This post is part of a series that will explore what prominent thinkers can teach us about today’s public multiversity, the modern university with its many colleges, departments, and other administrative units that play multiple functions and roles in our society.
Always such provocative thinking from Lee. In my own quest for what I would call "biologic truth" in medicine, I find excitement when I read articles that could turn around a person's illness, or even better, prevent the development of a disease that could be lethal. For me, the pursuit of truth is "chained" to my need to share it. This is, however, met with frustration as a result of others not seeing or understanding the ramifications of "discovery" that brings matters of biology into an integrative sphere.
I also do not see the schizm between teacher ⇆ student since in our quest for understanding we who seek to understand quickly realize how much the so-called student informs the teacher. The roles are switched, as the bidirectional arrow above is meant to indicate. This is voiced in the expression "We teach what we need to learn" but also in "We learn what we need to teach." This has been my experience almost all of my life, but sadly, in honest arrogance, I say that those of us who feel this way are in the pathetic minority with a ratio of about 1 in a 100, or maybe a little higher. If there is a bell-shaped curve for this, then I conclude that I am in the far right in a group of < 5%.
Let me expand on the adjective "excitement." Lee talks about wonder, and for sure it is wonder full. But the excitement is in the realm of a quest to solve, to see the whole or rest of the story (a la Paul Harvey) and it is for sure a passion that becomes an addiction because of the cerebral high it brings. And when, in the health sciences you see such a quest turn a dismal situation into a happy one, it is a high that is up there in the heavens. For me, those moments sustain me through the rainy days of discouragement and/or despair. Without those periodic revealing sunsets or sunrises, physician burnout is likely. I can grasp to some extent what Lee says about passion and "control" but personally, that control equates with getting closer to the truth, and not simply my own ideas of the truth, but from a pragmatic and realistic point of view the truth that "works" to change a human life. If you wish to read one story that will bring this home, then spend ten minutes and read this article by Bob Kotler MD and a chance encounter that saved his child's life: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y6kdvs52t4unz1i/Kotler%2004%20Young%20Life%20is%20Saved.pdf?dl=0
Also, in speaking of passion, the Greeks did not believe in post-mortem eulogies. They asked but one question when a person died: "Did they live their life with passion?"
So I do not see this distinction of wonder vs. passion; for me they are peas in the same pod.
Lee's article is pregnant with topics that could be exciting and revealing for a weekend retreat. One such topic is reflection on our interiority. This brings to mind a quote I have used a lot more in the last few years:
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?
Rabbi Hillel - (30 BC-9AD)
As I near the end of my life I find wonder joined with disappointment at how few people look at how their actions towards others, and towards nature, reflects what they are. I see, painfully, at how glib the lives of the many are and how few truly work towards the cultivation of a life of real friendship--with another person or with the creation. I see civilization and humankind as contradictions and hypocrisy focused on "me" as becoming the norm. I see H. sapiens as an endangered species spiralling down rather than evolving. Our world has become a dog-eat-dog world. I have to "laugh" at two quotes which typifies the harsh reality of what our lives have become rather than the LUV (Legacy, Unity, Vision) that I had hoped for:
When Charlie Chaplin lay on his deathbed a reporter asked him: "Mr. Chaplin, you have done just about everything. Statesman, actor, director, film maker. Can you share with us, at this crossroad in your life, what you consider to be life's main lesson?"
Chaplin replied, with a hint of a smile on his face: "In the end, it's all a gag."
"There were Indians to the North of me, and Indians to the West of me, and Indians to the South as well as the East of me. What did I do? I became an Indian." Bernie Strum as told to his son Stephen.
So, despite my love of Lee's writings, and his brilliance, I take some deference to what I would consider his "academic" views as opposed to what I have seen in my "real-world experience."
Funny, but not surprising, this same distinction haunts today's world of medicine. What you read in the peer-reviewed literature in medicine reflects the academic world, which commonly is a far cry from what is experience in the front line trenches of the real world.
Always such provocative thinking from Lee. In my own quest for what I would call "biologic truth" in medicine, I find excitement when I read articles that could turn around a person's illness, or even better, prevent the development of a disease that could be lethal. For me, the pursuit of truth is "chained" to my need to share it. This is, however, met with frustration as a result of others not seeing or understanding the ramifications of "discovery" that brings matters of biology into an integrative sphere.
I also do not see the schizm between teacher ⇆ student since in our quest for understanding we who seek to understand quickly realize how much the so-called student informs the teacher. The roles are switched, as the bidirectional arrow above is meant to indicate. This is voiced in the expression "We teach what we need to learn" but also in "We learn what we need to teach." This has been my experience almost all of my life, but sadly, in honest arrogance, I say that those of us who feel this way are in the pathetic minority with a ratio of about 1 in a 100, or maybe a little higher. If there is a bell-shaped curve for this, then I conclude that I am in the far right in a group of < 5%.
Let me expand on the adjective "excitement." Lee talks about wonder, and for sure it is wonder full. But the excitement is in the realm of a quest to solve, to see the whole or rest of the story (a la Paul Harvey) and it is for sure a passion that becomes an addiction because of the cerebral high it brings. And when, in the health sciences you see such a quest turn a dismal situation into a happy one, it is a high that is up there in the heavens. For me, those moments sustain me through the rainy days of discouragement and/or despair. Without those periodic revealing sunsets or sunrises, physician burnout is likely. I can grasp to some extent what Lee says about passion and "control" but personally, that control equates with getting closer to the truth, and not simply my own ideas of the truth, but from a pragmatic and realistic point of view the truth that "works" to change a human life. If you wish to read one story that will bring this home, then spend ten minutes and read this article by Bob Kotler MD and a chance encounter that saved his child's life: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y6kdvs52t4unz1i/Kotler%2004%20Young%20Life%20is%20Saved.pdf?dl=0
Also, in speaking of passion, the Greeks did not believe in post-mortem eulogies. They asked but one question when a person died: "Did they live their life with passion?"
So I do not see this distinction of wonder vs. passion; for me they are peas in the same pod.
Lee's article is pregnant with topics that could be exciting and revealing for a weekend retreat. One such topic is reflection on our interiority. This brings to mind a quote I have used a lot more in the last few years:
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?
Rabbi Hillel - (30 BC-9AD)
As I near the end of my life I find wonder joined with disappointment at how few people look at how their actions towards others, and towards nature, reflects what they are. I see, painfully, at how glib the lives of the many are and how few truly work towards the cultivation of a life of real friendship--with another person or with the creation. I see civilization and humankind as contradictions and hypocrisy focused on "me" as becoming the norm. I see H. sapiens as an endangered species spiralling down rather than evolving. Our world has become a dog-eat-dog world. I have to "laugh" at two quotes which typifies the harsh reality of what our lives have become rather than the LUV (Legacy, Unity, Vision) that I had hoped for:
When Charlie Chaplin lay on his deathbed a reporter asked him: "Mr. Chaplin, you have done just about everything. Statesman, actor, director, film maker. Can you share with us, at this crossroad in your life, what you consider to be life's main lesson?"
Chaplin replied, with a hint of a smile on his face: "In the end, it's all a gag."
"There were Indians to the North of me, and Indians to the West of me, and Indians to the South as well as the East of me. What did I do? I became an Indian." Bernie Strum as told to his son Stephen.
So, despite my love of Lee's writings, and his brilliance, I take some deference to what I would consider his "academic" views as opposed to what I have seen in my "real-world experience."
Funny, but not surprising, this same distinction haunts today's world of medicine. What you read in the peer-reviewed literature in medicine reflects the academic world, which commonly is a far cry from what is experience in the front line trenches of the real world.