The Maze | Chapter 8

"The most dangerous decision you can make is deciding the ending before attempting to improve it," I told him.

I was in New York to speak at a Goldman Sachs investment conference. After the presentation, I stayed behind to answer questions and talk privately with people who wanted a few minutes one-on-one.

One of them was a fifty-nine-year-old physician.

He had reached out the week before. After our call, I invited him to attend the event as my guest and suggested we sit down afterward before I flew back to Los Angeles.

When we met, he did not ease into it.

"I've been indicted," he said. "Kickbacks to marketers. It went on for years."

One of the marketers had been charged first. Through wiretaps, the government built its case against the doctor.

He did not argue the facts or minimize what happened. He spoke calmly, almost mechanically, as if he had already walked through the next several years and returned with the results.

"I'll lose my license," he said.

"I'll lose my money."

"At my age, recalibrating isn't realistic."

He paused.

"I've been a doctor my entire adult life. I don't know how to do anything else."

Kierkegaard described one form of despair as not wanting to be yourself. The physician had made "doctor" and "self" the same thing. If he could no longer be a doctor, he could not see what remained.

There was no anger in his voice. No self-pity. He had already accepted the ending.

"I'm thinking about leaving New York," he continued. "Between the cost of living and the shame that comes with this, I don't see a reason to stay."

I listened.

After a moment, he said something I have heard from defendants more times than I have heard my kids say, "Dad, can I go on YouTube and watch Mr. Beast?"

"No offense," he said, "but this was easier for you."

I did not interrupt.

"You were what, thirty? No kids? Easier to start over. I'm a doctor. I'm not a natural communicator like you."

He gestured toward the conference badge on the table.

"You just spoke in front of thousands of people."

Minutes earlier, senior executives from Goldman Sachs had come up to shake my hand. One managing director told me it was a shame I was not allowed to work at the bank; he believed my experience and knowledge would be valuable there.

The doctor was not resentful. In his mind, the comparison settled the question.

I was younger.

He was fifty-nine.

I had become a speaker.

He had spent his adult life practicing medicine.

My life after prison had become evidence that some people could rebuild. Somehow, he had turned it into evidence that he could not.

I'm too old.

I'm a doctor.

I'm not built for this.

He had questions about prison. What would it be like? What would happen to his practice? Would anyone employ him afterward?

I asked him another question.

"Do you know Theseus?"

He shook his head.

"Can I tell you a story?"

"Of course."

The Labyrinth

King Minos of Crete kept the Minotaur inside a labyrinth built by Daedalus. Athens was required to send young men and women into the maze as tribute. They entered and did not return.

Theseus volunteered to go.

He understood that the Minotaur was waiting inside. He also understood that killing it would solve only part of the problem. The labyrinth was designed to confuse anyone who entered. Theseus could defeat the creature and still die while trying to find the exit.

Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, gave him a thread.

Theseus tied one end near the entrance and unwound it as he moved farther into the labyrinth. After he killed the Minotaur, he followed the thread back out.

The physician leaned back in his chair.

"So what's the thread?" he asked.

"For me, it started with deciding how I wanted to live in prison and who I wanted to be when I came home."

I told him about the beliefs I carried after losing my securities licenses, my real estate license and my reputation.

I believed I would never rebuild.

I would never make substantial money again.

I would never get married.

Whatever came next would be smaller, and permanent.

Meeting Michael Santos did not change what had already happened to me. He changed the way I approached what came next. He encouraged me to think about the end before the beginning and to begin creating assets that did not yet exist.

That meant writing every day when nobody was asking me to write. I documented what I was reading, what I was learning and how I intended to live. Most of the time I had no idea who would read it.

My mom typed my handwritten pages at her kitchen table. I kept writing.

The physician listened.

"This Minotaur story sounds fatalistic," he said.

"It sounds practical to me."

"How?"

"Theseus knew the Minotaur was inside. He prepared for what was actually there."

The physician's indictment was already filed. The wiretaps existed. His medical license was in danger. He could not make those things disappear through optimism.

He was also treating several possible outcomes as settled facts.

Losing his license had become losing his identity.

A prison sentence had become the end of his professional life.

Fifty-nine had become too old.

Shame had become a reason to leave New York.

He had walked into the maze before anyone required him to enter.

"So the Minotaur is prison?" he asked.

"Prison could be part of it. The Minotaur is everything you know you may have to face. Sentencing. The loss of your license. Money. Shame. Prison."

"And the maze?"

"The case. The waiting. The decisions you have to make while this is happening."

He nodded.

"And Ariadne?"

"Someone who understands the maze."

He looked at me. "Meaning you."

"Michael was Ariadne for me. Other people helped too. I'm not sure Michael will enjoy being compared to a Greek princess."

The doctor smiled.

"Why the thread?" he asked. "Why not just give Theseus a map?"

"Maybe a thread is easier to explain in a story."

He laughed.

Then I gave him a more serious answer.

"A map shows the maze from above. Theseus was inside it. The thread connected each step to the entrance. He could feel it in his hand."

The physician looked down at the conference badge on the table.

A person going through a government investigation rarely experiences it from above. Lawyers may understand the legal process. The government knows what it is investigating. The defendant lives inside one conversation, deadline, document and fear at a time.

A plan provides something to return to when the next event arrives.

What Clyde Did

The physician understood the mythology. He still questioned whether it applied to a federal case.

"Let me give you an actual example," I said.

I told him about Clyde Gibson.

Clyde pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false tax returns. His lawyer told him to expect twelve to eighteen months in prison.

Clyde listened to his lawyer. He also began preparing.

He started before sentencing, before the plea agreement and before the probation interview. He wrote his narrative early. He documented his work. He volunteered. He tried to lead his family while they moved through the uncertainty with him.

He did the work on days when he would rather have done just about anything else.

"And people noticed?" the physician asked.

"They did. Probation noticed. The judge noticed. Even the prosecutor said something unexpected in open court."

"What?"

"That Clyde wasn't a threat and did not appear likely to reoffend."

"And the sentence?"

"Probation."

The physician exhaled.

"So preparation got him probation?"

"I can't prove that. I can tell you the judge and prosecutor noticed it."

He nodded, but I could see where his mind was going.

Clyde's outcome could easily become another reason the doctor believed this would not apply to him. Different charge. Different judge. Different life. Different everything.

Clyde's probation sentence was not something I could offer to the physician. I could not promise that a narrative would preserve his license or keep him out of prison.

Clint Eastwood once said, "If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster."

I have always liked the quote, though I am not sure it helps sell consulting services.

The physician laughed.

Then he asked the better question.

"What would I actually write?"

His Thread

I told him his narrative had to begin with details only he could provide.

His lawyer knew the case.

His family knew parts of his life.

His colleagues knew him as a physician.

Only he knew the entire sequence. Why he became a doctor. How he practiced medicine. When the marketers entered his life. What he told himself while the kickbacks continued. What he ignored. What he feared losing. How he now understood the decisions that brought him into the room with me.

Those details would not excuse what he had done. They would help him examine it and explain it.

The narrative would also force him to think beyond sentencing.

He needed a plan he could follow. The plan could include how he would prepare for prison, use his time, remain involved with his family and begin considering a life that did not depend entirely upon his medical license.

At fifty-nine, he did not need to pretend he was thirty.

He had decades of experience that I did not have at his age. He had cared for patients, managed employees and built a practice. He knew medicine. He knew the pressures inside a medical business. Eventually, those experiences might become useful in a different form.

He could not see that yet.

I understood. When UBS fired me, I stared at my business cards as if a small piece of paper had carried away my personality. I had been a stockbroker since I was twenty-three. I could not picture a life outside the industry because I had never seriously tried.

The physician had spent much longer inside his profession.

"This was easier for you," he said again.

"In some ways, yes."

He seemed surprised.

"I was younger. I didn't have children. You have more to unwind than I did."

"So you agree with me."

"I agree that we had different circumstances."

I also told him that I wasted nearly three and a half years before going to prison. I had time to prepare and did almost nothing useful with it. My age did not make me wise. It made it easier to tell myself I had plenty of time.

The physician had already taken one step I avoided. He called. Then he came to the conference and stayed afterward to meet with me.

He had not decided what to do next, but he was in the room.

"So when I leave here, nothing about my case changes," he said.

"That's right."

"The wiretaps are still there."

"Yes."

"And I may still go to prison."

"Yes."

He sat quietly.

"I'll be back in Los Angeles and back to work tomorrow," I said. "We can continue then."

As we stood up, he returned to the story.

"The thread is the narrative?"

"The narrative is part of it."

"What is the rest?"

"The plan you build from it."

Fifteen Months

The physician became a client.

He began writing his narrative. As he worked through it, he memorialized details about his life that only he could convey.

A sentencing memorandum could explain the law and argue for a particular sentence. His narrative allowed him to describe his life from inside it.

He wrote about becoming a physician and the years he spent practicing medicine. He addressed the marketers, the kickbacks and how the conduct continued. He examined the explanations that had allowed him to live with those decisions while continuing to see himself as the doctor his patients knew.

He also began building a plan he could follow.

The court sentenced him to fifteen months in federal prison.

Clyde received probation. The physician did not.

Preparation did not produce the same result because the cases were not the same. Different conduct, different facts, different courts and different people making the decisions.

The physician still had his thread.

His narrative preserved details about his life that would otherwise have remained scattered among memories, legal documents and conversations. His plan gave him instructions he had written before prison, when he had time to consider who he wanted to be during those fifteen months and afterward.

Theseus used the thread to return from the center of the labyrinth. It did not kill the Minotaur for him. It did not remove the walls or shorten the distance.

It kept him connected to the way out.

Chapter 8 Reflection Journal

Kierkegaard described a form of despair as not wanting to be yourself. If your profession disappeared tomorrow, which part of yourself would you refuse to become?

Theseus prepared for the Minotaur because it was actually inside the maze. Which consequence is truly in front of you, and which one have you created by deciding the ending in advance?

A map shows the maze from above. Theseus had only a thread in his hand. What is one decision you can make from where you are standing, without pretending you can see the entire route?