Heart and Head...

I just finished (along with a friend) editing a small write up which my father wrote. He was asked to write some memories of his time in a parish he pastored in mid-1980’s. Being in his late 80’s of age now, 89 to be precise, he is losing some of his memory. But he managed to put down a few key highlights of his time there. Reading through that, one thing became clear. Towards the latter part of his life, about 30 odd years after he left the place, it is the memory of “relationships he cherished” that remains most prominent in his mind. I do know that he had innovated much during his time there, but in his memoirs, all what he has done, only find a passing mention.

We were recently sitting with a young boy and his family who have been with us for more than 2 months. He went through more than 2 weeks of ventilator support, suffered multiple cardio respiratory arrests, and almost of month of rehab and was going home. In his broken Hindi, (they are more comfortable in Bhojpuri) the father was telling us, we will come back. We will come to meet you all. You have become a second family to us, and part of our lives.

William Osler, a pioneer in Medicine wrote many decades back - "The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with potions and powders, but with the exercise of an influence of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the wicked, of the wise upon the foolish. To you, as the trusted family counsellor, the father will come with his anxieties, the mother with her hidden grief, the daughter with her trials, and the son with his follies. Fully one-third of the work you do will be entered in other books than yours."

As I look back and reflect on my own engagement, I am left with many memories of contexts and situations where I walked out of “relationally relating” to “professionally relating”. Where I left the heart and practised by the head. In many of these contexts and situations, I felt I had to keep my professional relationships above other relationships or interests (Head above heart)! Even today, many a times in our engagement in the clinical work, professional engagement supersedes relational engagement. This is all the more in the current context, where “verbal violence” and “Culturally driven violent responses” are part of everyday clinical care, and it is easy to be professionally relating than otherwise.

Years back, as young idealist, I remember talking to one I felt was wiser than me, about the dream of a marriage of professionalism and care (Head and heart). Holding professionalism and relationships together, and build a care context where this is modelled! He told me “give up that dream it can never be done!”. Years down the line, I am more convinced that can be done and that it has to be done! If at the end of your life, all what you will be left with are going to be memories of relationships, why should I not focus on what I will be left with than what I might lose….

And is this not what our Master modelled? And expects us to follow…. A head which planned the redemption of the marred creation, and heart which gave up his life for this greater purpose, through restoring lost relationships….

How shall then I live today – in my professional relationships….?