Mortality and other trivial things...

In this, the 3rd month of my medical residency, I find that I am learning lessons beyond science. The technicalities of medicine are thick, that is for sure, but the art of connecting with someone in a profound moment has been a pleasant surprise to me. I am not the kind of person to enjoy "touchy-feely" moments and often I will be the first to back slowly out of a room once someone starts crying. But there is something curiously satisfying about dealing in human mortality. The kind of lessons only learned at the border of life and eternity are found in the most unusual places and times... perhaps the least unusual is in a hospital. We expect deep insights on life to come from a place of healing, and often times death, but nobody expects them elsewhere in our daily lives. Please don't allow me to write melodramatically here, I do not want to write about the fast-paced ER or the operating table where lives almost always hang in the balance. Instead I want you to practice the art of bringing out the good and the eternal in everyone around you.

Simply put, we do not experience life as a brotherhood. Something inside us (I am addressing this to Americans mostly) tells us that we value things too differently to express the ancient good in public with strangers. What do I mean by ancient good? The next time you wake up feeling happy and you go to work or out in society, dance a little jig or sing a little tune and see what happens... $100 says that the people that see you do it will smile, laugh, or even join you! That is the ancient good. We all understand what you are expressing and we want to be a part of it. The ability to recognize good is lodged deep in our souls (perhaps because we are so inclined to do evil). But with that one moment of joyful expression you have instantly shared a common purpose with us and that brings people together. (And for Christian believers, letting out this ancient virtue is not only satisfying, but is commanded from you).

Unfortunately there is a less enjoyable side to the ancient good... that is our basic drive to preserve life. With an extreme minority of exceptions, almost everyone would do something to save the life of a stranger sitting next to them if the need so arose. We know it to be right, and it's irrefutable. Some of us would be petrified with fear, but the drive to save that life would still be there. We want life. Mortality prevents us from having it, right? (I would argue here that death is not the opposite of life, only the absence of it, but that would take an entirely new post. Perhaps later.) I digress. The point is that this kind of experience isn't so different from the first, we instantly share a common goal. We connect in our desire for life. Whatever the outcome, we go through it together. Sometimes it turns out badly, other times we can celebrate, but we always remember and learn in the end. As a resident physician, I gratefully experience this daily.

The lessons of connecting with people on a base level do not come easily, but the opportunities to do so are more abundant than we have convinced ourselves to believe. We all strive for the same things; happiness, peace, rest. We all honor the same qualities; true courage, bravery, generosity. The only difference are the ways we contrive on our own to get there. And we have made up some stupid and almost always harmful schemes of trying to attain a clear conscience on our own. So the challenge I offer today is... Do not let your fear keep you from expressing the ancient virtues that we were meant to own. We have been given the grace of God and that alone is reason enough to act on those ancient truths. If you do... you will share life in it's fullest with strangers around you.