“Now, none of us has any idea where life’s gonna take us, ’cause what we have is now.”

Friends:

While I really hate to admit it, it’s simply a fact that Britney Spears is a role model.

Ok, maybe not a role model per se, but perhaps a model of how to effectively care for a young star who is quickly careening down a path of death and destruction. Remember the incidents of her shaving her head, shoplifting, erratic behavior, drug use, hit-and-runs and investigations of child abuse and neglect? Sure you remember; she was a train wreck and it was only a matter of time before she took her place in Hollywood lore next to James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, another star who shot to fame too fast and couldn’t control the downward spiral.

But then fate intervened, or rather, her father. He came into the fray, realized that her daughter was out of control and initiated court proceedings to have himself appointed as her conservator. A parent’s job is never over. Even though the kids may be adults and out in the world on their own, a parent is never not a parent.

Now I am not saying that the conservatorship of Britney Spears has been appropriately handled and without hiccups or controversy; I am simply highlighting the fact that on January 31, 2008, crimefilenews.com stated the following: “Sadly, the Britney Spears death watch is well underway.” And now, five and a half years later, you would be hard pressed to find anything negative about Spears, and certainly nothing as fantastic or appalling, or life-threatening, as in 2008.

Now look at the other side of the coin: Justin Bieber, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Shia LaBeouf, Jodie Sweetin, Adam Rich (a name from the past)… while some of those on this list seemed to find their own way out of their spirals (or at least so far), some of them seem unable to get out of their own way. Bieber and Lohan are the most prime and obvious candidates.

Many people look at conservatorship as a necessary evil when caring for the elderly or mentally ill, a court-supervised process that many of us perceive as applying in only limited circumstances. On the other hand, it seems that parents believe that their job ends when the kids turn 18. Seriously, how many times have you wondered what Bieber’s parents are doing while he consistently gets in trouble with the law, abuses drugs, falls in with bad crowds and generally makes a mockery of himself all over the world? While we would like to think that his parents had to have raised him to be better than this, it simply appears that his parents have stopped caring.

Which is why I revisit the Britney Spears matter, a situation in which a parent identified that his daughter was playing with fire and was on the verge of being irrevocably burned, so he took action. Was it right, was it wrong? I am not going to take a stance on that. I am only going to say that something was done. The parents did not sit idly by and watch as the flames rose higher and higher.

Recently the same thing happened with Amanda Bynes, a child star who was acting so erratically the police arrested her and put her under a psychiatric hold, the same as Britney Spears. Since then, her parents have been appointed conservators and she has been out of the limelight and seemingly under control.

I acknowledge that in the cases of Spears and Bynes the police had already arrested them and put them under psychiatric holds before the conservators were appointed, but if anything else, they are demonstrations of parents who took action to try to help and the help seems to have been successful.

Even though they are adults, they are still the children of parents and the parents cannot sit by and allow the devastation and personal destruction to continue, especially when their efforts cause harm to others. Bieber and his car accidents and personal attacks; Lohan and her shoplifting and breaches of contracts and car accidents. Look, if you want to mess up your own life, go ahead. But when you take your efforts to the public and threaten the health or well-being of other people, something has to be done to get the act together. The options are not pleasant: it’s either jail or death.

You can imagine that the parents will be weeping at the graves of their kids when they crash and burn; but will they be looking in the mirror at the same time? 

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“He’s human. Not superhuman, just human. He did what he thought he had to do because he wanted to be a doctor more than anything else in the world and you ruined this for him.”

Friends:

I watch such little television these days that for me to comment on something from the boob tube is an anomaly.  But as I kept my wife company the other night watching “Grey’s Anatomy” on the TiVo, I heard something that resonated that I wanted to share.  Because I am sure that even though many of us aren’t doctors, we have all felt this way at least once in our lifetimes…

I apologize in advance if I describe the circumstances inaccurately; however, I was actually reading at the time and only partially paying attention to the story line.  The character of Christina, played by Sandra Oh, was in a tough situation of having to decide which of two children, siblings, would receive a heart transplant and which would receive an artificial heart.  The parents, reasonably enough, could not make the decision of selecting one of their children to live and one to die, so they insisted that Christina make the decision.  Despite the fact that Christina felt that she had made the correct decision, it nevertheless resulted in the death of one of the kids, with the parents understandably distraught, taking their misery out on Christina.

We next see Christina, fully clothed, standing in the shower, trying to deal with the pain and heartache of what had just happened.  Her husband/former husband (who remembers?) tries to assuage her despondency by telling her that she made the right decision, but she will not be placated and says, “What’s the point, Owen?  What’s the point of anything?”

We all have, at some point in time, done our very best job, but the anticipated results just simply did not transpire.  An argument that we made that fell on the deaf ears of a judge; an investment that tanked despite all signs of it being a safe bet; the agreement that was not as bullet-proof as one had anticipated.  While you can never expect results, there is an expectation that when we give 100%, we will be rewarded.  And that frankly isn’t always the case.  The vagaries of the justice system, the unpredictability of the markets, and simply the fates having their way, can disrupt the best laid and performed plans.

And we are inevitably left wondering why we do it.  What’s the point…?  If we are going to give it our best efforts, do the very best job we can, then dammit, don’t we deserve to be rewarded for that?  Don’t we deserve to get the results we want and expect to get?  Shouldn’t the patient live?  Shouldn’t the judge make the right decision?  Shouldn’t our clients be happy?

When you consider how many factors can affect any type of an endeavor, you realize that you can only control yourself, you cannot control the unknowns.  You cannot control how the wind blows.  Just like in golf—you take your stance, give it your best swing, the swing that has been perfected over thousands of hours on the driving range, and you connect with the ball just right, the tuning fork goes off in your arms and the ball is flying right for the middle of the green… when a gust of wind comes from nowhere and pushes it off course.  No amount of planning or preparation could have saved that shot which just careered into the rough.

So what do you do?  Do you mope and whine and give it all up?  Do you throw a tantrum or punch a hole in the wall?

When I was playing baseball as a kid I remember distinctly being told that at the end of the game, I was supposed to go home, look in the mirror, and ask myself if I did the very best job that I could do.  And if the answer was yes, then it didn’t matter if I went 0-4 with 3 strikeouts or 4-4 with 2 home runs.  What mattered was that I was able to look myself in the mirror and ask myself that question and get a positive answer.  It’s only when you fail to give it your all that you have reason for dismay.  Sure you can be upset about a result and sure you can have clients who are irate, but as long as you can look yourself in the mirror and state with conviction that you gave it your very best try, then that should be all that matters.

We have all been in Christina’s position.  We have all questioned if we are doing the right thing, if it’s all worth it; if it’s worth the sacrifices and the hours of time and the stress and the pressure.  The only person who can answer that is you.  If you gave it 100% and the result just wasn’t what was expected or anticipated, then you can absolutely be upset.  And you can absolutely be troubled.  But you shouldn’t be troubled or upset with yourself.  The vagaries of our systems are simply a breeding ground for unpredictability.  What’s the saying about the best laid plans?

But I guarantee that if you continue to give it that 100%, the bad results will be few and far between.  And the rewards will greatly trump the disappointments.