To Isaiah

This speech was given at the Harvard Medical School Class Day, Boston, Massachusetts, May 24, 2012.

I really really like this,

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, “To become a man is to be responsible; to be ashamed of miseries that you did not cause.” I say this: To profess to be a healer, that is, to take the oath you take today, is to be responsible; to be ashamed of miseries that you did not cause. That is a heavy burden, and you did not ask for it. But look at the facts.

In a word—empathy.

I also like this one a lot:

I am not blind to Isaiah’s responsibilities; nor was he. He was embarrassed by his failures; he fought against his addictions, his disorganization, and his temptations. He tried. I know that he tried. To say that the cards were stacked against him is too glib; others might have been able to play his hand better. I know that; and he knew that.

But to ignore Isaiah’s condition not of his choosing, the harvest of racism, the frailty of the safety net, the vulnerability of the poor, is simply wrong. His survival depended not just on proper chemotherapy, but, equally, on a compassionate society.

(Emphasis added.)

I was brought up by parents who worked themselves to the bone every day and have pulled themselves out of extreme poverty in rural China to wealth in the suburbs of America. They have little respect for people who are still poor and believe it to be their (the poor’s) own fault. And that of course has affected how I feel towards the poor (& socialism). Yet, especially this summer, I feel myself changing a little after seeing so many inner city poor come into the hospital so sick and helpless. And how this affects their family. And their dignity. The above quote is a reflection of exactly how I feel. Yes, we do have a choice to work hard and make our lives amazing, but the reality is that people on average are human, and people on average have a hard time rising through the bad hand that’s been dealt them. Yes, we should applaud and support those amazing people who are able to rise above their means, but that doesn't mean we should condemn those average humans, those very human humans, who don’t.

(Note: This is a draft I started last summer around the end of my palliative care fellowship at a community teaching hospital. For some reason, I stopped writing mid-sentence and never published this. I finished the last sentence to the best of my memory and am finally posting this now. I sincerely sincerely wish I took the time to write more last summer. That fellowship was amazing.)