Alumni News & Notes | ESSAY
Living with Purpose
Following the death of his daughter, Michigan alumnus and professor Victor Strecher emerged from
his grief to find a new purpose in life. He shares that experience now with others.
By Victor J. Strecher, MPH’80, PhD’83
March 2, 2014. Montego Bay, Jamaica.
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY KODY CHAMBERLAIN
I’m
sipping a Red Stripe beer on the
veranda of a cottage overlooking
impossibly blue and green
shades of the Caribbean. The
temperature is perfect. Really. Perfect.
Roughly 100 degrees warmer than the ice
planet Hoth that we call Ann Arbor. I’m on
the University’s winter break, recharging
my batteries for the second half of the
semester and very grateful to be here.
Today is also the fourth anniversary of
my 19-year-old daughter’s death from a rare
heart condition. Julia was born healthy but
at 9 months caught a virus (probably chicken
pox) that attacked her heart. At 14 months,
she received a heart transplant—at that
time, a procedure performed on only a
handful of children. While Julia lived a
difficult early life in and out of hospitals, she
also went through school with great friends,
played on a softball team, ate ice cream, had
sleepovers, and read a lot of books.
At age 9, Julia started getting really sick
again, and one night, while at U-M’s C.S.
Mott Children’s Hospital, she suffered a
series of six heart attacks. Through four
hours of continual resuscitation, Mott
clinicians revived her and somehow
managed to coax 10 more years out of her
battered body. Julia read more books, wrote
poetry, drew, painted, traveled around the
world, had more great friends and two
wonderful boyfriends, and attended nursing
school at the University. (As an aside, if you
are considering the destination of your
hard-earned fortune, you could do no better
than to bequeath all of it to the heroes at
Mott.)
On the last night of her life, a beautiful
evening in the Caribbean, she turned to her
boyfriend and said, “I’m so happy, I could
die now.” That night, her heart unexpectedly
quit and she passed away in her sleep.
The illustrations on these two pages are from “On Purpose,” the book Victor Strecher wrote
following Julia’s death.
TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO, a Roman
woman named Marcia wrote a letter to a
friend, the Stoic philosopher Seneca,
conveying the unabated grief she felt at the
three-year anniversary of her son’s death.
She said that he had died too soon. Seneca
wrote back, “Imagine in the first place that
he had survived—assign to him as many
years in a long life that a man may have: how
many after all, do they comprise? Brought
into the world for the briefest of spans, and
destined shortly to give up our place to the
next person who comes.”
Michigan Alumnus | Summer 2014 | umalumni.com
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs must have
read Seneca. Knowing he would die before
his time, Jobs stated in his 2005
commencement address at Stanford
University: “Death is very likely the single
best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.
It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Right now the new is you, but someday not
too long from now, you will gradually
become the old and be cleared away.”
Before my life with Julia, my attention
was focused on writing scientific journal
articles and winning research grants.
ESSAY |
Awards. Tenure. As we gave Julia a life worth living,
the totems of academic success suddenly failed to
hold the same meaning—not because they were
unimportant. In fact, they became more important in
the sense that my research became more than a
means to promotion and job security. My teaching
meant more than student evaluations. The tenuous
nature of Julia’s life reminded me of the finite years in
my own life and became my change agent.
In the months after her death, I spent most of my
time in northern Michigan. Lake Michigan, with its
beauty and expanse of water, was a comfort. One
morning, I woke up from a profound dream that
involved Julia. It was 5:15 a.m. as I looked out on Lake
Michigan. It was like glass. I took my kayak about a
mile out on the gentle smoothness of the lake, far
from any sound. Watching the sun grow over the
horizon, the water started glowing. I felt Julia in me,
telling my heart that I needed to “get over it.” “Get
over it” not in the sense of getting the loss behind me,
but in the sense of getting over my ego—of finding a
new, transcending purpose in my life.
Recent epidemiologic research finds that older
adults with a strong purpose in their lives are, seven
years later, 2.4 times less likely to develop Alzheimer’s
disease than those with a weak purpose. Purpose in
life also predicts lower risk of heart attack and stroke.
Research I’ve been conducting with my colleague Eric
Kim suggests that purpose in life may help us sleep
better and have a lower likelihood of obesity four
years later. In another recent study, 2009 Nobel
laureate Elizabeth Blackburn and her colleagues
found that increasing purpose in life was associated
with greater activation of telomerase, an enzyme that
helps keep our chromosomes intact.
Chances are, you haven’t heard of these studies.
Neither the National Institutes of Health nor the
media have paid much attention. But what if we
discovered a drug with the same effects, one that
reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, heart attack,
stroke, and obesity, and kept your chromosomes
intact—a drug without three pages of side effects that
didn’t cost $1 million a year? They’d be putting it in
our drinking water.
Medical science may soon extend our life span to
beyond the century mark, but will we have a more
fulfilled life or just a longer one? Will we spend even
more years watching what the Kardashian sisters are
doing or the latest Miley Cyrus twerking videos? Will
we fritter away most of our time asleep? Or will we
live our lives with purpose?
The Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus
Aurelius said, “Do not act as if you were going to live
10,000 years. Death hangs over you.” He then added,
“While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
This last phrase is key. In a study of graduating college
Alumni News & Notes
students, researchers found that graduates who
placed importance upon close relationships,
community involvement, and personal growth were,
after two years, more likely to have achieved these
goals and to have greater well-being, whereas
graduates who aspired to money, fame, and
appearance were, after two years, more likely to have
achieved these goals but had greater ill-being.
One of the classic books addressing these issues is
Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Frankl
vividly describes his ordeal of being a prisoner in
three Nazi concentration camps, stating, “Woe to
him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no
purpose … he was soon lost.” The book powerfully
weaves together his personal experiences with
existential philosophy with a psychotherapeutic
approach he called logotherapy—“meaning therapy.”
A book I recently created, “On Purpose,” attempts a
post-modern method of communicating Frankl’s
message. The book is written as a graphic novel, which
may be described as a self-help guide, college lecture,
confessional, and time-travel adventure all rolled into
one. Extending the core messages of logotherapy to
the masses, I’ve created a free app for the Web, iPhone,
and most smartphones that helps people identify
their purpose in life and examine their alignment
with that purpose every day.
I wrote “On Purpose” as a tribute to my daughter,
but of course it doesn’t remove the pain. This evening,
I walked alone on the beach and had a good sob. The
loss of Julia has left a hole that will never be filled. And
I won’t try to fill it—I’ve learned that I can survive this
loss, and in some ways even thrive, when I direct my
attention to a purpose in life bigger than myself.
Every morning, I follow the strange Stoic practice
of contemplating my death for that day. Can you say,
“I’m so happy, I could die now?” Julia could. I can.
Especially today.
This was Julia’s gift to me.
The tenuous
nature of Julia’s
life reminded me
of the finite years
in my own life
and became my
change agent.
Victor J. Strecher,
MPH’80, PhD’83, is a
professor and director
for innovation and
social entrepreneurship
at the U-M School of
Public Health. He has
devoted much of his
professional life to the
study of the science and
psychology of healthy
personal change for
individuals and large
populations. His recent
book and free app, both
titled “On Purpose,”
can be found at
www.dungbeetle.org
or through Amazon
and iTunes.
Michigan Alumnus | Summer 2014 | umalumni.com
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