Do you suffer? So do I… Awareness of The Human Condition

Our greatest strength in our call to healing may come from our recognition that we’re fallible, and that we, too suffer.

Did you know that’s one of the greatest strength of the healing physician, as well? In the ‘Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine’ Steven Miles notes that swearing by Apollo linked the physician to a ‘moral song’ and “reverberates to a cosmology that sings of the origins, purposes and limits of medicine.”(p22) .  This is because according to the legend, Apollo got into trouble with the Gods for trying to restore his beloved wife from the dead. We’re human, we suffer grief, and there are limits to the human condition which we must learn to accept…  and there’s a gentleness and non-harming that results in awareness of this reality.   Noel Coward said it so well, in his poem ‘Nothing is Lost’ (see our other poem entries including Seamus Heaney).

Nothing is Lost – Noel Coward

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.