I think I was overly ambitious: I highly doubt that I’ll be able to produce 40 entries about relationships in 40 days. Day #40 is July 1st.

It’s not that I lack the source material for it. In my notebook I have scribbled down the following notes:

• hospitals as mazes
• Dr. B, the psychiatrist who mentored me and significantly influenced my career decisions
• arguably my favorite medical student who is now an intern
• music as “the soundtracks of our lives”
• the dancing Dane as an example of conditional (maybe?) relationships

Writing (online or off) is a notable commitment—the more I write, the less I read. It shouldn’t be a zero-sum game, but it often feels that way.

I am currently reading (in bits and pieces) “The Wanderer“, a piece that the New Yorker ran in September 2006 about former President Clinton. I first heard about this article from a friend of mine—a voracious reader who often pontificates on a variety of subjects, using phrases like “very lengthy hagiography” and “new constructs of language”—after he read it in the New Yorker in New York City (this is undoubtedly a point of pride for him). My friend had wistfully spoken about Mr. Clinton’s intellectual appetite and constant drive to learn. He contrasted this to himself and lamented that the constraints in our work—he is also in medicine—often stunts our abilities to think.

It’s not that we don’t learn a lot in medicine—we do—it’s just that so much of our training in medicine is memorization and regurgitation. He and I have often discussed that truly brilliant people do not go into medicine; they pursue careers in physics or philosophy. As a population, doctors aren’t the greatest thinkers—we don’t necessarily approach information (or our practices) critically. Maybe it’s the culture of medicine—we are indoctrinated to believe in and trust the instruction we receive from those who are more experienced. Maybe it’s the sheer volume of what we learn—we can’t think about everything we learn because there’s so much more to consume. Maybe it’s just laziness.

My friend and I, I think, wish we had the energy and time to learn about and understand everything (the world is an amazing place) and apply this bountiful knowledge to promote change (the world is an unjust place).

The written word not only teaches us content—how does photosynthesis happen? how do I program the VCR? what factors contributed to the final draft of the Magna Carta?—but also how people think. Because we are subjective creatures, all writers invariably introduce bias and arguments into their creations. Evaluating these arguments helps us understand what the writer is trying to communicate and can help us approach material with healthy skepticism. What is the writer’s agenda? What biases are present? What evidence is missing? What evidence would I want? Are the arguments logical? etc.

I recently received a book from my wishlist (my birthday still has yet to pass…) from a reader named Robert in Massachusetts. (Thank you much, Robert!) It is a book of “personal essays” and I am eager to read it, both to see how more accomplished writers approach this form and enjoy the prose for what it is. Surely their expositions have more coherent themes than this post.

I’m procrastinating on revising my personal statement for my fellowship application. I’m also frustrated with the ratio of what I know to what I don’t know. It seems incredibly small.