Remember Where You Once Were

When my little brother Jonathan was 3 years old, he loved to wake me up on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons with him.  Most of the time he wanted to watch “Dora the Explorer”, because he could “practice” his Spanish with me, but one particular morning we watched Babar the King instead.  The main character in the cartoon is Babar an elephant King.  While we were watching the cartoon, something was said about Babar’s “throne”, and Jonathan, the curious 3 year old, looked at me and said, “What’s a throne, Jessie?” And so I told him, “it is a chair that a King or Queen sits on.”  He nodded with understanding, and was then once again eyes glued to the TV.  Just a few weeks later, Jonathan and I were once again watching TV, and once again the word throne was used.  This time, out of curiosity, I said, “Hey Jon, do you know what a throne is?” and he repeated verbatim my former definition of the word.  I then asked, “Who told you that?  Do you remember where you learned that word?”  I was positively sure he would remember, as it was just a short while in between, but he shrugged and said, “I just know it.”

As children and even young adults, when the world is so new, our brains just soak up everything.  Learning our new (native) language and becoming fluent in it in just a matter of a few years… everyday is a brand new learning experience, but most of the time we’re unaware that we are even learning.  We just "know it."  I think this learning style continues, long after we’ve mastered a grand vocabulary… I think even as adults, some of the most profound learning experiences are (unfortunately) learned passively…

Let me try to explain. 

We often live this day to day thing called life.  Getting up in the morning. Drinking coffee. Rushing to work. Sleepily trying to survive at work. Rushing home. Making dinner. Cleaning the house. Running errands. Being a good wife/husband/daughter/son/friend/mom/dad... etc.  And all along the way, we are unaware of little things in life we are learning, until after the fact.  We learn that time flies.  We may not remember which exact moment taught us that, but somehow we just know it.  We learn that things often “work themselves out”.  We don’t remember exactly what taught us this either – maybe many things, but at some point we did not know it, and at some point we do.

I think it is very hard to recognize when we are in the moment of learning that we are in fact learning.  I think that part of the reason we struggle to recognize growing moments when they’re initially occurring is because maybe, more often than not, these moments are quite difficult in the present.  As a matter of fact, we often with hindsight realize that some of our best growing moments in life are the “storms” that we go through.  Now that I’ve recognized this in my own life, I try when I’m faced with something that seems to be at least for the time being ruining my day, week, or life… to think about how my future self will view my response to the despair ...especially a few weeks from now if in fact everything does work out in the end. (And will I be proud or embarrassed of my reaction?) This is often very hard to do, but I believe that if we can make ourselves recognize the learning moment than we will be more profoundly affected by it, and often I think the learned lesson will have a more dramatic effect in our life.

There are only 2 events in my life that I really really really realized that I was witnessing something profound and knew even as I was experiencing it that years later when I looked back on it, I would know that these were turning points in my life.  Moments where my path changed, hopefully to becoming a better, kinder, wiser, and more patient person.

The first happened when I had the great opportunity to rotate at Johns Hopkins University during my anesthesia training.  This particular day, I was doing a case with Dr. Ben Carson, apparently a world famous neurosurgeon.  I had no idea who he was, but after several people had made comments about how cool it was that I would be working with him, I did what any other 20-something year old from my generation would do – I googled him. And I found out that he was the first neurosurgeon to ever successfully separate conjoined at the head twins… and that he really was “the stuff” when it came to his field of expertise.  Not too shabby of a resume, I’d say…  So fast-forward several hours into the case… Dr. Carson had scrubbed out, and was over to the side of the room while the fellow (a surgeon who has finished residency, but is doing one additional year specializing further into his or her specialty) finished closing.  Apparently the inexperienced medical student assisting the fellow contaminated his sterile glove… and man, the fellow just went off.  It was loud enough for me to take notice… so I stood up and peered over the blue drape dividing me from them to see why this fellow was making such a ruckus.  He looked at Dr. Carson and said something to the effect of: “How do you do this everyday?  Working with medical students and residents that are inevitably going to mess up?!!”  And Dr. Carson, the world famous neurosurgeon… the one whose case this really was… the only one who had any real right to be at all arrogant looked at this red-faced, angry, hateful surgeon and said very quietly, “Remember where you once were.”   WOW.  I was blown away.  I was shocked.  I was inspired.  It reminded me that no matter how smart one is, no matter how high up the ladder of success one climbs… they once were just the low man on the totem pole, trying to get where they are now.  Dr. Carson, the world famous surgeon had once been called “dummy” by his elementary school classmates… and at that point in his life, he was just a kid trying to prove himself.  He had once been just a medical school applicant, trying to impress the interviewees.  He had once been just another medical student… just another resident… and it did not matter how much fame or knowledge he had gained… it did not matter who he was, what credentials followed his name… he still remembered these things about himself – and in my opinion, it makes him not only a better person, but a better doctor.  It allows him to have the gift of empathy. 

I firmly believe that my life is like the lyrics of an old country song, “But for the Grace of God, go I…”  How could we ever look at another human being and think that we are better than them?  How could we ever belittle or take for granted that what we have comes from God above.  But for the grace of God, there I would be.

When I was working as a nurse at Vanderbilt in the trauma ICU, I was always careful to appreciate and say plenty of thanks to those people who had the more technical jobs there with me… I would often remind myself that these people, who often had little to no education, were my like grandparents… None of my grandparents had higher than an 8th grade education, and my paternal Grandfather had just a 5th grade education.  But they were smart.  They were valuable.  They, like me, were made in the image of our creator. And because they were willing to do their particular job, it made mine so much easier. 

So somewhere along life's path I had passively learned the lesson of my blessings.  I had figured out that the people who were the "low men" on the totem pole were my people... they were where I had come from.  But the experience with Dr. Carson re-enforced this concept.  Kindness never becomes unnecessary. There is no level of prestige that gives one the right to be unkind.  

I want to remember where I once was… a careless and often scatterbrained kid who really did mean well… and spent years and years working on being more organized and more aware of my surroundings… the new kid at a school, just wishing someone would invite me to sit with them at their lunch table…a foreigner in a different country, stumbling over words, and sick of people speaking in louder tones when I couldn’t understand a phrase… the new nurse who felt unsure of my skills… who made bloody messes when trying to start my first few IVs… the anesthesia applicant hoping to impress… hoping for a chance… my prayer is that I never forget.  That I never feel entitled or better than anyone else.  I always want to remember where I once was.