Brace yourselves, because I just had the most radical idea:
What if we treated other humans as if they were actual humans?
I know, it's crazy.
I am so sick of the platitude that goes around the health care world; the platitude that you should treat your patients as if they are a member of your family. "Treat them how you would want your mother to be treated." Or your grandmother; or your son; or your sibling; or whatever. How about we stop justifying our love for our patients by saying, "I just think, what if you were my (insert relative here)"? I mean, what is with this American culture of ours that we can't be kind without reason, that we can't show courtesy without receprocation, that we can't love without classifying it first? How about we treat patients with love, courtesy, and respect because they are our patients? Because they, too, are humans.
And how about we take this idea and utilize it in every aspect of our lives, not just at work in the hospital or on the truck? People are just people. They are capable of all of the good and all of the bad that you are. You may think that you could not do what someone could, but you can never know until you are in their exact position. How many mothers out there would sacrifice everything for their child? That's probably something that, before they became mothers, they could not conceive of. So, I ask, why are we so scared of other people? Why are we afraid of them, intimidated by them, afraid to show kindness to them when they are strangers?
I am not spiritual, but you may think I am after this: we are all connected. Not just us, the humans that walk this planet, but everything in the universe. We're all made of the same elements, our atoms are buzzing about inside of us and around us. Have you ever felt so close to someone that you almost felt as if their body was yours? That you couldn't tell where their skin stopped and yours started? Many people would call this a very spiritual experience, but I call it science. I don't claim to know all that much about physics or science in general, but I know how atoms bond to create molecules and I know how electrons move in their valence shells. And I truly believe that when you are close to another form of matter, a little bit of you rubs off on it and a little bit of it rubs off on you. That feeling of closeness is the feeling of your atoms mingling with the atoms of another.
When you wake up in the morning and just don't feel right, and soon you find out someone you know is dead or in emotional pain. When you feel joy at a wedding or a birth. When you feel the deep ache of boredum like it hurts to exist. What do you think that is? Everything is connected. Everything in this universe. Because everything in this universe came from something before it. An explosion, a collision, a scattering of the atoms, the building blocks of life.
So stop apologizing for feeling what you feel and stop justifying your kindness, your meanness, your apathy. If you want to be kind, be kind. Not because it is what you are supposed to do. Don't put yourself in a place where you force yourself into politeness or talk yourself into love. Be kind to be kind, to show love, to make someone's day better, to save someone's life. And, if you don't want to, then don't. Get out of the practice of medicine and do something that makes you feel the way being kind to a stranger for fifteen minutes, who will undoubtedly forget me in an hour, makes me feel all day; all week; all year.
And, I know, I am not really the person that needs to be telling you how to be nice to someone or to not box people out of your life, because that is basically all I do when it comes to my personal life. I need to take my own advice and walk down the streets of my city as if I am in service to the people of it, not as if I am the forgotten sister.
I know that, so I am saying it. For all of us.
Be human.
What if we treated other humans as if they were actual humans?
I know, it's crazy.
I am so sick of the platitude that goes around the health care world; the platitude that you should treat your patients as if they are a member of your family. "Treat them how you would want your mother to be treated." Or your grandmother; or your son; or your sibling; or whatever. How about we stop justifying our love for our patients by saying, "I just think, what if you were my (insert relative here)"? I mean, what is with this American culture of ours that we can't be kind without reason, that we can't show courtesy without receprocation, that we can't love without classifying it first? How about we treat patients with love, courtesy, and respect because they are our patients? Because they, too, are humans.
And how about we take this idea and utilize it in every aspect of our lives, not just at work in the hospital or on the truck? People are just people. They are capable of all of the good and all of the bad that you are. You may think that you could not do what someone could, but you can never know until you are in their exact position. How many mothers out there would sacrifice everything for their child? That's probably something that, before they became mothers, they could not conceive of. So, I ask, why are we so scared of other people? Why are we afraid of them, intimidated by them, afraid to show kindness to them when they are strangers?
I am not spiritual, but you may think I am after this: we are all connected. Not just us, the humans that walk this planet, but everything in the universe. We're all made of the same elements, our atoms are buzzing about inside of us and around us. Have you ever felt so close to someone that you almost felt as if their body was yours? That you couldn't tell where their skin stopped and yours started? Many people would call this a very spiritual experience, but I call it science. I don't claim to know all that much about physics or science in general, but I know how atoms bond to create molecules and I know how electrons move in their valence shells. And I truly believe that when you are close to another form of matter, a little bit of you rubs off on it and a little bit of it rubs off on you. That feeling of closeness is the feeling of your atoms mingling with the atoms of another.
When you wake up in the morning and just don't feel right, and soon you find out someone you know is dead or in emotional pain. When you feel joy at a wedding or a birth. When you feel the deep ache of boredum like it hurts to exist. What do you think that is? Everything is connected. Everything in this universe. Because everything in this universe came from something before it. An explosion, a collision, a scattering of the atoms, the building blocks of life.
So stop apologizing for feeling what you feel and stop justifying your kindness, your meanness, your apathy. If you want to be kind, be kind. Not because it is what you are supposed to do. Don't put yourself in a place where you force yourself into politeness or talk yourself into love. Be kind to be kind, to show love, to make someone's day better, to save someone's life. And, if you don't want to, then don't. Get out of the practice of medicine and do something that makes you feel the way being kind to a stranger for fifteen minutes, who will undoubtedly forget me in an hour, makes me feel all day; all week; all year.
And, I know, I am not really the person that needs to be telling you how to be nice to someone or to not box people out of your life, because that is basically all I do when it comes to my personal life. I need to take my own advice and walk down the streets of my city as if I am in service to the people of it, not as if I am the forgotten sister.
I know that, so I am saying it. For all of us.
Be human.
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