Why Wanting Something Does not Amount to Anything

Sometimes people do really selfish things. From what I have observed some people do selfish things a lot. Do you ever wonder why? I do. As a matter of fact I found myself wondering this today.

As I write this I am on a family vacation in Hawaii (actually on Hawaii, the Big Island.) Today we made the over two hour drive to Volcanoes National Park to tour the Kilauea crater. Awesome. On the way back to our condo we stopped off at Punaluu, a beautiful black sand beach that is known for the sea turtles that sun bathe on the sand. Sea turtles are a protected species and the law says that they must be “observed from a distance.” As the turtles are common at Punaluu, signs are posted making this law perfectly clear. Well, perfectly clear to me. This apparently was not perfectly clear to the tourists who arrived before us, as they were all taking turns posing for pictures with two turtles situated on the beach. They were kneeling right next to the turtles, just inches away. I found myself asking, “Why?”

The best answer I can come up with is, “Because they wanted to.” That's it. They knew the law, knew the turtles were protected, but in that moment what mattered more was that they wanted to be near turtles and wanted that photograph. When push came to shove what they desired, what they wanted, was all that mattered.

It is easy to wag our fingers and criticize these people for the buffoons they were at that moment, but I think this character flaw is more widespread then we care to admit. How often do we ignore what is right or best because we don't feel like it, or because we just want to do things our own way?

We want time to ourselves, so we blow off our children. We have had a hard week and we want rest, so we skip church. We want to pay less in taxes, so we fudge a little on business expenses. We want to see a movie because it's popular, so we ignore the fact that the content is immoral and objectionable. We want...

Seems like wanting something is not a very good way to decide how to act. Just ask a turtle.

Like this post? Please share it with friends. You can make sure you never miss a post by signing up to receive posts by email, just click the link in the upper right.

The One Thing Every Girl Needs

Now that Christmas has passed, we can all be grateful that we will not have to hear "Santa Baby" for another 11 months. Not only is the song incredibly annoying, it is incredibly false. None of the items in the song are what girls need. A recent afternoon in my office made this perfectly clear-

Two 14 year old girls came in with their moms. Both had severe emotional issues and were in need of psychiatric help, and both were from Christian homes. They also shared something else- a father who wasn't involved.

One was a product of a divorced home. The other's parents were still married, dad just didn't talk. I asked the girl if she talked to her dad, and she replied, “He doesn't talk much, I have just learned to accept it.”

How sad. Even among avowed family men, too many dads think their responsibility to the family is to provide materially. That's it. As long as they don't cheat, holler or beat anybody, they are doing their job. If they drive the family car to church on Sunday, then they have exceeded expectations and earned extra daddy points.

Yet they haven't. Girls need a dad who is always available and engaged, even when they grow up. They need to know that they have a man who loves them unconditionally, who will be there for them no matter what, no matter when. The only way to foster that belief is by being there as they grow up, no matter what and no matter when. It is not always easy and it seldom convenient, but there is nothing more important.

Why There is No Such Thing as a Private Life

How would we act if we knew that someone was watching and recording everything we said and did? News Flash- they might be!

I recently read an article by Nisha Chittal at medium.com in which she asked people to not live tweet overheard conversations. The author cites recently well-known instances of people live tweeting the bad behavior of others and concludes by writing “what I’m saying is this: let’s put an end to the trend of humiliating people by live tweeting their conversations. Let’s leave people in peace to go about their business without threat of being shamed on Twitter “

She makes a valid point. It got me thinking about the number of times I have misbehaved “anonymously” in public and how I would have felt if my misbehavior had been documented and shared. Answer- terrible. (Want an example? Yeah, I know you do! Once I completely lost my cool at the return counter of an electronics store. I went to the store a week after Christmas to return an item and the return line was over 50 yards long. I couldn't wait that long so I came back a few weeks later to discover that I was now outside the return window for that item. Let's just day I did not hide my anger well at all, to the point where I was "encouraged" to leave.)

She makes another point in her article that hit home even more for me. One of the examples she mentions about someone's private conversation being tweeted was a conversation by Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA. Of Hayden she writes- “Hayden is a public figure, and thus his conversations — especially those with reporters — become newsworthy because of who he is. But for everyone else, to have your private conversations unknowingly live-tweeted...is the end of privacy as we know it” She implies that government officials and public figures should have lower expectations of privacy than the rest of us.

Before we nod our heads and agree with her on this point, we who are of faith should remember what the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth- “We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” 2 Cor 5:20 (niv).

Dang it! We're not off the hook after all! In a sense we are high ranking government officials, it is just that the king we serve and represent is God! We can argue, as the author does, that people should not be watching and documenting our every move and word, but the truth is they are. When we proclaim our faith, when we declare our allegiance to the kingdom of God, we invite scrutiny.

My blow up at the return counter was a significant moment in my life. I walked out realizing that my reputation and standing as a Christian had been potentially damaged over a $50 item. Although my behavior occurred before the era of YouTube and Twitter, the world was watching then, and it still is.

And yet, my ultimate goal is not to live and act better because people are watching, or listening or recording on their smart phone. My goal is to live and act better because that is who I am, to be the type of person who does not need to worry about who is watching me, because I am living like the ambassador I am every day.

If you enjoy this post and the blog, help contribute to its success by sharing it with your friends. Simply click one of the buttons below. You can make sure you never miss a post by signing up to receive future posts via email, click on the link below my photo on the right.

Good-bye JG. I will miss you.

I said good-bye to JG today. I have been his doctor for over 15 years. In that time he has had prostate cancer, bladder cancer, multiple heart attacks, diabetes, acid reflux, joint pain and multiple episodes of heart failure. He never complained about his health, although we talked a lot about his wife's conditions. She died a little over a year ago from lung cancer. She was much younger than he, and it hit him hard.

I am not sure if doctors are supposed to have favorite patients, but he is one of mine.

He loves golf, and loves talking about it. Several years ago I went alone to a local course to play and ran into him. We ended up playing 18 holes together. I learned a lot about him, his values, and his “expansive” vocabulary. Ever since then he repeatedly talked about how far I could hit the ball, graciously overlooking the fact that he beat me handily!

He has old school values. Once he quietly told me about a time many years ago when the daughter of a close friend physically was mistreated by a man. He and a few other friends went and found the young man and proceeded to educate him about his behavior in a manner that would have landed them in jail today. It was how it was done back then, how friends looked out for each other. He was fiercely loyal like that.

I visited him at home today to talk about his health and living circumstances. Life has caught up with him to the point where he can no longer live alone. He will be moving in with family out of state. We spoke for several minutes and then I got up to leave. It takes significant effort for him to stand, but he did, and gave me a long hug and told me he loved me. As I left, he followed me outside to watch me go, leaning against his car as I drove away.

I will not forget him and believe that the image of him watching me leave will linger for some time. I am so grateful for the trust he placed in me, for the love, affection and friendship we shared over the years. I am again reminded of the truth that medicine is first and foremost about developing healing relationships and of how much I would be missing if my job became about medications, conditions and diseases instead of people.

Good-bye JG. Here's praying we will see one another again.

A Patient gets what She Deserved... she had it Coming to Her!

Being a doctor can be hard, and giving patients what they deserve can be even harder. Patients can be needy, demanding, hard to deal with and harder to please. We have many more patients than we do patience. How we respond under stress says a lot about us.

Long hours, job pressures and difficulty communicating can stretch doctors to the breaking point, especially doctors in training. Work hours for doctors in their years of specialty training are pretty intense. When I was a resident physician, it was common to spend over 100 hours a week at the hospital. We were “on call” every 4th night, and call days typically ran from 7 am until at least 5 PM the following day. On that day after a call night, most residents passionately worked toward a single goal- getting done with their work and going home to bed.

This explains the intern's response when, as a senior resident, I paged him to discuss the care of a woman who he had admitted the night before. As the senior resident it was my job to oversee all of the patients cared for by the hospital team. It was 4 Pm, and I had just finished reviewing the admission notes for the elderly woman who he had admitted to a bed on the medical floor. In the intern's notes he had listed hyponatremia (low sodium in the blood) as one of the patient's diagnoses. Typically this notation would have been followed the cause if known, or if unknown possible causes and the tests ordered to identify the cause. Instead his explanation of the low sodium was simply- “cause unknown.” Nothing more was written.

While he may not have known the cause at the moment he wrote the note, a list of possible causes was available in any reference book, and it includes a number of potentially serious conditions.

Perturbed at the lack of thoroughness on his part I got him on the phone. I remember the conversation vividly.

“Hey Scott, what's with this “cause unknown' garbage in your note?” I asked with my trademark tact.

“I didn't know what the cause was!” was his reply.

“So look it up!” I said

"Okay, I'll do it tomorrow."

"No, you will do it now."

"But, I am post call!'

"Not my problem. This woman is in our hospital and deserves the very best medical care. If that means you stay until 10 o'clock, then you stay until 10 o'clock. We don't cut corners!"

"Fine!" he bellowed as he hung up. Boy was he mad.

At the end of the year at the graduation ceremony he sought me out. He shook my hand and said with a smile, "Thank you for making me good." I still get a warm feeling inside remembering the moment. I am still a demanding teacher, harder on students and even harder on myself. People deserve our best effort.

Doing our best and giving our all is a value that seems to be vanishing from society, even from the medical profession. I pray it will always remain a part of my practice.