What Are We Doing?

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On this day in 2013, Karl Pierson walked into my high school with a shotgun. When approached by classmate Claire Davis, who asked, “Oh my gosh, Karl, what are you doing?” he shot her. She died 8 days later.

At her memorial on New Year’s Day, 2014, her dad Michael Davis said:

“We can all realize Claire’s last words in our own lives by asking ourselves, in those times when we are less than loving, ‘Gosh, what am I doing?’ … Unchecked anger and rage can lead to hatred, and unchecked hatred can lead to tragedy, blindness and a loss of humanity. The last thing Desiree and I would want is to perpetuate this anger and rage and hatred in connection with Claire. Claire would also not want this.”

Follow the link to read about the light that was Claire, who shone for 17 short years, and how she brightened the lives she touched.

I ran around all day today, forgetting this anniversary. I got to see a friend for coffee and talk leadership, culture, and honest appreciation. I got to run errands, buy things, enjoy an excellent salad while finishing romance audiobook #62, pick up Daughter from school, cook dinner, and now sit at my laptop to reflect and share my thoughts. Claire will never get to do these things, the things I take for granted.

She will never again sit in traffic, hearing people honking loudly in frustrated powerlessness. She will never now witness people actually getting out of their cars to confront each other on the street when one of them makes a wrong turn. She is not here to see first hand the rapid demise of her fellow humans, sliding ever faster and forcefully into grief, rage, violence, and hatred.

Seriously, what are we doing? Is everybody just walking around with a giant can of gasoline, looking to douse random embers and light wildfires, just to watch them burn? What are we feeling that makes us behave like (believe?) everybody we meet is the enemy? I am convinced that people who lash out, even in the most violent ways, are not fundamentally evil. I think we generally treat one another pretty well when we feel good ourselves. For so many, though, whose reasons for feeling pretty terrible are cumulative and compounding right now, I can see how unregulated negative emotions explode at any provocation. I can validate the emotion without condoning destructive behavior, and hold folks accountable to natural consequences. And let’s be clear, all of us do this sometimes, to varying degrees, under stress. Hopefully we can recognize in time to repair, in most cases.

Better to prevent, though–illness, disease, relationship rupture, and social destruction alike.

For myself, I commit to practicing, however imperfectly, one deep breath at a time. Before speaking. Before honking. Before entering a patient room. Before replying to an email or social media post. Before snark. I will go to bed earlier, drink less coffee, eat more plants. I will move my body regularly. I will look for stories of people helping each other and share them generously. I will practice gratitude and presence, humility and curiosity. And I will connect deeply and unabashedly with the people who do the same, so we may hold one another up.

We can ask, and then act, when we answer the question, “What would LOVE do?”

And maybe let some music lift us, too. “Forever Young” by The Tenors helps me tonight.

Whose BEAST Are You?

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I feel protective. My friend has embarked on a necessary lawsuit to address wrongs done to her by someone she trusted. Generally I shun litigation as a means of conflict resolution, and I understand that in some cases it is the best path to justice. My friend shares this ethos, and has so chosen a like-minded lawyer. Her opponent has a very different mindset, one of fierce aggression and, sadly, meanness. In talking with Friend, we both feel her vulnerability, the risk of getting steamrolled in her efforts to be fair and equanimatous, even in the face of intense acrimony. She wonders if her lawyer (and she herself, maybe?) can withstand the vitriol flung their way without 1) returning in kind and/or 2) acquiescing simply to get through.

Over breakfast, I tried to articulate what she needed in her lawyer, and wrote it to her later in an email, so she would have it to mull over and expound on. What follows below is a lightly edited version of my message to her, and some reflections of my own after writing it. I love how talking and writing bring me so quickly and effectively to new insights and syntheses of ideas, core values, and resolutions. Onward, my friends!

I get (and validate!) that you sought a lawyer who is “not a fighter”… and you also need an effective advocate. Not adversarial for sure, but assertive and strong.

Like a quiet, confident alpha—tall and straight, with commanding posture–someone who knows they can own the opponent if they want to, but feels secure enough to not need to flaunt it.

So there is a degree of BADASSERY required here too:  You need someone SMART, and SHARP.

Looking for a metaphor here… Not sure why I gravitate toward vehicles—Bullet train? Mack truck? Snowplow? Maybe because the process is necessarily movement, transportation is required, and there is a destination, the path to which presents multiple and formidable barriers?

The BEAST: The US presidential Cadillac—that is your ideal ride to the other side of the lawsuit (over the bridge? Through the morass?)!

Big, black, heavy, SOLID.  GROUNDED and MOBILE at the same time.

Heavily armored–DEFENDED and SAFE, but not weaponized (I think).

Moves with purpose and agenda, no wasted fuel or frivolous trips.

People see it coming and move out of the way with respect.

And if attacked, the cargo–you and your interests–are protected.

Can plow through traffic if absolutely necessary, but only does so as a last resort:

Move or I will move you, make no mistake.

Try me.

Strong back, soft front. Steel spine. Claws and horns only when needed.

Strong and effective, non-adversarial, yet energized advocate. I’m thinking parent, friend, sibling, physician, adult child of aging parent, activist.

BEAST. I can be yours if needed, count on it.

The Sh*t Sandwich

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“I have realized that I really enjoy learning about ***, but I don’t necessarily like studying it and being tested on it.”

And there it is. My mama pride swells at this concise, distilled insight of self-awareness that Son shared with me, about 6 weeks into college. So you really like ***. How much might you be willing to work/tolerate/sacrifice to stick with it? Will you keep *** as a hobby/interest, or can you see yourself making a career out of it? No rush to figure it out! And how cool to know there is a distinction to make?

How much are we willing to give for something we really want? Are we willing to eat the particular flavor of shit sandwich (a la Mark Manson–check out his blog and books!) that’s inevitably served on the path to our goal?

Sometimes we don’t even have to know what we want; clarity about what we don’t want–shit sandwiches we will not eat–is enough to set us on the right path for each of us. Some shit sandwiches I have rejected:

Three Dimentional Calculus and Vector Analysis: Freshman year in college, one problem on the final exam of this class took up 8 pages in the exam book. And why did I have to know it? How did the reasoning help me in life? No more math for me, thank you. I left engineering the following quarter.

Physical Chemistry: Having already gotten a C in physics (which happens when you fail the second midterm because you start dating your husband), empowered with an aversion to math, and knowing already that life is too short for this kind of suffering, I rejected chemistry and embraced biology as a major.

5:30am Rounds: General surgery, my first ever clinical rotation. My intern, the wonderful Gopal Kowdley whom I love to this day, looked at me and said, “You’re tempted, I can tell.” But OMG surgery–the egos, the bombast, the misogyny–AND getting up in the dark every day, forever? Nope.

Lifelong call: I love reading echocardiograms–ultrasounds of the heart, beating in real time. Second year of residency is when internists apply for subspecialty fellowships. That year my cardiology fellow stood right next to me at 10pm, monitoring a dying patient in the cardiac ICU. He had a little girl at home who missed her dad. Later that year, the attending cardiologist, my amazing teacher, sat across from me at the nurses station, in the middle of the night, reviewing the EKG of a lady with a likely heart attack. He had grandchildren already. He had to get up in the dark–in the middle of the night. No cardiology fellowship for me!

I live in Chicago when my home is Colorado. Wut? But Husband is from here, we trained here, and we both found jobs here that fulfill us and allow us to make a difference in people’s lives. WINNER! Love makes us do crazy things, like eat this. huge. shit sandwich. Without hesitation, no matter how it tastes. Every day. For 20+ years.

Through the long hallways of my career, at each door has stood a waiter offering some shit sandwich for me to taste in order to get through. I closed some doors, and walked through others. I wrote last month that I regret none of the work thresholds I’ve crossed to date. Since the beginning, nothing has been be-all, end-all. If I hadn’t gotten into med school the first time I’d have decided to try again or try something else. I committed to finish an internal medicine residency and pay back my student loans; those doors swung heavily one way. Other than that, I have always had the privilege of myriad opportunities to use my skills and credentials in new and interesting ways if I wanted to–generalists are needed everywhere. But the older I get, the more selective I am about what shit sandwiches I’m willing to eat. I think that’s normal.

As Liz Gilbert interprets Manson in her book, Big Magic: “So the question is not so much ‘What are you passionate about?’ The question is ‘What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work?’”

So ONWARD, I say to Son. Keep learning about yourself and the world. Try out different things, taste a little of everything as long as you’re sure it’s not toxic. Carve out your space. I am confident you will find your favorite flavor of shit sandwich.