senior management have been nothing but great opportunities for leadership not just for me personally but for the entire institution.
I thank Dr. Sarmiento, our chairman,and Dr. Bengzon, our president and CEO, for trusting me and giving me the space to spread my wings just as The Medical City also started flying over wider territories. Dr. Bengzon loves to talk about those 3 elements that our institution aspires for and aims to be defined by: audacity, accountability and community. We have taken big risks, we have challenged traditions in medicine and medical practice, we have grown both in volume and in reach. Our accountability for those risks and the outcomes of our initiatives, we have never shied away from. But scientific expertise and advancements in technology have little impact – other than prolonging life perhaps – if the lives we save enhance only our stature as an institution of excellence but not the experience of being truly human.
Can I do a lot more in my present position here, or can I find more fulfillment making a difference in my individual capacity as a doctor? Is there still time to do other things? Those nagging questions have kept ringing in my ears, and I know that Jopie has been watching me grapple with the compromises and rationalizations that really do not answer those questions. The questions in my head: Am I doing what I love to do the most?
Am I truly happy?
When I see a friend quit a comfortable job to take a different path, or make bold decisions that have nary any guarantee of success, I take notice; I am awed. The road less traveled taken by people who are not afraid! Every time a colleague dies without warning, I get a jolt. Life interrupted at the threshold of significance! Life is short, what am I doing here? Where am I headed? How come the God that everyone else is worshipping does not seem to be the same God that I am looking for? Why am I afraid? What am I afraid of? Should I be afraid?
Our institution has grown in stature and in reach, our ambulatory clinics have replicated all over, our hospitals in our expanding network are imposing as they are impressive, our facilities are top-of-the-line, we have the best doctors that we can be proud of!
Is this all there is to it?
Indeed, we have been audacious, and we have been responsible and accountable, but there has to be something more than all those parameters that define health advancement and financial success, more than the revenues and EBITDA, more than the strategies for competitive superiority – that we should not disconnect from, that we, in fact, should jealously establish strong links to.
Which brings us to Dr. Bengzon’s 3rd element: COMMUNITY – Community is about people both within and outside our institution aspiring for things bigger than themselves, whose lives we may not be able to extend all the time, but whose quality of life we can always enhance just as theirs enhances ours! People connecting to people; people listening, doing and responding to acts of kindness, giving more of themselves for the love of it, finding beauty and humor in the many ways that people cope with the rigors of daily living, people embracing a new way of thinking, enjoying a sense of well-being and transforming wherever they are into a place of joy; people transcending their sadness, seeing beyond the physical and learning to appreciate that there is more to life than staying alive.
How will my 7th decade be?
I was in that state of mind last December when I got a call from a senior cardiologist from another institution. He requested me to see his friend, an artist, who was in our ICU. It was an honor, not only because the senior cardiologist is a Who’s-Who in Philippine cardiology whom I admire and respect very much, but also because he wanted me to take care of a highly-respected man in Philippine Art. Because the patient preferred to stay in our hospital than go home, he has been with us since December 2015. The regular doctor-patient interaction in the months that followed has led me to experience on a regular basis the joy of just being myself in the presence of this old man whose frame of consciousness did not include any reference to his illness.
That senior cardiologist is Dr. William Chua, the Father of Philippine Electrophysiology. After my fellowship at the UP-PGH 30 years ago, he waited for me at the Philippine Heart Center as one of only 2 cardiologists who would train under him, but I changed my mind. The patient he referred to me last December and who is still here in the hospital is no other than Mr. Arturo Luz, our national artist, a man of poise and dignity.
Dr. Chua – Bill – is the best president that the Philippine Heart Association never had. He was already vice-president and was about to be elected president when he stepped down – to give way to his friend who wanted the presidency more than he did. And then Bill withdrew from our midst to pursue painting, mount exhibits here and abroad, and awed us in the medical profession with the example of his life in its simplicity. We don’t remember how that friend of his was as a PHA president, but Bill has since then grown much bigger in our hearts and imagination. His life truly inspires! He still practices cardiology and is still the last word in cardiac rhythm disorders and the modern health technology that supports the discipline. He is a man of science, of the arts, of everything that is elegant about the civilized world. He truly is a Renaissance man.
And then he surprised all of us some more: from painting, he went into sculpture. In one of those Saturdays in the second quarter of this year, after visiting our friend, Mr. Arturo Luz in his room on the 15th floor, he called me to join him in the garden. “Eugene,” he exclaimed, “this garden is a perfect place for art that your patients can experience. How come you are not using it?” That question stunned me! And then he gave me a model of the sculpture he had in mind. In an instant, as I looked at the model, I knew that this was the answer to my question – exactly what to give to TMC on my 60th birthday. You see, by then I had already decided that my life from hereon would no longer be about receiving but about giving back. And what a better way to give back, for a start, than this sculpture that represents the answer to many of our questions.
Bill entitles his sculpture “THE ANSWER IS IN THE QUESTION”. Before I showed the model to Dr. Bengzon several weeks ago, I had spent time looking at it and reflecting on how directly it tells me – and all of us doctors and non-doctors alike – how we must confront the issues that impact our lives. The first step is to ask the important questions.
Bill asked me to write something to be inscribed in the plaque beside the sculpture. This is what I wrote, and I am sure that many of you who have have gone this far in life can empathize:
“ I sought for so long,
to tame the riddles in my head,
and calm the quivers of my heart,
‘til I found myself alone and discovered quietly
that all I needed was to listen.”
After many years of work and challenges, after failures that let us down, and successes that give us pleasure and a sense of power, we ask ourselves the question: What is our purpose in life?
Our purpose in life is to be happy. How do we find happiness? The answer is in the question. To find happiness we have to be happy. Cheri Huber, the author of “The Key” says, “That which we are seeking is causing us to seek”. Another author, Jon Kabat-Zinn, says, “Wherever you go there you are!”
(Jopie is right, I really might be difficult to understand!)
Here is the sculpture, Dr. Sarmiento and Dr. Bengzon and the rest of the staff of The Medical City, in behalf of my wife, Jopie, and our 3 children – Eric, Nicole and Julienne, and with the generosity of Dr. William Chua, the inspiring help of Mr. Sari Ortiga, the owner of the Crucible Art Gallery who made everything seem so light and easy, and in gratitude to Mr. Arturo Luz who, in illness and advanced age, has inspired us to see beyond our present circumstances, we give you Bill’s sculpture that creatively reminds us that Medicine is both a science and an art, and neither is more important than the other.
A very inspiring friend invited me to dinner last week, and we talked about birthdays and transitions. I think I was being too reflective; he smiled and quipped” “At 50, you should have fun. At 60, you should make everything and everyone a source of amusement!
Indeed, life should be a source of amusement …and in the final analysis, of happiness. I look forward to the years ahead with a lot more fun and irreverence, a readiness to laugh at myself when I make simple things so complicated. I look forward to having this garden filled up with more gifts of art that many of you will gladly bequeath. We are a community, we know the answer, we will make things happen!
June 20, 2016
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