The Wisdom of Surfers

Jack Johnson once asked, “Where’d all the good people go?”

Several times on this blog, I’ve tried to work through my thoughts on what angle I want to take on social justice. [What is Social Justice?, From the one who has been entrusted with much] I’ve been involved from several different angles ranging from global poverty awareness, biomedical research, homelessness, to drug addiction. Seeing this range of problems, and combining that with the introspection that goes into this blog has really focused my eyes on an overarching question.

“Where’d all the good people go?”

I think the world lacks virtuous human beings, those that my friend Mooks and I would refer to as beasts at life.

Sidenote: Mooks and I once did a beasts at life fantasy draft over email, which was mostly to discuss people we knew, and the qualities that made them good at life. We did this to emphasize to ourselves, that there were traditional metrics used to measure human beings like physical appearance, income, popularity, number of cars, hotness of trophy wife, etc., and then there was a separate set of qualities we thought made you a beast at life.

Reading this book reminded me of something I said to myself last summer. I had just wrapped up my undergrad and I was planning on taking two years off before heading back to med school. I thought about why I wanted to take those two years off, and I reached the conclusion: I am at an academic level necessary to be the doctor I want to be, but I hadn’t attained the level of human being, aka beast of life status, that I needed.

Sidenote: you might think it’s cocky to try to be a “beast at life,” and you are probably right.

Anyways, I recently heard of Ben Franklin’s quest to attain moral perfection, which he started as a twenty year old. He took a systematic approach by listing out thirteen essential virtues and the days of the week. Each day he failed at one of the virtues he would put an x next to that box, with the goal of attaining as few x’s as possible.

The combination of the Jack Johnson’s song, Mooks’ idea of “beast at life”, and Ben Franklin’s systematic approach to attaining moral perfection, has motivated me to make a similar list of virtues. But instead of having the goal of attaining moral perfection, I would like to attain, being a beast at life. Mostly because I think it sounds better.

Anyways, based on qualities Mooks and I loved in others, here’s my list

Humility – Prioritize others, swallow pride.
Moderation – Some is good, more is not better.
Independence – A Ken can only be a good Ken.
Sacrifice – I want to sacrifice, but without placing this sort of burden on others: “FINE! I’ll do this for you, but you owe me a BIG one.”
Working Hard – When I die, I want my friends and enemies to say two things about me. 1- Yeah, he was a good guy, he helped me once. 2- Yeah, I don’t know if he was a good guy, but he sure worked hard. In fact, I might just want to hear the second one.
Gratitude – Keep on the sunny side.
Control – Have emotions, don’t let them have you.
Humility, again – Accept my limits.

To bring this back to social justice, the word radical and the word radish come from the same latin word meaning root. And so, a radical, like a radish, must always be concerned with its roots. I think the root cause of the global AIDS epidemic, homelessness, drug addiction, and maybe all social justice issues is that there are not enough good people in the world. I think we as humans need to be stronger.

I want to know what makes a beast at life, a beast, and more importantly, I want to know what prevents people from becoming a beast at life.

Arthur Lydiard, a legendary running coach who revolutionized distance running, was famous for having initially experimented his radical training methods on himself, an average runner. So, I figured it would be appropriate for me to experiment different aspects and angles on being a beast at life on myself, an average human being.

I have no deceptions about this, and I don’t expect to ever attain moral perfection, or maybe even reach a level of human being that I can accept as beast at life, but, I think I will have a lot of fun trying.

Worst case scenario, to turn back to the words of Jack Johnson:

“I want to turn the whole thing upside down, and I’ll share this love I find with everyone.”

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

Burned out

This week is National Cover the Uninsured Week. At OHSU, the medical institute I work at, students have organized an array of events including panel discussions, seminars, and free clinic events.

Today, I went to a panel discussing providing healthcare for the uninsured. I think the panel members, mostly from the non-profit world, were supposed to talk about healthcare policy issues. However, that wasn’t really the mood. Most of what I was hearing was encouragement.

I think the panel members saw their past selves out in the crowd. I think they saw a bright-eyed batch of students unprepared for the struggle of caring for the neglected. They talked about supporting the neglected populations we were supposed to be talking about, but moreso they emphasized taking care of the optimistic students and young health professionals that are diving into these careers, and protecting them from burnout.

The talk was inspiring, or relieving, maybe. But one woman, the youngest, and easily the most enthusiastic of the bunch, had a comment that really struck me. She said:

“I think cynical people are just people that were idealistic, but had their hearts broken.”

When I think back to when I first read the inspirational biography Mountains Beyond Mountains a couple winters ago, all I can remember is how fired up I was. Reading the courageous story of a physician working with the rural poor in Haiti, I could feel the optimism and will to change the world rushing through my body.

I was obsessed. I ate up anything and everything about the struggles of the world. I read about the civil struggle in Zimbabwe, social entrepreneurism in Rwanda, epidemic drug-resistant tuberculosis in Haiti, all of it.

I thought if I just pushed myself a little more, if I just stayed up another half hour studying biochemistry, if I just ran another mile, if I read another article about social medicine… I could move myself closer to becoming a stronger human being, to my dream of reaching medical school, to being on a stage where people might hear my voice, to changing the world.

I don’t know what tipped the scales. I think it happened sometime earlier, maybe the summer before my senior year when I worked in a lab at Harvard med school, poured on the miles to get ready for one last cross country season, and spent the rest of my time hammering away at the MCAT. (the med school admissions test)

I piled through flash cards, page after page of practice questions, and I think at some point, I snapped. I couldn’t handle the work, the stress, and it clicked. I couldn’t stop war in Zimbabwe. I couldn’t cure drug-resistant TB. I couldn’t save the world. It broke my heart.

It’s caused me to grow a cynical side since moving to Portland. It’s made me afraid to push myself, and I find myself being lazy a lot. I pretty much notice at the first sign of stress and cut myself slack. I tell myself I’m still a productive member of society.. But I have this one thought running through my head every day: "I use to be strong."

There’s a quote I’m reminded of:

“The good news is that there is a way out of the dark forest. The bad news is that the way leads through hell.”

It sucked to burn out. It sucked to struggle through a year running on fumes to keep myself afloat. It sucks to feel past my prime at the ripe age of 22.

But on some days, when I can feel just a crack of that optimism leaking out of my heart, I can see that this initial burnout was necessary for me to ditch some of my unreasonable optimism, and cultivate a more realistic optimism.

Today, I read a quote from JFK’s inagural address that I hope to one day say, and mean.

“And this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

I suppose, just because I can’t save the world, doesn’t mean I can’t try, eventually.

Related post, "What is Social Justice?"

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com