Heroes Not Zombies

Both of these flowers are beautiful.

This is one of many photos I have where I get the impression that the contrasts and differences make everything in the image more beautiful. The purple against the yellow, the elaborate petal shapes against the simpler ones, both the flowers against the rich, green background. I love it.

You could focus in on any single element here and be amazed by it. You could explore any of the single flowers, perhaps try to draw one of them, and you would quickly find yourself relishing it’s uniqueness. But I think it’s the heightened presentation of their differences which makes the case that each is uniquely different.

This, is, absolutely, one of the foundations of my understanding of this world. I worked through four decades as a doctor. My “normal” working day was largely spent with patients one at a time. The entire essence of my work was the one to one relationship between doctor and patient built up over time. Continuity of care was the keynote of all the places where I worked. The expectation was to commit for the duration. Of course, that didn’t mean that each of us was the right person for every single patient. We weren’t. And as needed we would refer patients to colleagues, stand back, pass on the responsibility for a particular person’s care to another who had different skills, different knowledge, a different way of engaging, from our own.

I looked forward to Monday mornings because I knew I would meet a “new” patient, who would tell me a unique story, one I’d never heard before. My day unfurled, one patient at a time, and the full attention engagement with each, had clear starting points, and clear endings, set by them entering the consulting room, then leaving it. If I continued to allow my mind to be filled with the previous patient, I couldn’t be fully present for the one before me now. That rhythm and practice was, I now understand, a kind of meditation practice, moving through a cycle of full attention and fully letting go.

The sequence of patients was always an astonishment. Over the course of a single clinic, with a dozen or two patients, you couldn’t help but be amazed by how different each one was, how unique their story, how singular their experiences of both illnesses and treatments.

I’m sure that’s had an enormous influence on who I am, on how I make sense of this life, and on the creation of my values and beliefs.

I just don’t buy in to the industrialised model of standardisation and processes. There is no standard patient. There is no “mr or miss average”. There is no “ordinary” day. Every moment of every day is new, different and transient.

Every day is special.

YOU are special.