Habits That Have Become Instinct, and Perseverance That Ends Only at Death
A major exam is finally over. While reviewing before the exam, my mood was tense and the pressure high; I kept hoping the exam would end soon, planning to relax properly for a few years afterward and take it easy in the days ahead. But after three days of post-exam relaxation, I felt restless all over; by the fourth day I had returned to my pre-exam state. I made new study and exam plans, opened several thick volumes, turned page by page, took notes, left markers, and memorized key content.
An elder told me not to treat exams as a burden but as an opportunity for self-improvement. He has reached retirement age with the title of chief physician, yet still sits for new exams. Medical people must keep taking exams all their lives; one should approach exams with the mindset of "promoting study through examination."
I have learned many things from him. At a recent meeting he told me there are two kinds of fish: one kind lurks at the bottom of the water, the other floats on the surface. In scholarship, one should learn from the fish that lurks at the bottom. His metaphor is vivid: medicine looks dull on the surface, but only those who dive deep can penetrate its inner sanctum.
Those who love medicine train themselves, in life and work, into people who subconsciously love reading. For a medical person, the habit of reading is no longer merely a habit but an instinct. Medical knowledge updates rapidly; a day without reading means falling behind the times.
Medicine is closely tied to changes in science, technology, and thought. Human understanding of medicine keeps advancing, medical technology changes with each passing day, and the medical model is not static; therefore a medical person should have the awareness of updating their knowledge system every day.
When will it end? Probably not until the moment one closes one's eyes. Medicine is boundless; physicians a hundred years from now will surely differ in many respects in their understanding from physicians today. This is not to say that past and present physicians have nothing worth offering compared with future ones, nor that there is nothing unchanging in medicine; rather, medicine, in its pursuit of progress, never stands still—it constantly renews itself. Even if a few individuals or small groups of people love antiquarianism, humanity as a whole keeps moving forward, and no one can stop the rolling wheel of history.
A medical person should be eager to learn and open-minded, always ready to update self-understanding in the face of new data. Clinging to old rules is not good, nor is defending a stale self. Draw on diverse formulas, build deep foundations before unleashing, model oneself on worthies, correct every error—every day is a new day, and the self of every day is a new self. The ancients said, "If one day you make it new, renew it every day, and again and again make it new." What the physician needs is precisely this spirit of daily humanistic renewal. And to reach that state, there is no way but study.