I once asked one of the nurses, Sharon, if they liked me only because of the donuts. Her response: “No. If you were stupid or a jerk, we’d eat your donuts but talk about you behind your back. We like the donuts, but we like you.” That’s one of the best, most honest compliments I’ve been given.
“And on the seventh day, God rested. And said, ‘Let there be coffee. And let the donuts be plentiful. Let there be glazed donuts, and cake donuts, and long johns, and buttercream and custard filled Bismarcks. But there nay should be jelly donuts, as those are disgusting.’ And so it was. And as God rested, God said, ‘This is pretty good. Keep ‘em coming. And may I please get another cup of Joe?’”
Genesis 2:2, in the original Hebrew, or at least how it SHOULD read.
The recent happenings in the United States Senate illustrates the point. We had two sides completely talking over and around each other, and a president with a need for attention that rivals a spoilt toddler. I fail to recall a “debate” where so little was actually discussed about the problem(s) at hand. The debate was disjointed, much like Kevin Pollack performing a Christopher Walken impersonation. It would have been funny had we, the people, not been held up in the middle of it.
But experience adds an extra level of understanding. Your mind might believe it, but shared experience makes the GUT believe it.
You have a mirror. Use it. Please engage in some healthy and regular introspection. Please do so when things are going poorly and doubly when things are well.
Help comes in different forms at different times. We should be acquainted with all of them.
Even as an attending, I relied heavily on our nursing staff to lean about what we could do to help patients, and how to do it more efficiently. I was constantly learning from the nursing staff and leaning on their expertise.
“Try to tell them about it, they’ll stare at you with those big round candy eyes. They won’t understand zip. It’s like trying to tell somebody what chocolate tastes like.” -Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Your success is not predicated on another person’s (or group’s) failure. Success, compassion, and mercy are not finite propositions.
How did I get to this point? I consider myself to be “successful”. It’s fun to look back and try to figure out where all the forks in the road were. Now, I’m able to laugh at all the possibilities that maybe were not real possibilities. I’m amused by the “decision points”. I was going to be, in no particular order:
