Professional hazard

When PwC people paid their last respects to former chairman and senior partner Jerry Isla last week after his earnest battle for recovery from a massive stroke, friends told their tales as if they just happened yesterday. It seemed no time was lost even if it was a decade after his untimely retirement.

Former long-time chairman and senior partner Cora de la Paz-Bernardo soothingly referred to Jerry’s transition as a form of “deliverance” (a direct, one-way ticket to heaven); while former chairman and senior partner Tammy Lipana said, “see you soon, Jerry, but not too soon,” remembering she was in no great hurry. But the most poignant narration could only come from Jerry’s daughter as she recounted her tender years. She was given her first pair of black shoes by her dad Jerry, which she would incessantly tap against their wooden floor to emulate the sound made by her dad’s big shoes. Little did she know, she said, that making those sounds with her black shoes was the closest thing to being with her dad when she misses him while he is away from home working. And we all know that those were long hours of work.

This brings us to ask: how many pairs of shoes worn by young daughters tapped on floors while waiting for their dads to come home from work? How many basketballs bounced in play by little boys who were oblivious to the absence of their playmate-father, who would still be buried in professional duties in the office? How many fathers struggle with extreme stress on a daily basis, and don’t show it, for they need to appear strong and resolved rather than worried or sorrowful?

Being part of a profession with the most punishing deadlines, that demands great attention to details in voluminous paperwork, and that requires tons of report writing and analysis gives me perhaps some right to talk about a professional hazard that comes from stress.

I find stress is in large part voluntary. Our revenue targets that keep on increasing every year are self-imposed. Newbies stress themselves with others’ expectations that high academic achievements should translate to superior performance, and anything less is failure. We make commitments, take on new challenges, until we bite off more than we can chew. It’s almost like whipping our own backs, and calling the actual rituals unnecessary self-infliction of pain during Good Friday.

I must say the Supreme Court tends to favor one claiming compensation for work-related sickness .Even if the employee contributed to his sickness through his own bad habits, so long as there is a substantial showing it is work-related, the employee can be awarded compensation. The catch is, these are disability benefits requiring permanent (partial or full) disability. It does not apply to stress-related sickness one can recover from and then report for work again. Besides, too much stress in the work place is a difficult ground to use to claim damages because professionals know the nature of their profession and what they are getting into.

Labor law mandates safety and occupational hazard rules in the workplace but it will not tell people how to live their lives in a certain way. Or for that matter requires an impossible task for employers to avoid stress in the workplace, even if scientifically, stress causes sickness. When the body is stressed, our immune system malfunctions. You can skip learning from experience by just learning from people around you, and appreciate that hypertension, ulcers or migraines visit even persons with a healthy diet.

I am not an authority on exercise, so I will not pretend. But this much I know: when you get stressed, you need to take a minute, or take a day, to de-stress. When you notice your schedule is continuously tight for weeks, you need to make a way to relax that schedule the following week. Be creative about leisure. Take a couple of hours off to watch a movie if you must, or get a massage in the middle of the day.

I am not an expert on health insurance products, but I like those that encourage people to lead healthy lifestyles. I think it should be institutionalized that insurance companies should suggest health programs for the persons they insure. Health insurance premiums should be discounted when the insured follows that program as he lessens the risk. No one wants to recover health insurance premiums by actually getting sick anyway. Still, by all means, get sufficient insurance.

I do not know much about other careers, but I have seen enough to say loneliness, if it doesn’t go away, can be a death sentence for dreams, even for life and limb. If your career does this, you should go and do something else. If your career makes you happy, you can only use it one way, which is up.

As for our profession, work-life quality will always be the aspiration of people in it, and it certainly is not an impossible dream. It is not true that practitioners have very little personal lives, but there is no denying that being a professional is a big part of who we are. Thus, at the onset of this Holy Week, I pray: “Lord, save me from peril, but allow me to burn like a candle. So long as I am able to give useful and positive light, let me burn. And when the day finally comes that my light runs out, let it be because I ran out of wick, but not because I ran out of flame.” –Atty. Alex B. Cabrera (The Philippine Star)

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