I Lean and Loafe At My Ease Observing a Spear of Summer Grass
I am a week over a year into my much quieter practice and now six months free of my chronic fatigue and fevers, and I’m a bit at a loss. This past year reminded me of the time between finishing residency and having children when I was so sleep deprived I could sleep any time, anywhere, for years.
By the time I recovered it was time to have kids, when the second one was four months old I launched my own business, and 13 years after that in face of the pandemic and health problems with my parents and my own lingering illness I retrenched to a smaller business where I had time to rest and relax.
For a long time I only cooked one pot meals and the same few things because I just didn’t have time or energy for anything extra. Now I cook summer squash in a single layer in a saucepan, meticulously flipping over each piece with tongs.
The problem with me in a relaxed state is I need something to be interested in, to think about, to do. At first it was medicine, then psychiatry and and psychology, then nutrition and the microbiome. Exhaustion and illness wiped my brain flat but now it’s been months and I am really, confidently, better. I can do the laundry and I don’t have to rest. I can see patients in the morning and attend a concert at night without falling asleep before it starts. So many possibilities have returned.
All the while the really important questions sparked around my brain…what is the point, what are we doing, why do we fight, why do we strive, what world can we build for our children. In anticipation of Oppenheimer coming out in a few weeks I’m listening to “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes and I’m struck by how the chemists and physicists of the 19th and 20th centuries wandered around (back then many were itinerant, attending semesters and seminars at various universities as a craftsman might have wandered about to different cities in the Renaissance to study with different masters) musing and calculating until they stumbled upon the mysteries of the forces controlling the universe. The rules of God’s chess game, written in atoms and forces and light and energy.
The neutron was discovered in 1932. By 1945 they could use neutrons to bombard an atom and split it to unleash the energy of an atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was a deeply weird and brilliant man who was terrible at labs and calculating but was interested in everything and could bring different disciplines together like no other. He inspired many students to get Nobel Prizes though he never received one himself.
I’m no genius physicist but I do feel like I know something important that could help people beyond my patients and beyond just not eating (too much) ultraprocessed trash and not drinking too much alcohol or sugar water. Everything begins with integrity to oneself, recognizing your own hypocrisy, saying what you mean and accepting criticism for what it is worth, and listening when people tell you no just as much as when you are surrounded by those who applaud your worst instincts.
I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Newton conceptualized the universe as a mechanical machine, pinballs pinging, from the atom to the globe and beyond. Rutherford first discovered the true structure of the atom as a tiny dense positively charged nucleus and a nearly atmospheric ball of electrons that eventually led to the wild world of uncertainty and quantum mechanics.
Philosophers are much less fun to parse out than chemists and physicists. The direction of some modern political movements seem to favor old grumpy Hobbes and his negative view of humans and what they tear down and destroy out of fear and rage.
But I talk to people almost every day, listen to their worries, their weaknesses, what they’ve overcome, what they have failed. I think people are mostly good but we are often weak in character. We need each other to be consistently strong, while the rage of the crowd is the fastest way to make good people do horrific acts. Society is neither a zero sum game nor does a rising tide lift all boats. The truth is complex and like the fate of a particle zinging through space, sometimes unknowable.
All we have are each other, as hateful and obnoxious as we can be, and as kind and gentle. All we have to know each other is our words and actions.
I promise to come back to you every week now I am well with not a lot of cosmic mumbo jumbo and more practical questions and insights. Just let me get it out of my system this once, let me relax and sit and observe my leaves of grass.