For the last few months I
have been teaching a course at Adventist University of Health Sciences in
Philosophy of Healthcare, an Interdisciplinary Humanities and Religion
course. We aim to help students develop
their philosophy of healthcare for when they are in the workforce. It has been
an incredible experience of learning, growing, and struggling to develop my own
philosophy as the students and I journey through together.
One of our assignments is a
Life Events Timeline. This assignment asks students to highlight ten memories
of significance from their life. After identifying those events, the student
then spends some time dissecting why they chose those memories, identifying any
themes or patterns, and determining if or how those events have changed their
philosophy of healthcare.
As this is the first time I
have taught this class, I was unprepared for the level of authenticity paired
with an almost greater level of pain that has been experienced by my students.
They shared with me stories of parents, grandparents, siblings, children,
cousins, and close friends that they have lost. They shared with me stories of
losing everything they own to fire or finances. They shared with me stories of
broken relationships, missed opportunities, and the roadblocks of life. After
reading through the lives of over 30 students, I was struck by a few things.
The first is that my class
showed up every morning – smiling, happy, and “normal.” (Although, I will say we
meet at 8:00 am, so “smiling” and “happy” are relative terms.) If we had never
done this assignment, I might not have been able to tell that many of them had
experienced such brokenness. No one had a chip on his or her shoulder. No one
used class time to rail against anything or anyone. It wasn’t until we took an
opportunity to go deeper that the opportunity actually presented itself.
How many relationships are
we in that lack a level of appropriate depth? It is so easy to just stroll
through life and not acknowledge the brokenness. I have decided to challenge
myself to engage with people’s story, to ask the questions that foster
knowledge of the good and the bad.
The second thing that struck
me is the balance of the events in my students’ lives. Many of my students have
experienced some pretty tragic things, and yet those events only received a few
spots in their top ten. The other events that practically dominated were the
positive, life-changing events of births, graduations, travels, marriages, and
so on. Despite all their brokenness and pain, their reasons to laugh and live
far outweighed their reasons to be sad.
I tend at times to focus on
my mistakes and the bad things. My goal is to work to not commit the same
errors again. It ends up being a constant focus on the bad. If you are anything
like me, I challenge you to focus on the events that make us laugh and live. Or
maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Living and laughing aren’t a problem
for me!” If so, please help the rest of us to follow your lead!
Greg Creek
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