Category: Uncategorized

We are biased against the left.

Think about it: the dominant side for most people is called “right”. We label awkward behavior and ineptness as gauche – the French word for left. In Latin, sinister originally referred to the left. In Anglo-Saxon, the root for left (“lyft”) meant weak. To be a leftist has referred at different times in history to being evil, to being unstable, and even to being a communist. Humans have clearly harbored a longstanding prejudice against the left side.

This historical favoritism seems unfair. After all, at least ten percent of the world’s population is left-handed. Many other people have ambidexterous abilities or are born without any specific handedness. Yet cooking utensils and power tools are still typically made for the right-handed. And most scissors won’t cut properly when held in the left hand. Until not too long ago, we even made school children learn to write with their right hands.

So what have we got against our non-dominant sides?

Over the years, I have had occasion to face my right-sided preferences. There were the clavicle and sternal injuries in college and graduate school that inspired me to try new things with my left hand, such as tennis. There was the surgery on my right hand during residency training that taught me how to place iv’s and document in the medical chart as a leftie. There was the time working in rural Arizona when, just for fun, I taught myself how to throw with my left arm. These days, I will regularly brush my teeth, shave, or pour water with my left hand, rather than my right, as a reminder that both sides have potential.

The conscious experience of doing things opposite to their everyday feel is a positive one. I can feel my brain working differently. I can sense all sorts of reaction from diverse muscular-neuronal patterns and connections.

“Whoa!” the now unused right side sometimes exclaims. “What’s happening over there?”

Call me creatively conscious but I am sure that the experience is good for me – and for my brain. It is a form of calisthenics for my central nervous system. Although it’s not supposed to be possible physiologically, I can feel things buzz in my brain when I challenge it in new ways. The change helps me notice and address imbalances that have snuck into my daily ways of moving and being.

Not everyone has the luxury of symmetrical anatomy and capability; some of the people I admire most in this world have innate or acquired physical challenges that don’t afford them the luxury of two fully equipped and operational physical sides. It is amazing to witness these folks’ accomplishments. It is humbling to consider what less I can do with my own complete complement of extremities and physical components.

This inspires me to be less complacent with how things are and to exercise my abilities in dynamic and unique ways.

So consider trying something with a different hand, foot, or neuromuscular pattern, just as an experiment of change. If you are a righty, let yourself be gauche! It can be fun to pay more attention to our non-dominances. There are lessons to be learned in the infrequent, the ignored, and the sometimes forgotten abilities latent in all of us.

They were an unassuming pair of socks. Pale grey, factory knitted in the 1970s from thick Vermont wool, they did not receive frequent wearings, remaining folded at the back of the sock drawer until the depths of winter. Annually, however, during one toe-chilling day or another, they would get their chance – until, that is, I noticed a pattern. Invariable, within a day or two of wearing the socks, I would get sick.

Alas, despite their link to my undergraduate days, the socks had to go. 

Common sense might have dictated a course other than wooly destruction. The apparent relationship between sock use and sickness was no doubt silly; the notion that wardrobe can influence wellbeing would be considered by most people irrational, unscientific. Besides, the darned things were still in good shape.

But one year, two decades or so ago, I felt pushed to the limit. Three days of fever, chills, and myalgias finally effaced any bemused fondness I may have harbored for the quixotic relationship between textile and physical state.

A friend posited that responsibility for illness rested with me, not the wool. His logic held that because – once – I had coincidentally become sick after wearing the socks, I had expected to become, and hence indeed did become, sick with each subsequent donning. “It’s not the socks’ fault,” he winked, “it’s you. You’re the one making yourself sick.”

My wife spun a slightly different, and decidedly more supportive, explanation. “Maybe you self-consciously know when you’re about to get sick,” she suggested, “and you wear the socks right before the symptoms set in. To help you get ready.”

Socks as innocent bystanders versus socks as illness signalers: a pair of theories very consistent with western medicine and intellectual tradition. Both offered with the best of intents. Both rejected by my younger self.

“Look,” I argued, “I already recognize the cues from my subconscious about impending illness. When my mood turns negative, I know something physically yucky isn’t far behind. So I respect rather than recriminate those mental signals, and I rest, drink more fluids, even try to replace negative thoughts with positive ones.”

That is what I said. What I wondered was different: they were probably right. So I wore the socks one fine January day when it wasn’t cold and when my outlook was positively sunny. I laughed at my ludicrous indictment of a lifeless textile. I pulled the socks on and went about my day.

Twenty-four hours later I wasn’t laughing. The problem, it seemed, was not in my head. It was in the socks.

There were last minute pleas for soft sentencing. “Maybe the socks are involved,” a colleague whispered, “but it’s not their fault. They may be holding some sort of bad energy but you were the one that gave that energy to them, the first time you got sick. Look, socks are inorganic. They aren’t doing this on purpose. They can’t.” The perspective was shared with an imploring tone. Save the socks.

I considered some possible avenues to footwear redemption: donation, frequent wearing in the spring and summer, even some sort of ceremonial cleaning. In the end, however, I just needed space. I severed the sock-sickness cycle via the county landfill.

The inanimate world can surprise us. We hear stories of hard-to-explain interactions between people and inorganic objects. Crystals and jewelry are often cited. But there are other, equally mysterious experiences with other things and structures, large and small. Many of these interactions are positive. None of them make so-called “sense”, at least not in the way we explain sense scientifically. Still, they are there. We can feel them.

Last week, while straightening up a drawer in my clothes closet, I found a small plastic bag I had placed there multiple months ago, a ziplock container with a few of my father’s personal things. There were tie clips, cuff links, and an old watch. The watch had stopped; it hadn’t been worn since his death. Responding to some sort of instinct, I stretched the flexible band over my left hand, settling the watch face on my wrist. It fit. Next I sorted through the cuff links and tie clips, smiling at my father’s penchant later in life for sartorial style. By chance I glanced back at the watch.

It was running again.

After my heart paused, I realized that the watch must have an automatic winding feature; movement caused it to restart, not some familial force reaching through the space-time continuum. Nonetheless, something important had happened in that continuum when I slipped the watch onto my wrist, something akin to a mini-cosmic reboot of some non-linear measurement based on the transfer of wearership from father to son. There is more to this watch than modern time.

I wear it now, intermittently, not because I need to know the time of day; there are so many other ways of knowing that from the technology surrounding me. I haven’t even bothered to reset the hour and minute. No, I wear the watch because of another sense that it brings me, one that is far more basic, more foundational. It regulates me somehow, physiologically. It also grounds me someotherhow, lifealogically.

Unlike those socks, the watch just feels right.

Low clouds blocked the morning January sun as nests of grey mist hugged the rolling hills, flattening the light, making everything in the high desert seem closer than it really was. It had rained and looked as if it might soon rain again. A handful of cows stood motionless in the landscape.

They don’t look up much, those cows. Most of the time, when there is grass to be eaten, their heads are pointed downward, focused on the business of grazing. On a morning such as this one, on a stretch of Arizona highway with level road, low traffic and long vistas, I could, with soft gaze, appreciate the light and the scenery. And I could wonder if animals that live amidst that scenery ever pause themselves to take in the view.

The first answer is no: cows don’t have higher consciousness and awareness. And yet they experience certain emotions, such as fear; photos of cows being taken to slaughter reveal clear panic in their eyes and faces. Other animals likewise demonstrate emotional responses to a variety of situations. I don’t need to anthropomorphize canine capability to recognize happiness, sorrow, fear, and distress in my dogs. It’s there. It’s real.

Sure, it’s easy to assume that birds singing in a springtime sunrise are not happy but only announcing themselves to each other and potential mates. It’s easy to make such scientifically informed assumptions because birds do not write us letters, emails, or leave any permanent evidence that they like what they feel or are capable of sharing it. But is awareness required for participation in beauty?

I remember the first time I consciously experienced silence, complete and absolute quiet. I was hiking along a plateau trail overlooking the Colorado River. Because my feet were tired inside a heavy pair of old leather boots, I paused to rest atop a rock outcropping. The sun warmed my brow. I closed my eyes. Suddenly, I fell into, and felt, nothing. I thought nothing. I heard nothing. There wasn’t even a buzz of emptiness in my inner ear. There was simply no thing. I was not there. If I didn’t open my eyes, or move, or even breathe, I had no evidence that I existed apart from what existed around me. I wasn’t asleep but instead awake in a way that I’d never previously felt. The realization jolted me out of the unifying moment. My eyes flew open to confirm I was really there, I was still really me, still in but apart from where I was.

My consciousness got in the way of my being.

Cartoons such as Larson’s Farside have depicted the inner life of cows and other animals. We laugh at their insights and perspective. We don’t really believe it though, that inner life. We don’t really think that cows know they are part of something wondrous, something sometimes magical. We understand that a cow knows nothing of the grandeur it inhabits, even when no one is watching.

And so we can miss the point, and the experience, of the majestic. Because our access to splendor is not necessarily through the avenues of our minds. In fact, our taste of the whole may rely on the opposite of mental awareness and acknowledgement. For grandeur may instead be enfolded within the absence of differentiation, delicately wrapped – paradoxically and parenthetically – within the boundary-free space that knows not me and you, this and that, here and there, above and below, reflection and witness. Grandeur may mysteriously rest in the enjoyment of knowing nothing of knowing.

A cow grazes on a plain beneath a cloudy sky. It does not need a view. It is a view.

The morning was damp and misty. October, 1988. A friend and I had driven through dawn to a place in northeastern Pennsylvania with a stream, a floor of matted leaves, and a soft morning of muted color. We stood on a small wooden bridge that arced over murmuring water.

“There are three things you need to know about fish,” C whispered. He had been quiet as we had walked from the car to the bridge. I was wearing some oversized waders bought the evening before at a Philadelphia Army-Navy store. C was wearing some gear that looked as if he wore it casually around his apartment.

He softly took a breath. “They like to eat, they like to sleep, and they don’t like to expend a lot of energy doin’ the first two.” My friend exhaled, as if he had reverently unburdened himself of a fundamental philosophy that had been solemnly passed down to him from prior generations. He gazed at the gently swirling stream. “Good luck,” he said. Then he moved off without a sound and, it seemed, without his shadow.

I eventually trudged off as well – just not where C had gone. My previous fishing experience had been in a dirty creek that arose from or drained to (it wasn’t clear to me as a boy) the rivers running around and past Philadelphia. As kids, we caught something we called sunnies, tiny fish that would rise to the surface if you dangled some corn on a hook into the water. A rod and reel were not necessary. Just some fishing line, a hook on the end of the line, and a single piece of corn on the hook. We could flip the sunnies onto the bank just when they opened their mouths to take the corn. We tried to do it without the fish getting the hook caught in its mouth.

This was different. This was careful, even meditative. This was totally foreign.

In his defense, C probably offered to teach me how to create an arc with the line and fly on the rod he had loaned me for the day. He may have even given me a brief lesson on land at some point or perhaps described the technique of fly fishing during our morning drive. I don’t recall exactly what I understood about fly fishing and it honestly doesn’t matter: I wasn’t there to catch any fish. Because when I saw C move like a cat through the marshy weeds, creeping almost motionless to the stream’s bank and then into the shallow water in one of its bends, I realized that I was out of my depth. So I turned and shuffled downstream, in the other direction, letting C have a chance to interact with any gilled life forms before they were so unfortunate to encounter me. I breathed in the morning air, I valiantly kept myself from tripping over the oversized waders (they were the last pair on the shelf at the Army-Navy store and were two sizes too big), and I slid into some water where I could see the stream bottom.

And I did my own fly fishin’.

A good fly fisherman can move a fly across and through a current of air that mimics an insect being buffeted by wind and landing ‘just so’ on a quiet circle of water. It is a thing of beauty. The fisherman is one with rod, line, and fly. A fish doesn’t have a chance.

A creek fisherman like myself should not try to emulate such majesty, especially on a morning as the one we were enjoying. A creek fisherman should not demean the beauty of the day and its moments by getting fly and line tangled in weeds, trees, and his own clothing. He should – and I did – find himself a spot of peace and wonder in a stream, coil up some line in one hand, and gently let the line drift from a spot not too far near his side to a place as far away as the coiled line wants and is able to go. A creek fisherman should not care that the fish aren’t fooled. He should not try to catch anything that he knows nothing about.

And I didn’t. The fish and I kept to ourselves. At least, that is, until I had watched the light change through a range of tone and hue. And also until I had pensively consumed a sandwich, beverage, and snack, and had listened through a small headset to some favorite guitar music on my recently purchased Walkman.

I caught nothing, cared about nothing, until I was as still and yet as fluid as the life forms that surrounded me.

The tug on my line was subtle; it took a few minutes for me to realize that it wasn’t the water or a rock or my imagination that was pulling at the rod that I forgot was connected to the fly somewhere downstream. It was a trout. When I reeled the fellow in, walking toward him as I went, I saw that the fish wasn’t caught on the fly and hook but was instead wrapped up inside a few circles of the line. He wasn’t hooked. He was lassoed. And his mouth was gulping at the fly just out of its reach.

The moment was serene and surreal. It was also sacred, in an unexpected way. The sun, which had crept high in the sky, bounced its autumnal wisdom across the backs of the rocks in the gurgling rapid, the ripples of the undulating water, and the scales of my lassoed fish. Carefully, I unwound the young being from its entrapment. I almost wanted to send him away with the fly he couldn’t get, as a souvenir, as evidence of the story he might later tell his own kind. I also sort of wanted to show C that, hey look!, somehow I had caught a fish. But I knew that wasn’t right, and it wasn’t correct.

The fish had caught me.

The startled trout and I stared at each for a moment that now feels more like three decades. Both of us felt a bit foolish. Neither of us winked. Then I opened my hands and we went our separate ways.

I never told C that I learned another thing that morning about what fish like. Yes, they like to eat and sleep, and yes, they don’t want to expend a lot of energy when eating and sleeping. But C, I know now that fish also like to do something else, a fourth thing that, like the first three, isn’t so different from us and the rest of human kind. They like the freedom to keep swimming.

It is magical how life catches and releases us.

One of my delights as a father of young children was driving my daughters to school and various activities. Sometimes there was silence. More typically, there was banter and commentary. It was never dull.

Once, when one of the girls was only seven or eight, she took issue with me on the topic of perfection. “It’s not good to want to be perfect,” she announced from the back seat. Aspiring to be the dutiful parent, I tried to explore the difference between the goal of perfection versus its achievement. My young daughter would have none of it. “No one can be perfect, Dad,” she stated firmly. “It’s not good to try.”

My daughter’s declaration stuck with me. She was not a child who was lazy, indifferent, or unengaged. At seven, this girl participated in things. She had strong opinions. So from whence did this surprising conviction arise? Was she indirectly telling me, in the only way that a young child could, that my expectations of other people – of her, or perhaps even of myself – were too high?

We didn’t discuss the topic further, at the time or since. But the comment stayed with me, buried somewhere inside my memories, recently resurfacing as something of substance I’ve encountered in my life, a lesson unrealized.

The little whippersnapper was right.

I’ve lived my life as a pretty goal-oriented person. Both my upbringing and personality shaped a strong sense of potential for the world and specifically of my capability to achieve my own place in it. You can accomplish anything, if you set your mind to it. Over decades, I’ve repeated that mantra often, leaning on it when a seemingly insurmountable challenge lay before me as well as when I needed an excuse to either not engage in something or in fact to fail. I could do something, if I really wanted to. Some things some times were just not important. They were simply not goals.

And so I’ve trudged through almost 60 years of life, accomplishing some goals, failing at others, and deciding not to try to succeed at still more. I’ve learned to see much of what I do as success or failure from the perspective of task and objective. This trait has served me well – at least in some ways. It has, however, left me unfulfilled in others.

Goals are useful. They motivate us, get us out of bed in the morning, lead us into and through challenging circumstances and situations. Goals bring certain successes, especially in careers and vocations. And yet they are limited. Of greater importance, as we age, it becomes clear than they are limiting.

Have I had a goal to be perfect? ‘Definitely not’ is my first answer. ‘I don’t think so’ is the honest next. Because, in all truth, I have kept wanting to improve myself, like some rough-edged sculpture, smoothing corners, burnishing, polishing my traits and strengths in search of still unrevealed or soon-to-be glistening ability. There are diamonds in there, I know it. I just need to extract them from the mess of discardable rubble.

But is the drab rubble just as much me as the sparking gems I’d prefer that you see? Is self-discovery less excavation, less looking within, and more a process of revelation, more a learning to release and reach out?

We aren’t perfect, none of us. Still, we sense the perfect, in an odd and wondrous way, through our imperfections. We also experience the majestic – something related to the perfect – when we embody the essence of acceptance, when we see ourselves as part of the other, when we focus less on personal achievement and more on interpersonal awareness.

I do, therefore I become. That is the voice of tomorrow. Of separation. Of striving.

I am, therefore I can be. That is the voice of today. Of communion. Of being.

Maybe that was the message I heard from the back seat of the car so many years ago. My 7 year-old was expressing the very heart of being.

I’d like to know. I also would like to know the birthdays of others we might know in common.

Why? Because I’m on a quest. It’s not a journey to remake myself; I’ve learned enough since my own birth year of 1959 to realize that December 31st resolutions should focus on more achievable tasks than a new “me”. Consequently, 2019 is a year when I hope to be able to do something a bit more prosaic. Rather than a grand self-improvement project, 2019 will be a year when I fill a single calendar with the names of people I know who were born on all 365 days of the year.

My quest shouldn’t be too epic or difficult. There are, after all, over 7 billion people alive on this planet. Surely, out of that large number, I know at least 365 people with different birthdates! And yet, earlier this week, when I began filling in dates on the tracking calendar (a free one that my wife received in the mail), some months had no entries. And then, when I started to get serious about the project after seeing so much blank space, most months still had plenty of empty dates. One month persisted with no entries. Zero.

Do I really know no one born in March? Or am I biased against those 31 days, either because no one in my immediate family was born in March or because March otherwise holds nothing special for me and hence I don’t pay attention to birth dates in that late wintry time?

It is striking to see how many gaps my calendar has. Regardless of the season in which the blank entries occur, the empty dates feel cold, like frosted, impenetrable windows standing as barriers to my probing eyes and heart. You would think that I’ve met enough people in my almost 60 years to fill out a calendar with only 365 days. No doubt I have. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t paid enough attention to all those people to learn – and remember – the date of their birth.

Have I been that self-centered?

I could make excuses. You might even make some for me. Don’t bother though: I’m actually invigorated to have the opportunity to make amends. It’s as if I’ve got a treasure map and the clues to complete it are out there, in the world, held by people like you. It’s a bit exciting to take the calendar in hand and carry it with me, in my car and in my briefcase, to try to be able to fill in one more name each day throughout the year. Will I make it? Will I have the nerve to ask people about their birthdays? Will I need to explain my interest in the subject or will I instead learn how to slip it naturally into a conversation?

By the way, when is your birthday?

Already, rule clarifications have arisen. How well should I know someone before deciding that she or he gets included in my calendar? Strangers shouldn’t count, that I’m clear about; I should have some sort of relationship with a person before listing them. Is there an amount of time though that qualifies a relationship as valid? No. I think if someone is interesting to me, if someone inspires me to want to stay in touch with him or her, even if only once a year, that person should be included.

What about people who have died? I can’t send those people a birthday card, or call them on the phone. But I can still think about them – and smile. Sure, I’d prefer to keep an active listing of 365 people who are alive, people whom I can communicate with. For my starter year, however, I’ve elected to make it easier on myself and to count those who have passed. Besides, it just doesn’t seem right not to have Mom, Dad, and various others on the calendar. So dead people are in.

How about famous people, or those in the public eye? Nope. That doesn’t work. If I don’t know someone – more accurately if someone doesn’t know me – then they should have no place in my quest.

When I leaf through my calendar, it’s a bit embarrassing to admit how many dates I still have to fill it. So I won’t. Until I’m closing in on completion, I won’t count the empty date spaces, hence sparing myself the embarrassment of telling you that, at the start, I still have at least 300 people to find. (It’s in fact a lot more than that.)

Never mind! What good is a quest if it is easy? This one, I’m quickly learning, is more challenging than I might have expected. But not to worry: I have 365 days to go. And approximately 20 million possibilities on the planet for each day of the year.

I also already know my goal for the year 2020. That’s the year when everyone on my 2019 calendar gets a birthday card.

the things i’d like to teach you
are so many, and yet so few of
them make sense to me still 
as i search and seek for 
insights, for peacefulness, 
for the thrill of
understanding,
wisdom,
balance in walking this world
but then sometimes,
ah, yes, those special sometimes,
i unexpectedly touch the tapestry
of harmony and 
the majesty of life’s grandness, 
unfurled like a banner, a flag, a huge sign
for all to see
that brush with wonder is indescribable
the sense of being so deep, so full
it’s easy to doubt it happened
it’s hard to prove it was there
a joy forever imprinted within me
an awareness too difficult to share 
this, the whole, any or all
of it directly
these things
they cannot be transferred
they are things that must be found
by each of us
along and with the rest, 
they are things that cannot be placed inside you, 
except through your own feeble and 
best steps
and missteps
your own journey
on a path carved out by you alone 
and
the universe, the Creator, and
the bonds you make with life's 
simple lessons
the small number of learnings
the most basic of 
discoveries, the essence 
of why you are here.
i dare not presume to uncover them
for i know not how to bare the
heart of the cosmos so it is
visible
tangible
sensed solely by you, or by anyone,
for it is not my place, it is not my time
it is wholely yours, 
it is uniquely the rhyme that you 
write in your own, your 
beautiful, your
marvelous, your
magically wondrous
 story.


know though
please know 
 this one thing - 


you travel not alone, for
you are held by
you are embraced inside
you are bathed with
you are the embodiment of


 love

I hope I got your name right. There are so many choices, from so many traditions. During my upbringing, I learned to use God. I’ve tried other honorifics over the years but God is the one that I keep coming back to. It probably doesn’t matter to you what name is used when someone communicates with you. You probably only care about the act of communication itself.

Which is why I’m writing. It’s been a while, yeah. It’s been even longer if you characterize my communications as public versus private. Usually I’m not up for the public sort of spiritual salutation; most of the time I prefer to keep my feelings and beliefs to myself. In fact, I bet the last time I reached out to you publicly was during some sort of elementary school event or class. I can’t remember anything specific but, if you are really what I was taught during my youth, you do. It would be a kindness to me though not to be reminded about that last socially-exposed greeting. I was much more sincere during those days.

Oh, I’m still sincere now – just in a different way. And with a different frequency. I have lots of genuine emotions, really. There are plenty of core values and beliefs. They just sometimes get all jumbled about, if I’m being honest. Like a ball of tangled yarn, it feels too intimidating to take hold of the one frayed end poking out from the messy snarl and tug. My pull could only just make the ball condense into a tighter mass. It’s not very likely that everything will simply relax open.

Except – I’ve been having these experiences. With you. Life isn’t always smooth, for anyone, including me. I’m luckier than most, I see that, but I still find myself in situations of late that I’d prefer not to sort out alone. And so I’ve been asking you for help, either directly or, more frequently, through some people who hopefully have your ear: my parents and other deceased family members and friends. Funny how comfortable it feels to ask Mom to help me out. Less funny – actually downright unnerving – how she sometimes is able to do that. The signs are so very clear. I say a prayer. I ask Mom, Dad, Uncle Mike, Aunt Daisy, or any of a host of memorable people who I figure have earned the right to ask for a favor or two and, more often than I deserve, I get a reply.

Not everything gets fixed, no. But help, or sometimes simply comfort, is extended.

I’m too private a person to share many examples; it would be too humiliating to admit to all the things that I find myself praying for. Which is why I should admit to them. And why I think I should write to you now and share a note of thanks for at least one. I’m not a very humble person: the ego, the thing that Mom once told me was a human being’s greatest challenge, it whispers inside me that I am humble, a gathering wellspring of grounded diffidence, respect, and (dare I acknowledge it) wisdom. It tells me that I have a voice that should be shared. It makes me feel important to write this blog.

You and I know otherwise. I’m neither humble, wise, or respectful. I’m just a sometimes frightened almost sixty year-old man who wants to feel part of something outside himself, a man who often confuses experiences of the whole as successes of the self.

My soul was bare the other day though. Perhaps in consideration of the urging from some angelic assistants, you had helped my family during a difficult time. With a true desire to say ‘thank you’, I stepped into a non-denominational chapel, sat in the front row, and silently opened my heart. Surrounded by diverse symbols of religious faith and spiritual life, I focused on one that I’ve not given much attention to in years: the cross. My mind turned off. My spirit reached out. My lips formed the words “I believe”.

I absolutely admit to having felt a bit ashamed. It’s easy to believe when things turn out well. Nonetheless, I still felt thankful, and hopeful, and filling with belief. I told you. And then I asked for help getting past myself. I asked for faith to trust in your will, the will of the whole, the will of what would be and not at what I might want to be. And I smiled at one of my recent conceits – my role and responsibility concerning a potentially large work-related project. I’ll accept your guidance, I mentally murmured.

There was one person you could have placed in my life path at that moment to tell me your will about that project. That person was not in my mind whatsoever when I left the chapel. That person had no reason to be anywhere near the exit from the chapel. That person was suddenly standing in front of me when I turned from closing the chapel door.

Hello, God. Thanks for letting me write. Thanks for always listening. I’ll try to become a better communicator.

3AM. Night 8 of my daughter’s hospitalization for new onset headache. Status migrainosus, by its official name.

“Here’s a summary of all the doses she’s had so far.” 

I accepted the blue sticky note from the nursing student with a groggy thank you. Sometime earlier in the night – was it only just an hour before? – I had wondered aloud with her and my daughter’s night nurse if the dosing already given of an intravenous medication was sufficient. The side effects were nasty. Maybe it was time to stop the brutal med. Had she reached the maximum of 12mg? A short time later I was presented with a gift in response to my informal query: a three inch square of information. 

No, there was more to this gift than information. There was the timeliness of  its delivery, the caring and quiet manner in which the young nurse had tracked down what I needed and handed it to me. There was kindness. The young woman knew this data was important to me. She understood, without my saying so, that I had no chance of sleep, despite my feigned effort of closed eyes. In the dim light of the heart monitor, she handed me the sticky note with a certain reverence.

We all know that health care is not just expertise and efficiency. Those characteristics of care are important, to be sure. But they are insufficient – at least from the perspective of the person and family receiving the care. The simplicity of basic human interaction and the gentleness associated with gestures of thoughtful kindness are as much a part of healing as the decision-making behind and promptness of the medical interventions.

Intentionality is key. It is spontaneous, natural. It helps a person feel witnessed, seen.

Hospitals are busy places. Gone are the days when people stay long enough in them to recover strength, energy, and purpose.  Patients are hospitalized just enough days for diagnosis and stabilization. The goal is discharge, from the moment of admission. This isn’t necessarily bad; hospitals are places where drug-resistant bacteria loiter and medication mistakes may manifest. Improvement systems and safety checks are implemented to minimize risks. But the risks are there because the acuity of patient conditions is significantly higher than in years past. Hospitals are to be avoided, if possible. Once in one, a person and family do well to seek the sanctity of home.

It’s been years, decades even, since I’ve spent so much time in a busy hospital. Sure, when I was a hospital administrator, I walked the halls of a different hospital daily, visiting the inpatient units as much as possible. Not since my residency training, however, have I spent so many continuous hours inside one of those units. Never have I spent so many continuous hours inside a single patient room. 

And never have I been so reminded of the crucial importance of the kindness of strangers. 

It was all around us. The nurses were busy; that didn’t stop them from showing an interest in my daughter, my wife, and me. The support staff on the unit, the people working at the various administrative desks, the physician staff, the residents, even employees working in food service and the lobby Starbucks – they made a difference through the smallest of smiles, hellos, nods, and recognitions. They all made an invaluable contribution to my daughter’s treatment and our family’s recovery.

“You’re here all the time!” I said to the young barista at the hospital lobby Starbucks. A string of unlit holiday lights was wrapped about her hair.

“It’s fun!” she replied.

“Well, we’re getting out of here today,” I quietly shared. “I hope I don’t have to see you again.”

“Come on by when you’re next here,” she said. “Visiting. As part of the follow-up.”

We definitely will. We may even stop by to say hello and thank you to that nursing student and some of the other people who gave more of themselves than protocols and best practices demand. They saw us when we needed to be seen. We saw them too. 

Small acts of kindness. Intentionally offered. They can change the world.

You can learn a lot from your younger self. Especially when that self said or did something that, even if relatively unremarkable at the time, seems presciently potent years later.

The result of excessive hubris and self-focus, many of my life’s insights or actions would benefit from a healthy dose of amnesia. A fair share are in need of actual forgiveness. One particular contribution to the human enterprise, however, an essay filed away in a stack of old journals, re-presented itself to me today as a possible framework for refinding my footing in the modern era: a declaration of interdependence.

 

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