We, The People, Must Heal Together
Years ago, as a junior medical student, I was just holding tractors in a long and complicated surgery way above my pay grade. As the professor was about to call it a wrap, a tiny bone fragment was found wedged in a tight joint space.
Struggling, sweating and swearing, the team of surgeons simply couldn’t get it out. Leaving it would guarantee postop infection and chronic arthritis. Re-opening the joint would add much trauma and risk to the patient.
Stuck!
Sheepishly, I suggested pinching it out with two surgical steel pins lying right there on a tray. To me, they looked like those pointy Japanese chopsticks, only much skinnier. After many more failed attempts, the professor finally said to me, “Go ahead, you do it.”
In seconds, I got that little chip out with a pinch. It was a wrap.
That taught me two lessons:
One, an ordinary person with ordinary means can do extraordinary things.
Two, one chopstick can do little; a pair can do many things, even extraordinary things.
We, the people, have been split into two halves that are deeply divided.
- Our two eyes must see together in order to perceive depth.
- Our two ears must hear together to tell where a message comes from.
- The left and right heart chambers must beat together as one to pump blood.
- The two halves of the brain must work together to generate any thought or action.
- If one side of the body were hostile to the other, insanity, suffering and demise would result.
- The two halves of the body do not have to be exactly equal, but they must be mutually collaborative. Here, two halves add up to be greater than one.
- To weaken one half the body is like suffering from a major stroke. You get less than half of the capabilities of the whole.
In deep medicine speak, to heal means to optimize the whole, with all its parts, together.
The how comes after a mindset reset to consider all fellow citizens as a people in one body. Then and only then, our individual and collective wisdom will come up with the right ways for all of us to heal together and move forward instance by instance.
When disagreement between the two sides begins to overtake civility, just remember they are the other half of your body.
WRITTEN BY
Tak C. Poon, MD, PharmD, ABHIM, FACC Cardiologist now developer of a wellness blog and a lifestyle habit-forming app. www.metacardio.org
