When did dentistry change from a profession into a business? Well, I guess it has always been a business it just seems that today it’s primarily a business rather than a vocation, a calling or a profession. When did the meaning of dentistry become what it matters to the dentist rather than the patients?

Let me give you an example. I am a diabetic and every time I go to my endocrinologist I pass a dental office that caters to Dentistry for Diabetics. I always wondered about what that office does different than other dental practices. Do they just treat diabetics? Do they focus on special diets? What makes them unique? What is their value proposition?

One day my endocrinologist asked me the same question. Both of us wondered what made this office unique. Both of us were aware that diabetics do have special concerns however we both never heard of a dental specialty for treating patients with diabetics. Through further investigation I found that the concept was originally created by a marketing guru who was selling the concept to dentists.

So what’s new?

Over the past fifty years the focus has turned from patient care toward business and marketing. Years ago, dentistry was protected from “outsiders.” Not today. Non-dentists are allowed to enter the field and literally take over through retail tactics, unethical marketing and even ownership of dental practices depending on the state practice acts.

So what’s new?

What’s new is that some dentists are making incredible amounts of money. And others are suffering through the worst era of burnout and depression that the profession has ever known. The numbers are staggering. Where will that take the profession in twenty or thirty years? What will happen to passion, purpose and mastery.

Author Jacob Needleman in his book Money and the Meaning of Life said that money is important, it is emotional and desirous but it is secondary. Secondary? To what? you say. Whatever is primary. Primary includes all of those spiritual things that we cannot touch and feel like purpose, passion, mastery and happiness.

So then if business, money and marketing isn’t the royal road to happiness for many or most dentists, what is?

In her 2007 book The How of Happiness, positive psychology researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky elaborates, describing happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.” That would be the opposite of burnout and depression.

She describes happiness in the pie chart at the top of this post. A full 50% of our happiness is fixed or set through genetics. Some of us were born lucky…others not so much. No matter how well you eat or sleep or how much you meditate or exercise, that 50% doesn’t change.

Ten percent is dependent on our current circumstances whatever they are. Okay let’s say that you consistently can’t make your payroll, or you haven’t had a new patient in a month or your staff is holding you hostage. Well, those are fairly common circumstances these days. But are they worse than the circumstances than Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl or POW John McCain had to endure? The question then is how to survive horrendous circumstances.

The answer is the sacred 40%

That 40% are the source of our thoughts, feelings and actions. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said this is all we truly own. It is the source of all of our reasoned choice. When we don’t take control of our thoughts and feelings and what truly matters, our actions, then we become victims of our genetics and our circumstances. A full 40% of our well-being is volitional – we have total control. Forty percent is a lot.

Viktor Frankl the author of Man ‘s Search for Meaning said it best: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.“

This is the heart and our of Stoicism. Knowing this isn’t good enough. Applying our freedom of choice is the key no matter the circumstances. The sacred 40% is where our freedom lies.

My first major speaking job was at The Dawson Alumni Meeting in 2003. I had just published my first book, The Art of the Examination, and Joan Forest invited me to speak in Orlando. I was honored…but mostly I was nervous.

There must have been close to a thousand people in the audience. Joan told me to keep looking at her…and not to look at Pete. During my talk my eyes found Pete in the front row and that was the end of me. I thought I was terrible, Joan said I was fine and later that night at dinner Dr. Dawson gave me his seal of approval.

I was invited sit at the head of the table with Pete and his wife Jodie. For me the conversation was unforgettable. I considered Pete Dawson dentistry’s finest teacher and I was breaking bread with him and his inner circle…what a privilege. I told him that I had just finished Rick Warren’s bestselling book, The Purpose Driven Life. The book is a predominantly Christian book, and Pete was impressed that I, a Jewish dentist from the Northeast was reading it. Silently I thought to myself that the subject matter, purpose and meaning, is non-denominational. And this was long before purpose and meaning found it’s way to the business literature.

We spoke about his friendship with Dr. Morty Amsterdam and how he so enjoyed coming to Philadelphia. He spoke about L.D. Pankey. At one point he said something I will never forget, he said, “You know, L.D. was no fluke.” I asked what he meant. He told me, “L.D. really loved dentists and loved the dental profession. That is what drove him.”

To serve someone other than oneself is the highest order of meaning and purpose. Pete has been doing that through his writing and teaching for the past fifty years or more. When news of his passing came, tens of thousands of dentists all over the world wrote about how much he meant to their lives and careers. He carried the torch of meaningful comprehensive dentistry into the hearts and minds of dentists for as long as I can remember. Dr. Dawson was no fluke – he was a warrior for meaningful, excellent and dutiful dentistry.

Excellence, duty and meaning are the primary sources of Stoic joy. Not the surface cheerfulness and pleasure that we have come to know on social media. The essence of what he taught led to real inner happiness. I know it did for me.

Erik Erikson the developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings described the last tasks of adult development as generativity and keeper of the meaning. It seems as if Pete’s entire adult life was devoted to passing on the knowledge to younger dentists (from one generation to the next) and to never waver on the meaning of dentistry for patients and dental professionals. Erikson claimed that if one completed these tasks the reward would be a full life. Pete Dawson was the man in full, as we can tell by the people he touched and his wonderful family.

I carry coin in my wallet which reads, Memento Mori. The Stoics used that phrase to remind themselves that everyone is mortal. “You could leave life right now.” When the news of his passing came I was shocked. Joan Forest reported that Pete was prepared and yet on the Tuesday before he was still preparing lectures and writing a chapter for a new book. I guess that is what the keepers of meaning do right to the end. Dr. Dawson, to me, was the most admirable man that I have ever known in this profession. I know I share that sentiment with many.

Dentistry has changed since I first took Seminar I many years ago. The things I see on social media don’t resemble the way things were. Dentistry needs heroes like Pete Dawson. I am reminded of the last stanza of the Simon and Garfunkel song, Mrs. Robinson:

“Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you – woo woo woo

What’s that you say Mrs. Robinson?

“Joltin Joe has left and gone away, hey hey hey.

Hey hey hey.