Hope in a Troubled World
Helping others can provide hope during global crises and uncertainty. Instead of focusing on foolish, self-serving, and dangerous global events, we can improve the world around us.
In 1970, I came across an excerpt from neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing’s two-volume biography of the esteemed physician Sir William Osler, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. One phrase particularly inspired me, so I clipped it and taped it to my desk, where it remained until time faded the words.
Cushing described Osler as “a modest, kind gentleman, most informal in his daily interactions, beloved by everyone who looked forward to his visits that offered encouragement, optimism, and hope to all he met.”
Osler refused to allow thoughts of things he could not change to disturb the hope of helping others. These passages from William Osler: A Life in Medicine by Michael Bliss can offer encouragement to all of us.
“Everyone loved the Chief. He was so warm, so friendly, so happy and charming, so funny, so interesting and interested that he enchanted everyone, from patients to his most senior colleagues.”
When Osler came into the room, the room brightened. A friend remarked ‘I have never known anyone who was surrounded by such a distinctive, attracting, personal aura. He had a knack of giving you all his attention and interest, perhaps taking you by the arm, listening intently, remarking on some bond you had together, convincing you that for William Osler at the moment you are the most important person in this world…and then he moves on.’”
Osler’s equanimity, his calmness, composure, and poise during times of crisis can be summoned by an address given at the University of Toronto in 1903 and recorded in Aequanimitas: “Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations and consume your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints.”
At a farewell dinner, May 2, 1905, at Johns Hopkins, before Dr. Osler left to accept an endowed professorship at Oxford University, he said:
“I have three personal ideals. One, to do the day’s work well and not to bother about tomorrow. The second ideal has been to act the Golden Rule, treating others as I would like to be treated. And the third has been to cultivate such a measure of equanimity as would enable me to bear success with humility, the affection of my friends without pride, and to be ready when the day of sorrow and grief came to meet it with the courage befitting us all.”
Osler’s life reminds us that we are here not to get all we can out of life but to make the lives of others more hopeful.
