The good inherent in truth is worth fighting for
Sam: “..folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.”
Frodo : “What are we holding onto, Sam?”
Sam : “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”
(With gratitude, “Lord of the Rings”)
It was about a year ago when we all collectively plunged into an “alternate universe” where everything familiar changed drastically – changed so completely that, about the half-way mark, we finally realized there was no going “back” to familiar routines.
Pressing forward now, we see that what remains is of true value, those good things that we have held on to for dear life. Chief of which are the cherished memories of lives lost and the present shared moments with family and friends. No matter the separated time or space, we are connected forever heart-to-heart. Love is the good worth fighting for.
Scenes of suffering have given way to oases of hope and gratitude.
Hospitals and clinics have been “ground zero” for pain this past year, with healthcare workers bearing the brunt of it. “Getting through one more day,” while expecting the next day would be the same, was the thinnest of hopes.
But oh my! The two stories below describe a new atmosphere of hope for healthcare workers, hope that comes from the joy of giving compassion and expectation of better days ahead, trusting good to overcome the pain. It is hard to imagine a more deserving group of front-line workers to be filled with this selfless joy. “They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.” Aren’t we grateful they did?
Patients suffering from COVID alone in hospital, separated from family, seemed so very wrong to Dr. Ben Moor at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth. “We put up with it for 10 months because we had to. But all of the sudden we don’t have to. We don’t have to just get in and out and do the medical thing.”
He started seeing a few patients at first — ones that weren’t even his — before and after his shifts. He would sit with them, give them a hand to squeeze, and exchange small talk. He would make sure they were comfortable and fill the empty void in the room. Later, he would reach out to their families, who are unable to visit, and update them on their loved one’s status. “There’s something important just about being there.” As more hospital workers got vaccinated, that’s when he thought “the comfort posse” could be bigger and more organized. According to family members, these are ”guardian angels.”
The people giving the shots are seeing hope and it’s contagious.
The happiest place in medicine right now is a basketball arena in New Mexico. Or maybe it’s the parking lot of a baseball stadium in Los Angeles, or a Six Flags in Maryland, or a shopping mall in South Dakota. The happiest place in medicine is anywhere there is vaccine, and the happiest people in medicine are the ones plunging it into the arms of strangers. For health-care workers, the opportunity to administer the vaccine has become its own reward: Giving hope to others has given them hope, too.
“It’s a joy to all of us,” says Akosua “Nana” Poku, a Kaiser Permanente nurse vaccinating people in Northern Virginia. “I don’t think I’ve ever had an experience in my career that has felt so promising and so fulfilling,” says Christina O’Connell, a clinic director at the University of New Mexico.
Like a long dark night dawning into the bright light of day, the arrival of the vaccine has transformed the grim pop-up clinics of the pandemic into gratitude factories.
“May It Be” – by Enya for Lord of the Rings
Believe and you will find your way…
A promise lives within you now.
