Dr Margaret Placentra Johnston, Optometrist, says "A Farewell to Springfield"Twenty-five years ago I, Dr Margaret Placentra Johnston, Optometrist, was just one year out of Optometry school when the optometric office of my dreams at 6406 Springfield Plaza, Springfield, VA became available. The elderly doctor who had founded the practice was retiring and moving away. From the moment I first walked in the door at 6406 Springfield Plaza, I knew that was where I belonged. So I set about convincing my rather reluctant Optometrist husband that this was the practice for us and jumped right into negotiating with the owners. Basically I knew I needed to do everything in my power—including walking on eggshells in all dealings with the selling partners-- to make that deal go through. I simply could not allow anything to go wrong. About a hundred times a day over the three or four months of negotiations, I would visualize myself opening the door to that office with my own key. Over and over I ran the same video in my mind. I knew if I had that key, it would be because I owned the practice.
Finally, in December, 1983, the deal went through. Dr. Bohn handed me his key and moved to Arizona. I, Dr Margaret Placentra Johnston, Optometrist, stepped in as the proud owner and principle practitioner at 6406 Springfield Plaza. My husband Bill helped out somewhat when our kids were little so I didn’t have to work full time, but basically that office was my baby from the first day. Over the years it became apparent it would be better for our marriage if Bill did not work in “MY” practice so he basically left the Springfield office to me and went on to pursue his own professional goals. But ever so much did I learn about life within those walls. Oh, the eye doctor part was not so hard, but the “people part” was a complete education in itself! Managing staff was the most challenging. How to be fair to these indispensable people with goals and needs that often conflicted with each other and with the smooth running of the practice? As time went on I began to understand what was really important about the place Dr Margaret Placentra Johnston, Optometrist held at 6406 Springfield Plaza. It was service. I was serving my staff by providing a solid, stable workplace where, under my management, they could count on “the right thing” happening, even in the face of lots of little wrong things that generally occur everywhere in our largely imperfect world. Also - I was serving myself by providing an outlet for my professional aspirations, where it was a continual joy and challenge to meet the rising demands of Optometric practice, to always be sure my staff and I were providing the best care we were capable of, to be sure each patient was treated according to his or her individual needs. These tasks demanded basically everything I had to give. This service gave me a sense of purpose and lent joy to my existence. And - I was serving my family by providing an income, modest by Northern Virginia standards, but one that, together with my husbands’ earnings, always kept us comfortable. Though we were never what you would call wealthy, there was always “enough.” Quite importantly, it provided my children with a happy, professionally satisfied mother, who therefore had more energy for them than she would have had in a less stimulating career or had she stayed home instead of working. Moreover –I was serving the Springfield community. People in the community knew they could implicitly trust the office of Dr Margaret Placentra Johnston, Optometrist. The doctor was as thorough as necessary to be sure their needs were met, our staff as pleasant and polite as possible, the glasses and contact lenses we sold were always of the highest quality and, while we did not make too much use of coupons and sales tactics, our everyday fees were set to offer very solid value. But--most of all-- I was serving the individual patient. It was the joy of my life to be able to approach each person who came in with one question in my mind: “what can I do for this person that will most enhance and protect his visual situation?” And in some cases, “what kind word can I offer for some non eye-related pain he might have shared with me? “
Then in 2003, my son became seriously ill (he is fine now, thanks for your concern!) and, at the very same time I received an offer completely out of the blue from a larger company that wanted to purchase my practice. The purchaser was prepared, I was told, to deal with managed care in a much more solid way - with a whole office devoted to billing those entities. How could we go wrong? Still considering that Springfield practice as my life’s work, and going along with my instincts that this was the better course of action, I went ahead and sold, signing a five-year contract that would keep me seeing patients in what would no longer be “my” office after the sale. At the time I had little thought of what would happen after those five years were up, but I assumed I would perhaps decrease my hours a bit and continue practicing in that office until I retired – an event I would have assumed was still another twenty years out. Over those five years though, I began to realize less and less satisfaction with my professional situation. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, the feeling of providing “service” – to my patients, to the community, to the staff, to myself - was gradually dimming. From time to time, as I stepped into an exam room a question would pop into my mind: “Who am I serving here?”
Many of my long-time patients know that last summer I took an extended vacation to visit my husband in Fairbanks, Alaska where he was serving in the Army for a year, having been called up from the Reserves. Well, while visiting him, I took advantage of my free time to take very long walks each day, getting in some great exercise, and at the same time spending hours alone just thinking things over. One day I stopped to sit alongside a river that ran though the Army base where we were staying.
As I sat there looking out over the water, I found myself suddenly filled with tears. There was some great sadness ahead of me but I had no idea what it was. I had the solid sense that our kids were ok – thank goodness! And I did not get the feeling anything was going to change with respect to my relationship with my husband. My parents and father-in-law are old and while I know our time with them is limited, I was at peace with that – at least as much as is possible. No, my tears were not about my family or my friends. They were about something else in my life – something huge. A large, but unknown change was looming just in the months ahead. Whatever it was, it would affect me directly. A great sadness descended over me. Without knowing why, I cried and cried. Yet the sadness brought a certain sense of peace with it. Whatever it was, it would be something I would accept. It would be for the better in the long run. Whatever it was, it’s time was come. I knew the feeling was for real. This was not the first time such foreshadowing had happened for me.
Without knowing why though, from time to time I would catch myself issuing a long deep sigh for no particular reason. I even began to feel a little bit depressed, a feeling that I am blessed to say is otherwise completely foreign to my existence. Clearly some great burden was upon me. Then at times, quite involuntarily, an image would cross my mind wherein I was handing over my key to that Springfield office to someone else! Even more startlingly, a couple of times I got an image in my mind of my diplomas coming down from the exam room walls! I could not imagine any logical reason for any of this. Both sides seemed anxious to nail down the new contract. Negotiations seemed to be going fine and the few little sticking points all seemed workable. But for some reason, one thing and another seemed to keep delaying that contract becoming finalized. Then in late November, a number of purely random, but for me completely adverse, things came together all at once in such a way that the negotiations for my contract renewal fell through. Once I allowed myself to look clearly at the big picture, I got the message: the “sadness” from that day back in Alaska was about my practice! Though I had been hard-pressed to admit it, I finally saw that I no longer belonged in that office! I saw that I no longer fit in with the mission there. It was indeed time to take my diplomas and down from that wall and literally hand over that key to someone else! When a business relationship fails or a contract negotiation falls through, human nature is to try to blame the other party. But the truth in my case is, there was nothing all that wrong on either side. The Springfield office just was no longer the right place for who I was. I think I had undergone a personal change in one direction and around the same time the owners had made a move in the opposite direction. December 31, 2008. New Year’s Eve. I had seen my last patient in Springfield. The staff had left. All alone, I packed up my last few belongings, and turned my key in that door for the last time. As I stepped back to take one final look at the office that had been my work home for twenty-five years, I was surprised to note, through the veil of the inevitable soft sadness, first a glimmer and then the brilliant glow of a deep, contented joy. The words “It’s been one hell of a kick!” flitted gently through my mind. A broad smile crossed my face as I walked away.
To the Springfield community, it was my great privilege to have devoted my energies for twenty-five years to your general eye care needs. The satisfaction attached to those years will always remain one of the greatest joys of my life. That I must move on is a sorrow beyond compare. To my long-time patients, I want you to know how much I have appreciated your loyalty and the gift of the trust you placed in me over the years. I will always think of one and another of you with great fondness. I hope you will see my departure NOT as an abandonment of you. But perhaps rather as a moving on to serve a different purpose. In recent years it has become clear to me that there are many people who can perform my optometrist functions. There is something new in my life now beside Optometry - a service to my fellow man that only I can perform. I have a viewpoint I can share that may serve to decrease a lot of the religious intolerance we have in our society. For some reason years ago, I found myself driven to plow through some very difficult texts by some academic theorists regarding spiritual development. Over time concepts I gleaned have gelled in my mind into a perspective so clear and so obvious I am perplexed as to why no one else is pointing it out. Late in 2004, about a year after I had sold my Dr Margaret Placentra Johnston, Optometrist practice but while I was still working there, an idea suddenly occurred to me that I should write a book about this topic. Strangely enough, a format that would make it very easy for others to understand also popped into my head at the same time: I could use stories of real life examples to bring out the process I would be trying to share. I spent the next few years in a state of ambivalence about whether I should actually write this book (ask any writer about ambivalence and doubt!) and have come to the conclusion that yes, I must. So that is another reason why I, Dr Margaret Placentra Johnston, Optometrist left the Springfield office and went to work at a quieter place. I needed more time to write. While there are many who can adequately provide eye care, there is only me who can write my book. For an idea of what I am trying to do with my book, please visit my new website: www.exploring-spiritual-development.com.
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