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Being human Medicine Reflections on Life, Being Human, and Medicine

The Assignment

If you could be anyone who would you be?

That was the assignment. I was in Mr. Dow’s 5thgrade class and that was the assignment. And it was a very troubling assignment for me.

I had a secret and I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. I wanted to be a doctor. I don’t even really know why I knew this. From adulthood I can remember the assignment and the dilemma, but I cannot remember when or how I had decided that I wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t know of any doctors in my family. I didn’t know of any friends who wanted to be doctors. It wasn’t like I had watched doctor shows and idolized them. I just knew that within my heart that is what I wanted to be.

It seemed bold and maybe prideful to me. I was afraid that people might laugh at me. It meant so much to me that I couldn’t bear to have people laugh at me about it. I was in a dilemma. I was raised to always tell the truth. The truth was I wanted to be a doctor. But I didn’t want to put it on paper. So, I did what a mature 5thgrader might do. I didn’t do the assignment.

Mr. Dow wasn’t happy. There were a couple of us at the table where he sat the “advanced” kids. We were the ones that had the harder assignments. He pushed us to turn in our assignment. I continued to procrastinate, hoping that my dilemma would just “go away.” It didn’t. Mr. Dow wouldn’t accept just letting me not turn it in.

Finally, reluctantly I wrote it and turned it in. I don’t remember what I wrote but I wrote the truth and revealed my deepest secret. It was really scary.

My friends started talking about how they answered the assignment. One told me that he said he wanted to be “Abraham Lincoln.” Another was “George Washington.” The others told similar historic figures. My heart sank as I realized that I had misunderstood the assignment. 

If you could be anyone who would you be? The assignment was not what do you want to be.

Abraham Lincoln would have been a far safer answer. And yet I had revealed my deepest secret. Graciously Mr. Dow did not reveal my secret. I didn’t tell my friends. I was able to continue with my secret dream.

Why did this upset me so much? 

First, I heard the assignment wrong because of my anxiety. It seems that we often worry so much about things that are not real. 

I read a book where every day for a year the author challenged herself to do something that scared her. It brought about tremendous growth for her. One of the things that she did during that year was to go meet with her ex-boyfriends to find out what they really had thought of her.[1]She had huge anxieties. But in doing this she discovered that most of what she had worried about was never real. Her anxieties had driven her to assume the worst. She was not able to see, believe, or know the truth until she had been bold enough to ask.

That is a big lesson. It is hard to know the real truth about ourselves. We fly between the extremes of a sort of “Walter Mitty” over glorification to a false self-denigration. Neither are the truth. We all have some pretty cool and pretty average (and some pretty crummy) things about us.

It is important that we try to live in reality and not let our anxieties drive us to neurotic behavior. For me, as a 5thgrader, my anxieties were to the point where I would have let them drive me to a failing grade for not doing the assignment. If I could have seen through the fog of my anxieties I might have actually read and listened and done the assignment. Maybe I would have written a very nice and safe essay on wanting to be Neil Armstrong stepping foot on the moon. 

Is there more to learn from this story? I think so. 

Honestly – I don’t know why I was so anxious for anyone to know. Perhaps it comes from being the youngest of 6 children? Perhaps it came from being afraid to actually dream and tell the truth about who I was and what was important to me? Oddly – I have no idea now what I was so afraid of. My family and friends would have been quite happy to indulge me in my dream. They probably would have been happy for me and proud of me. It seems strange now that I would keep it so private.

This blog has been an odd experience for the introvert that I truly am. 

I have found power in being able to write in secrecy. I write a lot and then store it away. I don’t worry about whether I will ever post it or not. There will be time later to decide that. Writing in this way is immensely liberating. I can be myself. I can be honest. I can say what is on my mind.  

If only the 5thgrade me would have thought of this. I could have written a full essay on my hopes and dreams. I could have worked through my thoughts about someday going to medical school and becoming a doctor. I could have fully explored what I was thinking and why. I could have better understood myself. I could have tested out my thinking secretly at first. I could write it down but keep it private. Having done this I would then have understood enough about myself so that I could then safely explain it to others. I could have been bold enough to know myself and then be open about what was important to me.

It may sound silly but the Disney song, “Let It Go”[2]has a strong appeal. “Let it go, Let it go, Can’t hold it back anymore…” “I don’t care what they’re going to say…”  Even though we may not admit it, I think many of us feel the pull of this song when we hear it. We spend a lot of time hiding. Shielding. Protecting ourselves. Maybe sometimes we should really, “Let it go.”

So, lesson number one: Live in the truth not what you worry people might think about you. For me I know that it is ok, important and good to be honest with myself. I should look objectively. It is ok to be average – excellent in some ways – and not so good in others. I don’t have to be good at everything. And I had better not let anxieties or worries about what people might think about me drive my life. 

Lesson number two then is this: It is good to have dreams and deep thoughts and feelings. I do not have to be afraid of them. I do not have to be afraid to be myself. We all may have thoughts and dreams and ideas inside of us that we keep safely and secretly hidden. I am not saying that you or I have to reveal anything and everything to the world. I have things buried on my computer that I may never post. But there may be real value from time to time to “Let it go.”

It has amazed me how people have responded to this blog. By putting myself out there many have told me that I have helped them. Some tell me I hit points that make them better know who they are or what is going on in their life. That is pretty cool. That makes me really happy.

Who did I want to be? I wanted to be a doctor. And to be honest I wanted that more than I would have wanted to be Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or Neil Armstrong (although it would have been really really cool to be Neil Armstrong!). 

There. I said it. I “Let it Go.” That is who I was as a 5thgrader. I was a nerdy little boy who dreamed of being smart and studying hard and having people come to me for answers as their doctor. 

It still is easy for me to want to hide a lot. But in this blog I have let you see a little bit of who I am now.

Who are you?

[1]https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061875014/my-year-with-eleanor/

[2]https://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/f/frozenlyrics/letitgolyrics.html

Categories
Being human Reflections on Life, Being Human, and Medicine

Coffee Cups

They are white china cups with a nice gold trim on them. They are from a coffee serving set. I keep them in my office at work. They mean a lot to me. And recently (last fall) I have been honored to have others appreciate what they mean. 

Let me explain.

I had wonderful grandparents growing up. Both sides were an important part of my life in their own unique ways. This story is about Grandma Hill. If I had to pick a couple of words to describe her, I think they would be “love” and “contentment.” As a child, I used to really enjoy visiting their house because you could feel their love whenever you went. The hardest part of visiting was when we had to leave. The rest of it always seemed just to be a joy.

My personal favorite place was their house on Dunbar Road. The mind pictures are imprinted on my brain. I can picture the kitchen. I remember the little plaque, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get!”

As they aged, we lost Grandpa Hill. They were happy in the little house that they had later moved to. Grandma did ok after he was gone for quite a while. Sarah and I had the joy of picking her up one day and driving with her across state to a family get together. As we drove, she told us how happy she was in her home.  She said, “I don’t need very much. I am just happy puttering around my little house.” 

This was a great example to us of contentment. We don’t need a lot of things. We don’t actually end up happier with a bigger house or a lot more stuff in our house. We just need to appreciate what you have. Grandma Hill was good at that. She was happy to just be alone and able to enjoy her little house.

She had a lot of grandchildren. She used to give all of them presents. I don’t know how she kept up with it all, but she did. But as she got older and as she went through various illnesses it was not as easy for her to keep up with the gift giving. It must have also been a real strain on her budget to do so. But she was insistent on still getting something for all of us. One year she bought us a used coffee set from a yard sale. When we got it, I thought it was beautiful. I also didn’t know what I was going to do with it. It didn’t match our own dishes. It was fine china and not the sort that you would normally use on an every day basis. But I was immensely touched that she gave it to us. More than that I was thankful that she still was able to give us a gift. It was important to her and because of that it was important to me.

Then we went to Europe.

https://www.opcafegaan.be/leuven/cafe-leffe

When Sarah and I and the girls went to Europe for the first time, what coffee meant was changed in my mind. In Europe they did not have take-out coffee. They did not have paper cups and lids. That would have been offensive to them at that time. Coffee was an experience. It was something you did more than just something you drank. Coffee meant stopping and sitting down and relaxing. It would always be served in a nice cup often with a little cookie on the side. At 1stI struggled with this. In my busy American mind, I wanted to grab a cup and keep going. By the end of the trip I had learned the joys of coffee. I looked for the little cafes and looked forward to the experience. We would all stop, and we would just have coffee together. We would be forced to stop and rest and talk together. Often, we would replay our day and what we had enjoyed. But more than anything we would just stop. The night before we left to return to the US I insisted that we go to the city center and sit outside and have a coffee. It was not about drinking the coffee. It was about sitting at a table in a beautiful place and being there. It was about the moment.

When I came back home, I stopped at Starbucks on my way to work. I watched the person in front of me grab a Venti coffee and then dash out the door. The huge paper cup suddenly looked obscene and an insult to the coffee experience. I almost wanted to cry. I decided that morning that if I could ever drink coffee out of a real cup, that I was going to do.

And so, I went home and found the coffee service set from Grandma Hill. I brought it to my office so that I could experience coffee even at work. It is fun to offer people a cup of good coffee in a fine china coffee cup complete with the saucer underneath. Meetings don’t seem quite so rushed. It makes us feel a little bit more professional. We are not in panic mode. We are civilized. We can experience coffee. We can experience the moment.

The coffee cups and saucers in my office mean a lot of things to me. 

  1. Love: The love of a grandmother who showed it by giving gifts to all of her grandchildren. Even when the budget was tight, she found ways to show her love. In return I love those coffee cups.
  2. Contentment: They remind me of her joy in just being in her house. You don’t need a lot more than what you have. You are not happier with more. You just need to enjoy what you have. If you do this, then you can be content.
  3. Slow down: Coffee can and should be an experience more than just a drink. Whenever you get the chance, insist on a real cup. Hold it in your hands and sip from it. Slow down and taste it and enjoy it. If you are with someone else, talk to them. Put your phone down. Experience them. Truly have a cup of coffee. Don’t just drink it.

That is the story of the coffee cups.

Many of you are aware of the pins that were made up in support of me and my recovery from cancer surgery and treatment. For those that are not, they are an image of my coffee cups. This is immensely touching. It is overwhelming to see how people care about me. It also is important that people have noticed the importance of these cups to me.

What is the message for this blog?

  • Love. 
  • Contentment
  • Experience moments and others. Oh – and whenever you get the chance – insist on drinking your coffee slowly out of a really nice cup!