Living an Intentional Life: This is Water

by Bob Arnold (@rabob)I am not sure what led me to go from thinking about data and evidence in the literature to waxing philosophical recently. It may be that I saw Rufus Wainwright in concert and heard him sing “Hallelujah” with his sister, Lucy Roache Wainwright (Google it). It may be that one of our cardiology fellows died suddenly of unknown reasons and everyone at my hospital is a little fragile. Or that I was just on service and trying to balance the existential realities of sadness and dying with teaching learners and dealing with institutional budget cuts. But when I sat down today and tried to think of what article to review what popped into my mind was David Foster’s Wallace’s 2005 Kenyan commencement address.This is where I go to whenever I am feeling philosophic. I go to it because it, more than anything else I ’ve ever read, summarizes the human experience, what is real about it, and what is hard about it. And so, it reminds me of how hard it is to stay present, be curious, and think about is “just in my head”. It is too long for a blog post (and I hope you’llgo here to read orwatch it). So what I am going to do is give you some illustrative quotes and then a couple of comments.There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says " Morning, boys. How ' s the water? " And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and ...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Tags: arnold david foster wallace The profession Source Type: blogs