Where there's life

Back on the mainland for a month with the sun still in my hair and on my skin, wondering why life seems so different now. Noticing the air becoming cooler, the sun seeming further and further away. A Ted Talk on why we should smile at strangers pulled me back into Hawaiian life for the briefest of moments and I found myself wondering if this is the reason why things seem so much closer and warmer there. Acknowledgment of another life, the validation we exist and are here to love one another - this should be pervasive and unavoidable in a hospital. Why then do I find such sadness, such alienation, so many alone and crying, so much pain and isolation? A different Ted Talk I saw a while back talked about the amazing power we have as physicians - as people- to heal one another. Not though any extraordinary training and years of education, while this helps us make medical decisions, but through reaching out to one another. Though listening, loving, supporting and simply acknowledging someone's pain. So often acknowledging a feeling, validating it's authenticity and it's normality is all we need to feel healthy again. We should, as physicians, and as people embrace this power. All the time we see people wishing for super powers, admiring super heroes for their ability to save and rescue when we fail to recognize the super powers within each of us. We are capable of so much love and health, so much compassion and kindness - so extraordinary is this power and yet we fail to embrace it. The aloha spirit, namaste - these principles cross lines of religion, ethnicity, economy - the universal truth, the universal love, the core of all that is good in humanity: Hope.

                                Source: http://uthmag.com/hope-the-answer-to-a-perfect-life/