Monthly Archives: November 2016

On Thanksgiving–Meh

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NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 24

To Patients Who Feel Lukewarm About Thanksgiving:

I’m with ya.

Not that I have anything against Thanksgiving…  I just have difficulty pouring forth a great gush of gratitude every fourth Thursday of November for a national holiday.  I thought this week it was just because of the tensions of the year, but looking back, I’ve never really loved this day.  I feel sheepish to write it, like people will think less of me.  Then again, something tells me I might not be the only one?

Yesterday I shared the most eloquent treatise on gratitude I have ever read, and I believe every word.  I try to live the premise every day—to pay attention and feel gratitude at the deepest cosmic level, connected to everything in the universe.  I marvel every day at all that I have, all that I am privileged to witness and do—to live this life, so full of learning and connection.  Today I’m supposed to summon and articulate all that moves me to thankfulness…  Why do I resist?

I imagine many would read this and think, “Wow, she is so ungrateful,” or maybe un-American?  I think most people who know me would disagree.  And those who know and love me best would hold the space with me to explore the curiosity of it all, without judging me for it or trying to ‘fix’ it.  And I’m ever so grateful for them, because I’m not sure it’s something that needs to be ‘fixed.’

I think it’s okay to feel not particularly grateful today, no more than any other day.  I also think it’s okay to feel especially grateful on this day, significantly more than any other day.  What’s not okay—what I see causing so many people to suffer—is when we shame others for thinking and feeling differently from us.  We physicians do this more than we realize, I think.  When patients don’t seem to take blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, or flu as seriously as we do, we can get very judgmental.  When they have different ideas about what will make them better (natural supplements, unusual diets, acupuncture, shamanic journeying, homeopathy), we can become positively hostile.  This is rarely helpful.

So if you, like me, are not particularly into Thanksgiving, and/or if you don’t subscribe to all conventional wisdom around certain things medical, I will try to withhold judgment.  I am indeed grateful for the chance to gather and enjoy one another’s company this week.  I don’t advertise my apathy for the holiday, as that would diminish others’ joy—and that would be antithetical to my core values.  I also appreciate the freedom to celebrate modestly rather than exuberantly.  I respect your right to choose therapies according to your values and beliefs, as long as your choices do not harm others.

I’ll continue to explore my relative indifference toward Thanksgiving.  Thank you for not trying to make me feel bad for it.

On Experiencing and Expressing Gratitude

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NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 23

To Patients Seeking Words for Gratitude:

I found them!

As we head to gatherings tomorrow and seek words to honor and express the occasion, I’m particularly grateful today to see the post below by David Whyte.  Where, you ask?  Why on Facebook, of course!  Back tomorrow with my own original words.  Until then, peace and gratitude to you all!

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GRATITUDE

is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a-priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are miraculously, part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

To see the full miraculous essentiality of the color blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully, the beauty of a daughter’s face across the table, of a son’s outline against the mountains, is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank him. To sit among friends and strangers, hearing many voices, strange opinions; to intuit even stranger inner lives beneath calm surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world, to be a someone amongst all other someones, and therefore to make a conversation without saying a word, is to deepen our sense of presence and therefore our natural sense of thankfulness that everything happens both with us and without us, that we are participants and witness all at once.

Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s strange world while making our own world without will or effort, this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege.

Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets and fully beholds all other presences. Being unappreciative, feeling distant, might mean we are simply not paying attention.

…

© 2015 David Whyte
from ‘GRATITUDE’
In CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press 2015

On What Helps

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NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 22

To Patients Preparing for Uncomfortable Holidays:

Seek what helps.

What did I write recently about staying off of Facebook and minimizing my social media exchanges?  How fascinating, look what I just did—spent the last two hours on Facebook!  I also write about trying, falling down, and trying again…  So this is me both falling down (in my attempt to stay off) and trying again (to engage meaningfully).

The holidays are coming, yay!  …And, not so yay!  The conversations we have with friends and family in the next 6 weeks or so have enormous potential—for division as well as connection.  Personally, I feel optimistic.  I plan to evoke my core values of open-mindedness, empathy, and integrity.  I want to look back on the gatherings with gratitude and deeper connection.  So today I share with you all the things I have read (today—see?  I endure Facebook for your benefit! teeheehee) that have helped me.  These pieces validate, challenge, reassure, alarm, question and motivate me to Hold the Space, Stay on the Path, and Seek Love.  Please share yours, also!

A fellow physician’s acknowledgement of the humanness of bias, its potential for harm in caring for patients, and a reminder for self-awareness and –management.

Posts by Michelle at The Green Study, reminding us that internal conflict is normal in the face of world events such as ours, with concrete suggestions for actions that align with core values:  “We cannot strengthen our character unless it is tested. We cannot defend our freedoms unless they are threatened. We cannot become better writers or artists or humans unless we have obstacles to overcome.”

An article from The Guardian that points me to reputable sources of alternate points of view, so I may understand better.

A call out from the Wall Street Journal—to help me own my shit before I call out others on theirs.

A gentle message from fellow blogger John Pavlovitz: “Friend, however you choose to navigate these holidays, know that it’s the right way. Give yourself permission to pretend or confront or abstain as you need to, and forgive yourself later if you decide you chose poorly. You’re probably going to get it wrong or at least feel like you did.

“But remember too, to save a little of that mercy for those who sit across the table from you or those who choose not to. They’ll be doing the best they can too.”

And finally, the Prayer of Maimonides, the twelfth century physician and philosopher:

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These holidays, wish me persistence and ‘stubborn gladness,’ as Liz Gilbert calls it.  I wish you all the same!