Poetry Tuesday: Live the questions

Today's poem is inspired by a dear friend who has made this her resolution.  It fits so well with the aims of this blog, and of my own life that it seems crazy that I haven't posted it until now.  This friend has been struggling with her own quest to make a difference in this world.  This poem is by Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet.  What question are you living right now?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"... I would like to beg you, 

dear Sir, as well as I can, 

to have patience 

with everything unresolved in your heart and 

to try to love the questions themselves

as if they were locked rooms 

or books written in a foreign language

Don't search for the answers, which

could not be given to you now

because you would not be able to

live them.

And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday

far in the future,

you will gradually,

without even noticing it,

live your way into the answer.

A New Hope

Some articles that have caught my eye in the news after the election:

*Apparently being against reproductive choices for rape victims makes you un-electable.  Thank goodness.

*A comment from Friedman on why Obama won - and why the Republicans in Congress need a change of heart (and maybe they are, thank you Boehner?)  Best quote:  "Many in the next generation of America know that climate change is real and they want to see something done to mitigate it.  Many in the next generation of America will be of Hispanic origin and insist on humane immigration reform that gives a practical legal pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants...Many in the next generation of America see gays and lesbians in their families, workplaces, and Army barracks and they don't want to deny them marriage rights held by others.  The GOP is at war with too many in the next generation on all these issues."  I would add to this reproductive choice - which was a clearly decisive factor in voting for many women (and men!)

*20 quotes on immigration from politicians including Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), "Obama voters chose dependency over Liberty.  Now establishment R's want citizenship for illegals.  You can't beat Santa Claus with amnesty"  Wow.  I'm not even sure what he means by that, but it does not sound either nice or productive.

*A surprise victory in Minnesota for gay marriage rights - where the campaign manager of Minnnesotans United for All Families (around 1:45am) is thanking everyone and telling them to go get some sleep because the results likely won't be in for a while....and then they get a result.  It was the first time in US history than anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment had been defeated.

waiting for a sign

source

I have been interviewing and planning interviewing for residency for a little while now, with the end of the planning - and deliberations of which program is the best fit - still too far off to be in sight.

But I'm reading a series of books for my "Medical Leadership" elective, including Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, where I found a lot of evidence that perhaps I should not worry so much about collecting all the data, and just pay attention to how I feel at these different programs.  This sentiment is summed up by Gladwell at the end of the book with this incredibly helpful quote:

"When making a decision of minor importance, I always have found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons.  In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves.  In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature"
-Sigmund Freud

Poetry Tuesday: a poem of three truths

This week a poem by one of the poets I admire most, Mary Oliver.
Her poetry draws on observations of nature that force us to reflect on observations of ourselves.
This one has been running through my mind a lot lately.

Do you have three truths?  What would they be?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side 

is salvation

whose meaning

none of us will every know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

From the fantastic Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems, Volume One

Reproductive Ven Diagram

This past weekend I went to a friend's wedding in a beautiful park.  The friend had thought she was infertile so had been not using birth control (!!)  But, when she found out she was pregnant, she and her long time boyfriend were both absolutely thrilled.   They decided to get married and start a family all in one year - all things they had hoped to do in the near future anyways.

The way she put it was "I feel like in the ven diagram of when I should have children, the circles are overlapping the most right now - so I want to do it".  She only gave a few examples of circles, but I sort of ran with it.

Here's my image of how this would look - I could have kept adding circles...

How do your circles fit together?

On another note, during the ceremony, they read this poem by Kuan Tao-Sheng (1262-1319):

MARRIED LOVE

You and I
Have so much love,
That it
Burns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mold again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.

In life we share a single quilt.

believing the whole concept

Back to Sarah* (*obviously not her real name) and our counseling session.  Sarah started the session by listing quickly - before we could even ask her any questions - all the reasons why terminating her pregnancy was the right thing.  Reasons that she - and many other woman- have cited included that her "life is a mess" and she could not responsibly bring a new life into it.  Sarah* was living with an on again/off again boyfriend who she loved, but struggled with uncontrolled and unpredictable bipolar disorder.  The two of them had been living in a van under a bridge for the past several months.  They were both having a hard time finding work.  Neither one of them had any support from or connection to family in the area, nor did they have any other resources to draw on.

She went on for several minutes listing these reasons and more.  We listened.  Then she stopped and paused, looking at us to see if we had anything to say, almost looking for our agreement with her reasoning.  But the very wise and experienced counselor said nothing, just waited.  I wasn't sure what to do, so I said nothing, and waited.  Then Sarah* said, "but the truth is, I want to be a mother more than anything else in the whole world.  Even though it doesn't make sense.  Even though it's not responsible.".

And that's when the counseling began, as the counselor started asking questions to help Sarah* work out what she thought and felt.  To help her see her situation in the truest light - without judgement, but without rose colored glasses either.

Sarah* said that she was concerned that if she terminated her pregnancy, that in several months - when the baby that would have been actually would have been - what if her life was better?  What if it was now responsible for her to bring a new life into it? What if she and her boyfriend had figured out jobs, had found an apartment, had organized their lives - would she then feel incredibly guilty and regretful that she had ended the pregnancy?

The wise counselor listened and finally said, "You know, Sarah*, no matter what you decide to do in this situation, your life will be different in several months.  And if you decide to end the pregnancy and your life is better in several months, how will you know that this decision didn't help you to make your life better? And if you decide not to end the pregnancy and your life is better in several months, how will you know that this decision didn't help you make your life better?  We just have no way of knowing how our lives would have turned out if we made other decisions, but I can tell you that this decision you are making now will absolutely affect your life over the next few months - because it will be very different if you are pregnant and expecting a baby than if you are not.  Only you can make this decision, but once you have made it, don't judge yourself for it, or think of all the other possibilities that could have been - because it will be different."

Later, after Sarah* left, without terminating her pregnancy, to think more about her decision, the wise counselor and I debriefed.  We talked about how even though her reasons for why she should not be a mother right now make logical sense to us - that if we really believe in a woman's right to choose, a woman's right to make decisions about her own body, then we cannot judge her decision, we cannot think to ourselves that she should make one decision over the other.  Our role is to help her make the best decision for her, in a non-judging, non-assuming way.

It's definitely hard, but feels incredibly important.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience"

-Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (1896-1986)