What Really Matters

In New Years Eve fashion I decided to make a post reflecting on the book What Matters Most by Arthur Kleinman - a global health super star and one of our informal advisors. He's such an amazing professor and professional in general - he even sent me a Merry Christmas response so that was pretty huge.

In his book he discusses a variety of different cases that he had as a psychiatrist. Many of them share elements of hardship and overcoming the hardship/ making the most of their situation. Through these case studies he begs the question - what matters most in these people's lives. The answer ranges in depth and complexity for each case. Further, this question is probably one of the most asked in humankind. We ask it on a broad scale to plan out our life dreams and on a small scale every day in prioritizing our activities. I'm sure many philosophers have tried to answer this so feel free to google it up, but here's my stab at it.

Hope

This is something no one can take away from you and what many of the people Kleinman talked about had. There's no real logic behind having hope or not - except that if you don't have it life is sure going to be a lot harder. You can make the case that it doesn't influence life at all, you have the same odds at surviving/thriving if you are hopeless or hopeful. I don't particularly think that's true. Studies back me up on this in proving that optimistic people are more successful and lead a higher quality of life. If you have hope, then you can shift your perspective and the way you view the world and that's huge. It's the old glass half full or half empty arguement but you can apply it to a multitude of life scenarios.

Ex 1: My home life was worse than some and better than others - however, I try to take those bad experiences and really every bad experience I have and use it to help other people. I hope that they'll suffer less than I do.

Ex 2: Many say the world is getting worse because more social media leads to less real connections, increased superficial ones and more isolation, but everything is a double edged sword and there's always a better way to look at things. Lots of things on social media are fake, but it's in accepting and recognizing that, that you can begin to appreciate to positive aspects of it. Like getting to see what your best friend from elementary school is doing. Is it only the positive moments of her life? Yes. Does this mean she lives a perfect life? No. Should you still congratulate her on any accomplishment she posts about? If you feel like it. I have hope that technology and those who innovate it do so in some way to make it better, and even if they don't I have hope that people will someday be able to make life better for themselves using the tools they have. Even if it takes a while.

Even if you weren't born just naturally full of hope you can still use logic to try to change your way of thinking to see the better parts of things. Hope is something no one can argue away from you - believe me, many have tried - because it doesn't mean having unrealistic expectations about anything. Change is slow and gradual - especially in global health, which has a lot of young people that slowly fade away because they see how hard it is to make change. The fact is, we probably won't solve the latest issues in global health before my death - we may even make them worse, but I have hope that someday they'll get better and getting to fight that battle while I'm on earth is worth it.

Hope is the last thing you lose - this is something my father says a lot. Hope that your actions will impact someone, somewhere, something at some point in time positively that's what really matters in the world and in each individual's life.

Purpose

Having purpose in the grand scheme of things helps orient us, gives us a place in this whole big world. Having purpose is one of the most challenging things to find and something that we hound on students to find since they're basically 15. It's often equated to a life's calling or a profession, but that's not really what it is. It's just recognizing who you are in the world and what you can do with it.

Ex1: One of the people in the book had AIDS and hit rock bottom on drugs. She turned her life around by using this hard experience to become a stellar advocate for AIDS. She gave her own life purpose, and if we changed our perspective to do this with our own hardships then life would be a lot better.

Ex2: When I was growing up I wanted more than anything to get out of South Carolina and away from my family. 2 years into Harvard, sitting on a dirt floor in Bolivia I realized that I felt more comfortable there than in the wood paneled rooms of Harvard. Because Bolivia reminded me of Ecuador which reminded me of my family. It's very cool that global health super stars travel around the world creating bonds and ideally empowering other people and I want to do the same. But, I could do that anywhere including home. I was more than a student looking to be a doctor, I was also a member of an incredibly loving family. I had more than one purpose in life - to be a good daughter/cousin/sister/step-sister started to weigh equally on the balance with becoming an intelligent and capable professional to change large scale health systems. Now I have both of those purposes and it fills my life all the more. This can be seen as a classic example of balancing personal and professional life - because it kind of is, and everyone's balance tips in the different ways. Life is kind of an endless journey to find that right balance, and 22 is still to young to give you any secrets on that.

Ex 3: One day I asked a janitor at a medical school what he thought his purpose was. He responded: to make this medical school clean for young men and women to be able to learn medicine and help the world. This coupled with a statistic that said 60% of people think their job is their calling, blew me away. It shouldn't have, but it did.

So there you go, purpose comes in many shapes and sizes. However, with purpose you can find and even create your own community. People are drawn to those who have purpose in their lives. Purpose calms the mind, let's us see things more clearly and let's us enjoy life all the more.

What helps most? Resilience

So what helps cultivate hope and purpose in your life and keep them there. A friend of mine actually told me about this the other day - if you think about it why do some people thrive who come from hardship while a million more drown in their sorrows?

Resilience is a nice academic way to quantify it - not saying its the right way, it's just a logical way to explain things. It basically means how quickly you adapt to stressful situations and bounce back from adverse situations. It depends on a lot of things, especially your childhood. But something that helps a lot is emotional intelligence so check that post out, because increased self esteem and the ability to manage/recognize your own emotions do wonders. But quickly: things like having a good sense of humor to laugh at your own tragedies, having a positive outlook on life, being able to change perspectives but still staying true to yourself, being curious, being flexible and believing that tough experiences do make you stronger help a lot.

There are studies on this that say a good home life helps, and really that always helps in everything, but it does seem like I'm going to have to come back to the whole nature vs nurture arguement and say that some people are born more resilient than others. But once again, just because you were born a certain way doesn't mean you have to stay that way - everyone can get stronger.

Happy New Years everyone! May all your hopes and dreams get one step closer to coming true in 2018!