Looking Around

I've been musing lately. I'm musing because the world looks a little different to me right now than it ever has before. Encountering my patients and their families has changed me. It's expanded me.


When I go to be with my patients, I'm meeting their humanity in a very open, revealing, and vulnerable way. When you have a terminal diagnosis, it tends to motivate you to strip away a lot of the fluff, the veneer, and the barriers you have lived with your entire life. When you can no longer do many of the things you have been doing every day for your whole life, and many of the people you knew and loved are already gone, what's left?


My patients bring their authentic selves to me because their basic self is all that's left.


Sharing that with them is nothing short of a humbling honor.


That sort of interaction with another human being changes me.


It's made me realize that we all have far more in common than we think. At our innermost core, we are essentially the same, yet each individual retains a unique essence.


Realizing this has changed the way I move through a day. I cannot drive through traffic without wondering about the people in every car around me. They are no longer part of the busy backdrop of every day life. Every other driver on the road has a story. They have needs. Concerns. Passions. Vulnerabilities. Joys.


I want to know them all. I want to give each of them a space and time to be heard and validated.


I cannot drive past a cemetery now without perceiving each headstone as a sparkling gem. Each one represents a life, a loved one. Each headstone represents someone who was once a newborn baby, a wondering toddler, a questioning teenager, a working adult, a reflecting elder.


And as I wonder about each beautiful life who has ever walked this earth, I have to wonder if I am the only one musing this way. Surely not. I find it unlikely that I am the only one reflecting on the enormity and beauty of the human experience in this way.


So now I want to know about you. I would be humbled and honored if you would share with me your musings about this life and the people living it with us.


"You matter because you are."
-Dame Cicely Saunders