Lesson Four: Blessings are a test and not a reward
Don't get this backwards because life will humble you and it will hurt
Next month is my 22nd wedding anniversary. As you are about to read, there was a time when there was no way in Hell we would celebrate this day. Thank you all for reading and thanks to my beautiful wife Rachel for teaching me bravery and fighting for us.
I have always loved myths and folktales. It isn't that John Henry busting through a mountain to build the railroad is some epic heroic feat that seems realistic, it is that tales like this give us a context to understand the minds of the people who wrote them as well as the people who passed them on. In this case we can learn a little about what folks thought about the advent of the Industrial Age and machines taking the work of men, which feels relevant even today. That we even know these stories exist is evidence that viral marketing was a thing long before the Internet and Social Media.
Diversity is a strength in Silicon Valley because it allows multiple perspectives to come together to form the products that will shape the modern world. Celebrating differences is a righteous endeavor, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that one side effect of growing professionally in a wildly diverse environment is asking myself the question “But what makes us all the same?”
There are many types of diversity. Ethnicity is the one that most folks think about when the word is used. Gender identity is another. But the one that I spent a lot of time thinking about when I was at Facebook was religion.
Towards the end of my days at Facebook, the Production Network Services Sourcing team that had been really just me for a few years became a threesome. One of us was a Catholic of Filipino heritage, another was a Muslim of Middle Eastern heritage, and I was an agnostic that leaned atheist of European heritage. You couldn’t find three more different people, but we got along great and I spent some time trying to understand why, focusing on the diverse spiritual beliefs and searching for commonality. I added in my penchant for foundational stories and I was on my way.
One thing I learned at this time, reading about the Koran, was that one of the foundational stories of Christianity was also one of the foundational stories of Islam. It was also a foundational story for Judaism and I was sure that I had found one answer to my question about what made us all the same. Of course, I was an agnostic who leaned hard toward atheism so a religious text didn’t make the most sense. But I had grown up going to Sunday School and knew, or at least had a cursory understanding of, the story of Abraham.
After rereading the story, boy did I struggle to believe that this narrative had any relevance to the modern day. Applying a modern context to that foundational story made it an infuriating thing to read. I mean, the crescendo of the story involves a man taking his son to a mountain in order to sacrifice him to God only to be stopped by an angel. We have seen folks do similar things in our day without the benefit of an angel to stop them and no one I know is clamoring for those stories to turn viral and serve as the cornerstone of a bright future.
It was only natural, then, for me to seek a deeper symbolic meaning in what was going on in the story of Abraham. What I came to many years later, with the help of the Michael Lewis book The Blindside, was that blessings are a test and not a reward. In that book, Leigh Anne Tuohy says “God gives people money to see how you’re going to handle it.”
It is safe to say that I handled it poorly and wish I had read this lesson in the story of Abraham at the time. As my days at Facebook were coming to an end I found myself sitting in a private meeting with my personal physician. I hadn’t been feeling well and when I visited him previously my blood pressure was astoundingly high. He sent me to get a blood test and a urine sample and this was the follow up meeting.
It seems ridiculous to look back on this time in my life and see how blind I had been to the fact that I had let myself become something that I never thought I would be. It is also alarming to think that I was surprised by the results of the tests, or that my blood pressure was ridiculously high or that my doctor recommended outpatient rehab and an antidepressant prescription.
“Do you have a drinking problem?” my doctor asked.
“Well, I don’t have a problem with it,” I said with a laugh.
He was not impressed with my wit. He raised an eyebrow and said, “What else are you doing besides drinking?”
For reasons I can’t explain, the gravity of the previous year of my life hit me like a ton of bricks at the question. I started to cry as I explained that I didn’t want to get out of bed most days. My wife hated me and I hated her. I drank a lot. Usually Vodka Red Bulls so I could stay awake to work while drunk.
As I began to spill what I didn’t know I had been lying to myself about, I noticed that he had something in his hand to give me. He saw me look at it and he put it back into the pocket of his crisp and clean lab coat. He asked me to continue.
I look back now and laugh at myself that it took this meeting with my doctor to admit to myself that I was in trouble. I had let the enormous weight of a massive opportunity crush me. All that mattered was how much work I could get done in a given 24 hour period. I had lost track of the reason I was so motivated to work like this in the first place.
Initially, I started drinking to relieve the stress. When that started to interfere with my ability to produce, I started adding energy drinks to the alcohol so that I could stay focused. When that became sustenance and I needed more I found it was very easy to get Adderall. When this combination of speed and alcohol made it hard to sleep, I began smoking copious marijuana so that I could fall asleep.
Rachel and I had filed for divorce. I spent time living in my sister’s spare bedroom. Rachel and I decided to not get divorced but we took no steps to address the source of fractures in our once strong partnership. It all sat right below the surface and simmered and I ignored it because all that mattered were the things I could afford to buy if this all went the way it should go.
By the time I was sitting in bewilderment in my doctor’s office, this had ceased to be things I was dabbling in and had become a daily routine. I would wake up every morning at 4 AM, go into the garage of my house and smoke a large amount of pot. I’d then go into my living room and check my email and get to whatever I hadn’t gotten to the night before. By 5:30 AM I was showered and on my way to Facebook HQ, at this time of day it was a 45 minute drive at worst. I’d start drinking around noon, always Vodka Red Bulls. Before dinner was served at 6:00 PM in the various cafes around the Facebook campus, I would pop an Adderall so that I could maintain my focus. I would usually get home by about 8:00 PM and see my kids for about 30 minutes before I would post up in my dining room and do the work that hadn’t been done during the day. I was generally smoking pot by about 10:30 PM so I could fall asleep by midnight and the cycle would repeat. Rachel kept track, though I didn’t really know, and told me a lot later that I went 6 months sleeping no more than 4 hours a night.
After I explained this to my doctor he reached back into his coat pocket and pulled out a pamphlet for a rehab facility in Fremont, CA. He explained that if I didn’t stop living this way I would be dead before I was 40 years old. He also told me that he had checked with my insurance and that they would cover the outpatient program he was referring me to. I took the pamphlet, a prescription for antidepressants and I headed home with every intention of going.
I called my brother as I drove towards home and told him about the appointment and the doctor’s recommendation. He was supportive and encouraging, but something in my brain went sideways as I listened to him. My pride was kicking in and it felt almost like a challenge, “You will be dead before you are 40.” Pffft, I will show that asshole!
When you miss that a blessing is a test everyone becomes your enemy. My doctor was just trying to take care of me and for that he had become an enemy in my mind. My brother, too.
When I got home, Rachel was volunteering at school so I was all alone. I opened my laptop and started to do work. I poured myself a Vodka Red Bull, took several hits from a bong and turned on Spotify. I played the song “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse and with a self indulgent and horribly misplaced smile on my face I shared it to Facebook highlighting the chorus lyric “They tried to make me go to rehab but I said no, no, no.”
My brother sent me a text almost immediately. I replied that it was just a joke, but he knows me well enough to know I was full of it. I had convinced myself that I was fine and just celebrating life as a defense against the gravity of the situation. Like my brother, I knew I was full of it and had the antidepressant prescription filled. I decided giving up the Adderall was enough.
Within a few months, I resigned from Facebook. I decided that the problem was the pace of work I was trying to maintain and Rachel demanded that I quit. I found a new job at a small start up, Square. Not exactly the best move when blaming the pace of work for your personal failings, moving to an even earlier stage company with a more demanding pace of work assured. I was convinced that I had better things ahead for me.
I left a job where I worked amongst the best people I had ever worked with. I was blessed with an amazingly supportive team that had put up with the shrapnel of my life falling apart all around me. I failed this test by deciding they were the problem.
I continued to drink. I stopped taking the antidepressants. I fell back into the same hole and before long was living in the spare room of my Aunt’s house. Rachel and I had filed for divorce again. I rationalized that she was jealous because I was traveling the world and building, in part, the building blocks of a game changing service. My ego was out of control and with that the test had absolutely zero chance of being passed.
I had been tested. I had been given an amazing team of human beings to work with at Facebook and then Square. I had been blessed with a beautiful wife and three amazing daughters. I had traveled the world and made more money doing it than I ever thought possible. I had everything that anyone needed. I was blessed beyond measure.
But I failed the test. I lost every single thing that was important in a pursuit of things that were not.
Thankfully, all of this proved to be surmountable. I eventually repaired my relationship with my wife and girls. I gave up drinking for good. I realized that the things I was trying to get were not as important as the experiences and people I was fortunate enough to have in my life.
I do not regret that this all happened, it was eventually a great lesson. I do wish I had avoided some of the heartache I caused for those around me. When you find yourself blessed with an amazing opportunity, remember to be present and honest with yourself. Do not confuse pleasure with sustenance and make sure that you do not fall into a pattern of self destruction while convincing yourself that you are not on some slippery slope. Remember the why and forget about the what. Don’t fail the test.
I already did that for you and I learned what Abraham learned centuries before me. A blessing is a test and you can only pass it by holding on to what is important and eschewing the pomp and circumstance.