As I Age, I Try Hard Not To Lie To Myself
By
Leonard Zwelling
I asked Rabbi Claude to define rationalization. Here’s what he said:
“Rationalization is a defense mechanism where someone unconsciously creates false or misleading explanations for their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors to protect their self-image or reduce cognitive dissonance. For example, someone might rationalize not studying by telling themselves ‘I work better under pressure’ when the real reason was procrastination.”
That’s my definition of lying to yourself.
How important are rationalizations?
I will leave that to screenwriters Lawrence Kasden and Barbara Benedek from Kasden’s 1983 film The Big Chill:
Michael: “I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.”
Sam Weber: “Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.”
Michael: “Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
I have been meditating on the subject of rationalization a great deal of late because I find that retired people like me are more apt to use rationalizations to put off what they ought to be doing and that they should know they ought to be doing.
Here are some of my favorites that I have encountered of late:
I recently lost a close friend who died suddenly of what appeared to be a cardiac event. He was six months older than I. I stopped rationalizing that I could delay learning Basic Life Support and took the course. A lot has changed since I learned how to do CPR as a house officer. It was very beneficial. I should have done it sooner, like years ago when it was offered to me.
I also purchased an automatic electronic defibrillator for our home. It just may save my life or Genie’s.
I suggested this course of preventative learning to others. I have been largely ignored.
Here’s another rationalization I’ve encountered a great deal. It is without question that being overweight and old is a bad combination. When my doctor finally convinced me to take a GLP-1 drug, I wondered what my rationalization for putting it off when he first offered it to me could have been. I lost 33 pounds, I feel way better. I eat better—no sugar and no beer (it kills me, but then again, it doesn’t). I should not have put off losing the weight for as long as I did. I am a vocal extoller of the use of GLP-1 drugs to lose weight, especially in those over 70, where it is very difficult to do using will power alone. This weight loss approach MUST be combined with resistance training (e.g., weight lifting), because the GLP-1 drugs can decrease muscle and bone loss, along with promoting fat loss. Some people listen. Most don’t. Maybe they’ll listen to Serena Williams more than to me.
Since the sudden increase in the severity of my back pain in October 2023 and the eventual diagnosis of terrible spinal degeneration, I stopped putting off the need for epidural steroid injections and my back feels way better. BUT, now these are done by a highly skilled interventional anesthesiologist. To gain the benefit of these injections requires such an individual administering the therapy having seen the MRI. He knows the anatomy. He knows my anatomy. He knows the different options for injection and can do them all. This did not work well when I had it done in DC in 2008 when my sciatica reared its ugly head for the first time. Here, in Houston, it was a God send. So many others I know put it off or use lesser doctors. Why rationalize living in pain?
In each of these cases, and in so many others, there is always an excuse for not doing something. I used them all myself before wising up, as I illustrate above. I am afraid at my advanced age, not doing something is rarely a good idea.
Pharmaceuticals, daily, vigorous exercise, and a strict diet are all pains in my neck, but they are the only way I survive and continue to play golf. No rationalization can get me around the fact that I am 78 years of age with a history of a bad back from long-distance running, coronary artery disease from having terrible genetics, atrial arrhythmias, and a pacemaker. I work hard not to lie to myself that I can skip a day or eat that dessert. I just can’t. I just don’t.
When you are old and retired you give yourself permission to give yourself some slack. After all, you worked hard all your life. I have found this to be a bad plan. Old, retired people need to be more rigorous than they were when they were working and their lives were filled with demands and schedules. Now that the demands and schedules are less strenuous and free time has expanded, the discipline has to be even greater.
And further on the subject of rationalization, this time among a somewhat younger group, recently I have dealt with a series of MD Anderson faculty encounters in which these younger members of the faculty have been treated badly by the older faculty, especially the departmental, divisional, and institutional leadership. Each maltreated faculty member wants to tell me his story, but there is only one story. Somehow, in some way, each has pissed off someone above them or have something someone above them wants. When that happened during my tenure, leaders like Dr. Krakoff, Dr. Hohn, and Dr. Kripke adjudicated using their superb judgment. They righted the wrong by listening to all sides and not automatically supporting the disputant highest in rank or most aligned with the president. Uniformly, everyone kept his or her job. Those days are gone. Politics is everything. The president of MD Anderson has unbridled power to fire and often uses it. Anderson has gone from a participatory oligarchy to a malevolent dictatorship complete with the use of an academic, career-ending guillotine.
Therefore, I advise these young faculty members in tangles with the powers-that-be not to delude themselves. They should not rationalize that somehow they will prevail in a system in which a court has declared “sovereign immunity” for MD Anderson leaders doing harm in the course of their jobs. After all, didn’t the Supreme Court say the same about the President of the United States and he surely does whatever he wants regardless of who it might hurt. Heck, he would willingly sacrifice a plane load of staff and reporters plus his own Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury as long as they were just decoys for the Iranians and he was safe. So many have been damaged or killed by Donald Trump.
Try not to lie to yourself about the situation you are in. Fight if there is really a way out. If not, don’t walk, run.
There was a world-famous investigator at the NIH when I was there named Bob Gallo. He claimed to have discovered the cause of AIDS as you might remember. He was notorious for wrecking the careers of many young people who came to work for him. He was accused of having stolen the work on which he based his critical HIV discovery. The Nobel Committee passed him over for the prize. Yet, still young people went to his lab to train and were subsequently chewed up by his system. They lied to themselves that it wouldn’t happen to them—until it did.
Be careful of rationalizations. They are never a good course of action and can be very harmful. Try not to lie to yourself. We all fail at this, but one must keep trying—even in old age.
