I should have stopped my talk right there. I had made my point in the first 10 minutes. But this was a 45-minute presentation and I had another 35-minutes (plus Q and A time) to fill up. Everything that followed was anticlimax.
If I had to do it over again, I would have thrown away the script after one particular remark of mine. This is when I explained that a lot of us see the world through the eyes of artists and poets and mystics and visionaries, not to mention highly-successful professionals and entrepreneurs.
Basically, give us respect for who we are. Honor it.
"We don't want to be like you," I explained.
Sixty startled faces. Uneasy silence.
"From my point of view," I adlibbed, "all the rest of the world has flat affect" (clinical terminology for I find all of you as exciting as Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off).
Doubly-startled faces. Tension you could cut with a cliche.
"Including Robin Williams," I joked.
Laughter, sighs of relief. Then I moved ahead with the next point in my script.
Hey, wait, I should have said instead. I'm finding this interesting. Let's talk about this. Seriously, we don't want to be like you. Why should you find this so surprising?
I had missed a golden opportunity to get a dialogue going. Clearly, these clinicians needed to learn where we were coming from. Clearly, I needed to learn where they were coming from. I'll probably never get another chance to speak to clinicians again, so I may never find out.
I finished my talk, and the room emptied out at once. Unlike talking to patients and families, no one was interested in hanging around, in talking to me one on one. I couldn't help but think of the F Scott Fitzgerald quote:
"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."
Except that we are the ones who are very rich. Who, after all, wants to be Ben Stein?
Like what you're reading? Get email notifications when John McManamy posts, or get updates on Facebook, iGoogle, your personal blog and more!
