Skip to main content

What I Learned This Week

Sunday
We need each other.
*Context: A small group of friends spends the day together, and one of them feels refreshed after having done so.

Monday
We have more influence over other people's days (and even lives) than we are sometimes willing to admit.
*Context: A student cries in a meeting after being reprimanded by all six of his teachers, in the same room, for consistently annoying others.

Tuesday
Investing in others can be very fulfilling.
*Context: Students make much more of a teacher's birthday than he ever thought they would.

Wednesday
Medicine-- even in the assistant role-- is a field with very visible responsibility.
*Context: A student takes his first set of complete vital signs, and realizes that he is dealing with others' lives.

Thursday
We may not be able to control others' behavior, but we can move mountains with our response to it.
*Context: Someone says something unkind about a teacher in the presence of another teacher, and the listening teacher-- in a hurry-- says nothing. The listening teacher realizes later that this moment was wholly worth stopping for.

Friday
Growing older is a great thing for the person willing to learn from his or her mistakes.
*Context: A small group of people converse about their respective pasts. The members realize that they have firmer boundaries, and are far more able to handle life's challenges, than was true just five years ago.

Friday Two
Many Christians yearn for the church to do more for the needy.
*Context: Two people discuss the disparity between medicine in the United States and medicine in a country like Haiti.

Friday Three
Good music is soothing to the soul.
*Context: Good music

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heroes

Although we have several examples of heroes in our day, one of the best known is of a woman named Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (“Gonja Bojaju”), who devoted her life to sustaining the “poor, sick, orphaned, and dying.” Her venue was Calcutta, India, where she served as a teacher until she began to take notice of the poverty there. Seeking to do something about it, she began an organization that consisted of just thirteen members at its inception. Called the “Missionaries of Charity,” the organization would eventually burgeon into well over 5,000 members worldwide, running approximately 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries; and caring for the orphaned, blind, aged, disabled, and poor. As her personal work expanded, she traveled to countries like Lebanon, where she rescued 37 children from a hospital by pressing for peace between Israel and Palestine; to Ethiopia, where she traveled to help the hungry; to Chernobyl, Russia, to assist victims of the nuclear meltdown there; and to ...
2 comments
Read more

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...
2 comments
Read more

Comparative Medical Care

One thing I'd like to understand is why there is such a difference between medical costs here and those in Haiti. At the time the book Mountains Beyond Mountains was written, in 2003, it often cost $15,000 to $20,000 annually to treat a patient with tuberculosis, while it cost one one-hundredth of that-- $150 to $200-- to treat a patient for the disease in Haiti. Even if the figures aren't completely accurate, the sheer difference would still be there. Indeed, the United States pays more per capita for medical care than any other country on Earth. My first guess for why the disparity exists is that there is a market willing and able to pay more for medical treatment, so suppliers see the demand and respond with higher prices. According to at least one doctor (go to http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/what_is_the_cause_of_excess_co.php), part of the reason is administrative prices here. People here have a higher standard of living, and so the cost of care is shifted to ...
2 comments
Read more