Made in America
It doesn't take much prompting for my wife Lue and me to pack our bags and get out our passports. Recently an invitation came to speak to a group of orthodontists in an area we had never before visited, and not even the fact that it was in war-torn Yugoslavia could keep us home.
To be precise, the invitation came from Slovenia, which successfully seceded from Yugoslavia more than a year ago. Once a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Slovenia is more Western European than Balkan in culture and history. The new country has only 1.5 to 2 million citizens, and could actually be considered more of a city-state. Slovenia owes its independence to its unusually strong and unified resistance to the Serbian-controlled government, which sought to maintain the synthetic Yugoslavian confederation that Tito formed by military force in the aftermath of World War II. Serbia tried for only 10 days to subjugate Slovenia before heading back south.
Today there are about 45 or 50 dentists in Slovenia who practice orthodontics exclusively. As in most of the countries that were once dominated by the Soviet Union, orthodontists had to restrict their therapies to removable appliances until only recently. Now my hosts wanted to learn more about edgewise techniques and preadjusted appliances.
Despite the professional deprivation and therapeutic restrictions imposed by their former government, these orthodontists gave proof to the observation of Jacob Bronowski: "The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well, and having done it well, he loves to do it better." Here were people who were used to working with the most meager of instrumentation and the most limited of treatment expectations, and now they were seeking improvement for the benefit of their patients and their own professional satisfaction.
You could sense the excitement and expectation of the Slovenians about their economic, political, and professional future. In fact, during our stay the United States formally recognized their new country, and this clearly encouraged and pleased our new friends. Everyone raised the subject in conversation.
Sometimes we become jaded about our professional lives and take our vocational accomplishments for granted, as if they were minor achievements. Believe me, the Slovenians don't consider our skills insignificant, and I imagine most countries now emerging from restrictive economies and governments will feel the same way.
In a conversation about the general dental health of Americans, one of my hosts remarked that nothing in the world was as distinctive as the smile of a teenage American girl. Of all the things she could have noticed about our young people--their hairstyles, clothes, jewelry, physiques, cars--the most attractive and enviable feature to her was the smile created largely by us, the orthodontists of America.
As my colleague explained this to me in what I respectfully call Slavinglish, I experienced a tremendous professional pride. Orthodontists in other countries justifiably believe American orthodontics to be the world's best, and all of them want to emulate our therapeutic success as quickly as their economic and educational limitations will allow. Few American industries or professions can make that claim nowadays.
We ought to make use of this pride not as an excuse to rest on our laurels, but as a challenge to continue improving our collective skills and exerting our leadership in the orthodontic world. It took a Slovenian orthodontist to make me realize that we have been instrumental in creating a gift that enriches both the giver and the recipient, and that promotes and confirms friendship and understanding throughout the world--the American smile.