Inspiration Remembered

During one of my neurosurgery away rotations I was honored to have worked with Dr. Alfredo Quinones. This man has the energy of a hamster on speed and the perseverance of a monkey trying to open a plastic banana. Of particular interest, is the tale when he hopped over the United States-Mexican border to illegally escape into the land of honey and opportunity. He was caught the first time and sent back; hardly enough to stop this man. He attempted again, obtained an education, trained in neurosurgery at UCSF, and now is an attending neurosurgeon at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University (I believe he's legalized now, so don't call the INS). One of the few things I'd taken away from the rotation at JHU, aside from a trip to the ER after being plowed by a 2003 Yukon (crazy Baltimorans), was him sitting me down and telling me that in order to succeed in life, one needs to surround himself with brilliant people. Reminiscent of an old Spanish adage 'digame con quien tu andes, y yo te digo quien tu eres' (tell me who you walk with, and i'll tell you who you are), I've found these words to be increasingly more true.

Saving the World:
A good part of the medical community I believe, or would like to believe, for at least a few seconds in their life had dreams of saving the world: eliminating poverty, achieving world peace, delivering chicken nuggets to everyone on Wednesdays. Small people, big aspirations. But the world teaches us that when we grow up, we are no longer children, and we put off our childish thinking and infantile delusions. There is no world they say, only isolated islands of capitalism, communism, and forsaken third world-ers somewhere at the bottom of the ladder. The hooing and hawing of politics and international policy drain the drive of the inspired, entangling them in logistics and law until they hang themselves in their vain efforts to break free of the system. But then there are others that in their Neo-like genius realize that the system can be bent, and even broken. There is no spoon.

I once believed that such people were truly rarities, the ones that you never meet, but only read of in books and epitaphs. But I recently met someone that really gave my matrix a run for its money. She wasn't born into royalty like Princess Diana, or birthed from the fires of political unrest like Gandhi. Nor was she a nun like Mother Teresa or a rock star like Bono. But in her own small ways, she was affecting change in rural countries, improving the lives of others in our own, and dreaming of ways to take these things to bigger scales in the future. As you know, I'm rarely one that gives compliments or openly admires people; but I was was thoroughly stricken with her life attitude, and probably came off as a blathering groupie. Not so much because she could change the world, but that she was doing so now. I always thought I'd have to grow up, be in a position of power to bring such change, but no, she was doing it now, yesterday, before she even graduated college. So yes, she deserved such praise.

Changing the world, one life at a time:
Then there are others who've devoted their lives to the pursuit of saving individual lives. We in the United Sates are in an age of science and technology where we can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with the most sophisticated methods to save, and maybe not even save but prolong, the life of one person. Meanwhile the people of Malawi are dying by the tens of thousands for want of $1 a day supply of medication. I do not mean to excuse the latter egregious crime of our modern world, but mention the dichotomy to highlight how privileged we really are. We've come so far from the days where the lack of food, clean drinking water, or simple medical remedies would decimate towns in one untoward year. Now we focus on curing the ailments of those who've lived too long - osteoporosis, dementia, cancer, and other conditions where our exhausted topoisomerases give in to the calling graves below. Of these, perhaps one of the most specialized, smallest niche occupying, is the neurosurgeon. One in particular that inspires me is a friend of mine. His tireless pursuit to become the best, to eliminate the world's need for people like himself by curing the disease he treats, and inspiring the generations below to follow his lead - he definitely gives me something to work towards and aspire to be.

So the moments of inspiration are definitely there. They're in the people that happen to walk a path different from the ones laden with the mundane and trite technicalities of the world. They're in the roads that they forge, the roads less traveled as Frost said, and it makes all the difference. As the world saver said, it's about creating value from nothing; these friends are artists of humanity, in their ability to bridge people and create cures that did not exist before. They say the artist fears the blank canvas, and I'll admit to such fear. Fear that the brush strokes of my next 20 years will culminate in the scribblings of a six year old rather than the Monet I had envisioned. But to allow such fear to blind us would only hide the paths of change that my two friends walk. So thus I take the first strokes, and hope that their steps will guide the rest.