Heartache and charting a way forward
It is about more than enduring until things improve. It is more than weeping until my tears have run out. It is also finding a way to flourish in the gloom, to instill hope, and to do my part to create a better world in these dark times.
My colleagues in Palestine are experiencing even darker times. The most recent OCHA report from the West Bank catalogues the ongoing horrors, unimaginable to me.
Once again, I ask myself, what I can I do here in Rhode Island? How can I support my Palestinian colleagues, my disheartened friends and family? I wonder how my Palestinian colleagues keep going, keep up their spirits.
Yesterday, I saw the movie The Encampment at the local independent movie theater. The documentary explores the Columbia University student protest to demand divestment from the U.S. and Israeli weapons industry and an end to the genocide in Gaza. The protest lasted 2 weeks and seeded dozens and dozens of protests around the globe. The film was well done and included footage from the Vietnam War and Civil Rights protests of the 1960s. It stirred my hope, a sense of optimism that feels hard to come by these days. Pundits like David Brooks have called for mass protests as the way forward against the current abuse of executive power in the U.S.
The two undergrad courses that I am teaching this semester also give me hope. The classes attract students interested in careers in health and public health. One class explores Communication in health care and the other looks at Health and healing through the lens of culture. The idealism and energy of this next generation nourishes me. But simultaneously I realize that I am responsible for inspiring them, helping them tap into their hope. In the Lens of culture class, the students are assigned “fast writes”, six-minute reflections without edits, written or typed, at the end of the 2 ½ hour seminar class. They are asked to probe what caught their attention, what surprised them, what they want to know more about? It energizes me to see their ah-has and curiosity. I’ll share two from a recent class on colonialism and medical ethics:
The class made me realize that being ethical in medicine isn’t just about rules. It’s about listening, reflecting, and being willing to question whose voices are heard—and whose are missing?
The Cincinnati Radiation experiment from the 1960 and 70s or the experiments on the Havasupai tribe, where researchers used blood samples in ways that permission wasn’t granted, are so jarring to learn about. The violations of medical ethics feel so incredibly wrong, like a betrayal of everything I have learned about the goals of science as a Health and Human Biology concentrator [major].
And then there are the groups of medical students in the West Bank who I am helping with their qualitative research projects. We meet via Zoom and I am in awe at their capacity to create, find meaning, and endure in horrible circumstances.
I am reminded of Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning that I read in high school or college. "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."
And "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
One group of students is interviewing patients with kidney failure who are trying to get to their dialysis appointments. In collecting the stories, the students hear about patients facing checkpoints and roadblocks where abusive Israeli soldiers tell them to turn back for no reason. Patients admit that they worry about burdening their spouses and children. Patients are forced to choose between money for their medications and the needs of other family members. The students tell me that these interviews have changed who they will be as doctors. Holding the unfixable, undestanding the difficult choices, and the tough realities of patients’ lives is part of medicine. And part of these murky times.
These times ask us to look deep inside, to find new resources and discover unrecognized strengths that keep up hope for ourselves and for others. May you too find something to inspire hope in yourself and those around you.