Cherish Those Who Watch Over Us Along the Way

When hearts were uneasy a while back, I received a gift — a patient of many years gave me a "kongling drum" (hollow-sky drum), with my name engraved on it.

It is a new instrument with an ethereal, pleasant sound. As the pandemic raged, she hoped it would bring me some joy. I love this instrument; although I lack the patience to learn it properly, the kongling drum has one advantage: when I have leisure, casually tapping it can clear the heart and dispel vexation.

A few years ago, this patient was a TCM enthusiast who feared Western medicine. After she developed breast cancer, she believed the claim that gua sha could treat it and persisted for a long time, but the tumor grew larger and larger.

After we met, I spent a long time talking with her, persuading her to set aside her prejudice against Western medicine and treat her breast cancer with integrated Chinese-Western medicine, not rejecting surgery and chemotherapy, because in my view her tumor still had surgical opportunity.

My persuasion worked; she changed her mind, accepted my plan, and the treatment outcome was encouraging. Even during Western treatment, she would often consult me. This trust moved me deeply; plus we are close in age and have much in common, our daily conversation is easy and congenial, and I sometimes ask her to help with image processing. Over several years our relationship has become like that of old friends.

So during this pandemic she gave me this instrument to chase away sorrow. She has given me other gifts before, and I have always reciprocated with medicines of equivalent value. In friendships I prefer giving to receiving. Of course, this is also a shortcoming: if friends who get along well give gifts and one is always unwilling to accept, it makes them unhappy, because many people take joy in giving.

A friend in need is a friend indeed; in such difficult times, mutual care and warmth can truly comfort the heart. During this period, more than one person has shown me such care; patients worry that I may not hold up under the pandemic and主动 give a bit more when paying me. What I think about more is charging them less or not at all, because compared with them my pressure is far smaller.

A few days ago an elder from my hometown contacted me, asking whether I had any difficulties and telling me to let him know if I needed help; he could help. I hastened to say there were no difficulties; indeed there are none in my life, and even if there were, I would never think of relying on my elders. By seniority he is my martial uncle, and I have always treated him as an uncle; I should be the one honoring him, not him helping me.

Last time I wrote an article saying I might make some adjustments this year, a long-time old friend saw it as soon as it was posted and immediately called me; he too was worried the pandemic would affect me.

Actually I do not need anyone's help; what I hope for more is to be able to help others at such a time. But to my surprise, many people have reached out to me.

These things move me deeply; people's gestures show me that there are others watching over me. I am not fighting alone; the principles by which I have conducted myself over the years have been recognized by others. That is why, in difficult times, they think of helping me, even though they themselves must certainly have been affected by the pandemic and are having a harder time than before.

I hope everyone in this society has someone watching over them; even mere mutual support in hardship is better than carrying all the pressure alone. I saw the British government say this is the hardest period Britain has faced in three hundred years. Our government would not speak so bluntly to its citizens, but we all know the difficulties we face now are extraordinary.

Mencius said: "The heart of compassion is common to all." If there is any bright spot in me, I think it is this "heart of compassion" Mencius spoke of. Over the years I have not always been broad-minded, nor have I never refused a patient because of a mistaken judgment, but most of the time I conduct myself from this "heart of compassion."

Perhaps it is this spark of compassion that leaves some humanity in me, making people I have dealt with willing to befriend this unsociable person and willing to watch over me in difficult times.

Physicians are the people who witness human nature most; in the work of battling disease and death, physicians are inured to both the best and the worst in people. The real-world medical environment is highly complex; physicians live with risk every day, at any moment at risk of infection or of being killed by a patient or family member. That is why, from ancient times to the present, physicians have practiced medicine "trembling with fear, as if treading on thin ice." We observe people and disease at all times, carefully assessing the risk of contact with others from the smallest details.

I am extremely cautious with patients and family members who show violent tendencies; most patients and families I politely decline have such tendencies. Sometimes I cannot tell whether their violence is directed at me personally or is their habitual nature. But to protect my own safety, whichever it is, after I smell gunpowder I carefully maneuver around them and find a way to escape. In a society that has seen so many physician-violence incidents, we cannot be naive enough to think everyone is friendly to us.

Every other patient arouses my compassion. The greatest misfortune in life is to be tormented by illness. Physicians do not merely help patients treat physical disease; we also have an obligation to care for and love them. We understand the physical and spiritual suffering of patients better than even their own close relatives, because we know far more about disease than they do.

I chose medicine precisely to watch over and be watched over by the patients who trust me; the joy I gain from that mutual watchfulness far exceeds the joy wealth brings me.

Several older physicians once asked me why, at my young age, so many patients follow me devotedly. I answered that perhaps my personality makes me a born healer. This answer was not perfunctory; some people are born healers because they are born with empathy and compassion, able to feel others' suffering as their own. Patients need care; cold, clinical medicine cannot relieve their suffering.

Everything beyond life and death is a small matter; in our eyes, people who deal with life and death every day, the current difficulties are indeed not much, but some people cannot bear them. I hope that everyone living in this pluralistic world has someone who cares for them, and that they care for others. No matter how fierce the storm outside, as long as there is care from friends and family, it is no longer so frightening.

Some primitive tribes do not know what poverty is; when people from our civilized world talk to them about being poor, they ask, utterly puzzled: "Why would a person be poor? Don't they have friends? How can there be poor people in this world?"

This counterquestion leaves modern people awkward and ashamed. We humans are born with a spirit of solidarity and mutual aid; in primitive tribes, because friends watch over one another, the very concept of poverty did not exist. Ironically, modern civilization has made this spirit of mutual solidarity rare. I hope that in the current difficulties we can rediscover this innate watchful spirit in our human cultural genes, cherish friendship and family affection, and weather the storm together.