david & goliath | malcolm gladwell

"courage is not something you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all."

weekend reads

"[Mr. Sharp said:" "People are so eager to maximize efficiency of relationships that they have lost touch with what it is to be a friend." By his definition, friends are people you take the time to understand and allow to understand you."
- from a NYT piece, "Do your friends actually like you?" (link)


"Instead, David encourages people to explore that frustration — maybe you're upset because your boss didn't give a coworker due credit for a project. What that signals to you is that fairness is a really important value for you. "That information is really, really important," David said. "So what happens when we focus too much on being happy is we actually push aside critical information that helps us to learn and adapt in our lives. And that helps us to forge a life that is connected with our own heartbeat.""
- from a Business Insider article, "A Harvard psychologist says too many people think about happiness all wrong" (link)


"But as I see it, the bigger problem is not that conservatives are infiltrating social science departments to spread hatred, but rather than liberals have turned departments into enclaves of ideological homogeneity... 

Maybe a starting point to bolster ideological diversity would likewise be to signal that conservatives are not second-class citizens on campuses: We liberals should have the self-confidence to believe that our values can triumph in a fair contest in the marketplace of ideas."
- from a NYT op-ed, "The Liberal Blind spot" (link)

i'll be right there | kyung sook shin

an excerpt from a book i've recently finished:

"This is the story of Saint Christopher.

"According to legend, Christopher was a Canaanite. A giant, some say. A man of great strength who was afraid of nothing. He made up his mind to serve only the greatest, strongest man in the world. But no matter where he looked, he could find none worth devoting his life to... Christopher built a house for himself  on the banks of a river and made a living carrying travelers across the water... He owned only a single pole, but he used it to pick his way through even the roughest current and carry people safely to the other side...

"One night... There in the darkness beside the river was a small child. The child told him he had to get to the other side before the night ended, and he asked Christopher to carry him across... The child, so light at first, grew heavier the higher the waters rose. The weight, like a massive piece of iron, so unbelievable for such a small child, pressed down on Christopher's shoulders... The once overly confident Christopher began to tremble with fear for the first time at the thought that he might drown... the child vanished and Jesus appeared before him, surrounded by a dazzling light. He said, 'Christopher! What you just carried was no child. It was I, Christ. When you crossed that river, you were carrying the world on your shoulders.'" 

Over his glasses, Professor Yoon's keen and gentle eyes stopped on each of us in turn before moving on. 

"Each of you is both Christopher and the child he carries on his back. You are all forging your way through adversity in this difficult world on your way to the other side of the river...

"You are Saint Christopher. You are the ones who will ferry the child across the river. It is your fate to brave the swollen water. Though the waters may rise, you must not stop before the child reaches the other side. So how do we cross this river?...

"We cross by becoming Saint Christopher to one another. By carrying the child across together. There is no difference between the person who crosses and the person who helps another across. You are not just Saint Christopher, carrying your pole into the rising water. You are the world and its creators, each one of you. Sometimes you are the Christopher and other times you are the child- you carry each other across the river. So you must treasure yourselves and hold one another dear." 

paul & lucy kalanithi

"my marriage didn't end when i became a widow" (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/my-marriage-didnt-end-when-i-became-a-widow/)

He considered following his master's degree in English literature with a Ph.D., but entered medical school instead, yearning, as he later wrote, "to find answers that are not in books... to keep following the question of what makes human nlife meaningful, even in the face of death and decay."

... Then 10 years after we met, while we were finishing our final years of training at Stanford, Paul's health began to falter. After a battery of tests, we learned that his back pain and weight loss were not symptoms of exhaustion, but metastatic lung cancer. It was now our turn to face mortality and, more than ever, to follower the question of what makes human life meaningful... 

...  One night recently, alone in bed, I read "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis, and I came across the observation that "bereavement is not the truncation of marred love but one of its regular phases." He writes that "what we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through that phase, too." Yes, I breathed. Bereavement is more than learning to separate from a spouse. Though I can no longer comfort Paul, the other vows I made on our wedding day- to love Paul, to honor and keep him- stretch well beyond death. The commitment and loyalty, my desire to do right by him, especially as I raise our daughter, will never end. And I am keeping another final promise... 

"my last day as a surgeon" (http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/my-last-day-as-a-surgeon)

As we uncovered the patient, the scrub nurse, one with whom I hadn’t worked before, said, “You on call this weekend, Doc?” 

 “Nope.” And possibly never again.

“Got any more cases today?” “Nope.” And possibly never again. 

 “Shit, well, I guess that means this is a happy ending! Work’s done. I like happy endings, don’t you, Doc?” 

 “Yeah. Yeah, I like happy endings.” 

... On my way out to the parking lot, a fellow approached to ask me something, but his pager went off. He looked at it, waved, turned, and ran back in to the hospital—“I’ll catch you later!” he called over his shoulder. Tears welled up as I sat in the car, turned the key, and slowly pulled out into the street. I drove home, walked through the front door, hung up my white coat, and took off my I.D. badge. I pulled the battery out of my pager. I peeled off my scrubs and took a long shower.  

 Later that night, I called [my co-resident] Victoria and told her I wouldn’t be in on Monday, or possibly ever again, and wouldn’t be setting the O.R. schedule.  

“You know, I’ve been having this recurring nightmare that this day was coming,” she said. “I don’t know how you did this for so long.”

"before i go" (http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2015spring/before-i-go.html)

In residency, there’s a saying: The days are long, but the years are short. In neurosurgical training, the day usually began a little before 6 a.m., and lasted until the operating was done, which depended, in part, on how quick you were in the OR...

Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.

Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: my daughter, Cady. I hope I’ll live long enough that she has some memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters — but what would they really say? I don’t know what this girl will be like when she is 15; I don’t even know if she’ll take to the nickname we’ve given her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past. 

That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.

[Editor's note: Paul Kalanithi died March 9, 2015, at age 37.]