Living The Present Moment

“It is our stories that make us human.” In medical school, I learned all the technical details about heart transplant. I studied the medical criteria that makes you a candidate, the drugs required post-transplant, and the labs and physical symptoms to monitor. Yet, what I did not yet learn were the stories. Those stories came later in medical internship and residency. I met the real people and learned their stories of love and loss behind the words “heart transplant.” We sometimes fool ourselves as a culture to believe that medical science can solve all the problems of the “heart” with just a surgery or a medication. However, even when we cannot know all the stories behind the weathered faces that we encounter, it changes our own humanity to acknowledge that there is a story there. It changes how we are present to the facts, how we open to listen, and how we honor time. It is our stories that make us human. In sharing those stories, we can also heal the heart. My friend, Sonja Greene-Smith, shares her remark