On Spoken Word and TED Talks

Lately I have found myself engrossed in TED talks.  I stumbled upon a talk by spoken-word poet Sarah Kay and have been inspired to start working on my own spoken word pieces.  The process has been totally liberating so far.  Below is a piece that I wrote tonight.  Enjoy!

Stark, Bright, Pressed (9/25/2013)

You only like to read fiction.  That's why I didn't mail the letters to you.

Letter writing is a three-step process.  One: you spill your guts out using nothing but pen, paper, and sheer bravery.

Two: you use your fingers to carefully fold and refold the message.  There is a proper art to letter folding.  It isn't like origami.  Simple shapes do not become complex pressed-fiber structures.  No--instead, the intricate meshwork of words becomes streamlined and plain.  You could hold it in the palm of your hand or in the back of your pocket and it would go unnoticed because no one really cares about small, properly folded pieces of paper.  But you would know the specialness of that small piece of paper and so you would continue to hold it--still in your hand or in your pocket or maybe even over your heart if you had a suitable pocket there.

Three: you send the letter.  This usually involves an envelope, stamps, and a postal company.  It is the shortest task in the letter-writing process for the author.  But don't let that make you feel that it is the easiest.  It is never easy to subject your guts to the cold aluminum hallways of the post.

In the eighth grade I would write letters to my friends and they would write back to me.  And maybe we wrote letters because we were nineties kids who didn't have access to text messaging.  But maybe we wrote because we knew we could leave our guts on those Hilroy notebook pages.  And we knew we could pass them on to our friends and that they would hold those guts so tightly and so carefully in their pockets, folded and perfect.

And we would feel less alone, too.  Few people feel more alone than fourteen year old girls who must stumble in the darkness of adolescence to find the light switch that is womanhood...or at least the idea of it.

Now that I am grown and standing in that light I find it difficult to write letters.  But I wrote letters to you.  Lots of them.  Even though you don't know it.  You reminded me of the beauty of shadows and of the glory of stumbling, and of falling hard for you in the dark.

It is not the darkness of adolescence, but the stark, bright, pressed linen of adulthood that makes cowards of us.  So we don't let our friends carry our thoughts in squares in their pockets anymore.  And we don't send our guts by post.

We hold our own thought squares, stumble in our own light, and hope--

That somewhere, someone just as cowardly as us is stumbling in their own light, waiting to read non-fiction, and wanting to receive our guts in the mail.

...

E

On Hidden Curriculum and Adsorption

I have been struggling to get out of bed since June.

I thought I was overtired for a while, so I started sleeping more.  I was averaging 10 hours of shut-eye a night for the summer but it still wasn't enough.  When I woke up I felt like I needed to go right back to bed.

I have always needed a good amount of rest and time alone to feel well.  But sleeping for over 11 hours and not even stirring when an alarm clock goes off is problematic when you have things to do (and buses to catch).

Fortunately, I have felt infinitely better this week.  In part I think it is because allergy season is nearing its end (finally).  My mind feels clearer and I am glad to be weaning myself off second-generation antihistamines.  However, most of me feeling better stems from other events.

If you know me you may know that I am a highly intuitive person.  In academics this means I easily see patterns between abstract ideas and I am good at understanding the "big picture" behind complex concepts.  In relationships it means I have a great sense of the emotional state of others and how that affects their interactions with me and vice versa.  It is not an easy thing to understand, but the sense I get can be so strong that I have felt the pain of others before I consciously know they are experiencing a certain kind of pain.  My first strong experience of this personality quirk occurred when I was seventeen, and to be honest, it made life difficult and confusing for me because I could not figure out why I felt such a heavy weight on my chest when I did not feel bad.

I am not sure why it did not register with me that I was adsorbing a slurry of emotions from different sources this summer.  But I was.  And it was wearing out my mind and my body.  This week so much of the weight and tiredness I was feeling has left.  I am thankful to be able to rest a bit more easily and to wake up peppy and ready for the day.  But I am mostly thankful because I think the weight lifting means that healing is occurring for at least one person who has been on my mind.

As an intuitive individual I have also become very interested in the hidden curriculum of university, particularly during my medical education.  Hidden curriculum is, essentially, the side-effects of formal education (and normally has a negative connotation).  My first reaction to the term "hidden curriculum" was that it was a good thing--because who doesn't love looking for new, interesting nuances and connections within the formal curriculum?  "Hidden curriculum" sounded like an adventure and a challenge and I loved that.  After reading some lit on the subject I see that the term is being used differently, particularly to describe actions accidentally taught to students by medical preceptors.

I read a shocking example which I will not reiterate here because it was grotesque.  I realized I had already observed an example of hidden curriculum myself, when a fellow medical student told me that when he worked in the hospital "TB" would be written on certain patient files--not because they had tuberculosis, but because they were total b******.  I felt uncomfortable when I heard this story and didn't know how to respond.  He laughed a bit.  I couldn't...but I didn't say anything either.

I think it is important for physicians to hold humanitarian values in high esteem.  In simple terms this means caring for the patient as an individual rather than as the "inflamed knee in room 8."  If I lose my love and care for others my work becomes pointless.

I was reminded this week of the benefits of reflecting on my experiences--often.  In part, that is why I started this blog a few years ago.  It is a conscious commitment to self-reflection that keeps me accountable.  When I reflect on myself and see my own frailties it makes me more sensitive to the frailties within others and allows me to serve them better. 

"The heart of servant leadership is when your deep passion meets the world's deep need."

Don't just pretend to love others.  Really love them.

E.