Kindness: An Aspiration for the New Year

I’m going to come right out and admit it. It’s hard for me to say Happy New Year this year, especially with what is going on in the news lately. In fact, it’s hard to say much of anything about this past year that doesn’t sound trite and redundant, but I want to try and say something about going forward after a wickedly painful year, the pain of which is not over yet. It begins with a story.

In my medical residency, we were each on call for 24 hours every 4th day followed by a regular work day which resulted in a 36 hour shift. In those days, there were no limits on the number of admissions we could get or the pace at which we would be called by the emergency room. We were also providing cross cover for all the other medical patients already in the hospital who’s teams had gone home for the night. Needless to say, it could get pretty hectic and stressful. Worse than the actual quantity of work was the the total lack of control over how much worse it might get. I usually entered most periods of call with a sense of impending doom which would deepen as everyone else went home for the evening and the clock moved into the wee hours of the predawn morning. I felt desolate at times, answering pages, going to see patients at two and three in the morning, slightly nauseous and bleary eyed from being awake at this totally unnatural time. Justified or not, I also recall that I sometimes had a sense of outrage and resentment about this dehumanizing situation, anger at the pager that just wouldn’t stop ringing, and even bouts of stepping into a bathroom to have a short cry. How could there be yet another admission? How I would I possibly get through this?

But then dawn would come. The day shift workers and other teams of doctors would start to arrive at the hospital, the latte stand would open, and my biological clock would recognize that it was daytime. Even if I had not slept at all, it felt more normal to be awake. The most blessed thing of all was that my pager would stop ringing. I would then be flooded with a sense of relief, accomplishment and a little sheepishness. I would think to myself that perhaps I could have gotten through the night with more grace and less catastrophizing, without the rage and resentment part that my internal rant had added to an already difficult situation. Next time I would try to do better. 

One night in my internship year on a particularly busy and difficult night of call, I found an empty nursing station with a phone (no cell phones back then) and called a friend at home for support. He said something to me I have never forgotten. He told me his favorite Shakespeare quotation from Macbeth:  “Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.” It being Shakespeare, I rolled it over in my mind throughout the night before it revealed its hidden meaning to me. My more simple translation could have been ‘You are not in control, and this too shall pass’.

It was a very short phone call, but I still got caught by my senior resident who walked up just as we were hanging up. I was pretty sure I was going to get reprimanded for having taken any kind of a personal break, but instead, he sized up the situation and in the kindest tone of voice he said “I know. I’m having a terrible night too. I just got off the phone with my girl friend.” The interaction was brief, only a few seconds, but I felt so comforted and re-humanized. It would have been so easy for him to criticize me and cut me down, but he didn’t. He was kind.

I remain grateful for both the gifts I received that night which I now recognize as gifts of kindness. I wish I could say that every call night after that I was able to work without despair, resentment or internal anger. Unfortunately, that is not the case. But I did gradually become more aware of the part of my suffering that was optional, which was a step in the right direction. I also experienced the gift of true compassion, offered in real time on the fly, and I felt less alone. 

As I enter into this new year with so much work ahead of us, so much uncertainty and no control over what will happen next, I am embracing kindness as a primary intention. We have all suffered this year. We have all lost things and felt some aspect of our hoped for future dissolve. Unfortunately, this long night is far from over yet. My hope is that we can offer a kind word of support and solidarity to each other and to ourselves and refrain from adding unnecessarily to the amount of pain in the world. 

I am reminded of the first part of the poem Kindness by Naomi Sheehab Nye.

Before you know what kindness really is
You must lose things,
Feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth. 
What you held in your hand, 
What you counted and carefully sorted
All this must go so you know
How desolate the landscape can be
Between the regions of kindness. 

Let us not leave too much space between the regions of kindness. Let us trust that we are each doing the best we can, even if we appear to be shirking our duty or are found crying in a linen closet. Reach out a hand, hold open a door, say a kind word. This year too shall pass. May the moments of kindness be what we remember.