Year: 2000
Type: editorial
Abstract: The Blue TrainJanuary is named for the god Janus.He is the god of beginnings (but is also then related to endings).He is generally represented as a man with heads placed back to back so that he can look at the future and past.With all the millennium drivel, we have been inundated with information summarizing the past thousand years and trying to predict the next.What Janus fails to do is look at the present, yet this is where we are and what we have to deal with.The wonderful aspect of human thought is that it allows us to assess the past and plan for the future.It is often a hoax since it permits tolerance of difficult situations in the present with the idea that the future holds something better.For me and possibly many of you, this idea is exemplified by the process of my education.Having gone through grade school with the concept that Jr. high was important, I then was told I needed to excel so that I could do well in high school.High school was spent with the anticipation of getting into a "good" college.The message was to keep working because something was coming.College grades were important because no medical school would admit you without an excellent record.During medical school the "carrot" was entrance into a quality internship and residency program.Once achieved, it was important to do well so that the best private practice or university group would hire you.Entering this phase of my life, I worked to build my practice and reputation, although too much of the time I was postponing present pleasures for some future goal or prize.Then all of a sudden the future was here and what was it?What is the balance between living in the present and the future?Is it midlife crisis, practice depression, and a sense of pointlessness?Because, in fact, the practice of surgery is future oriented.Patients come to the out-patient clinics and undergo disagreeable treatments because we promise future gains.We set our surgical goals, rehab treatments, and outpatient follow up visits based on future outcomes.Telling the patient to live in the present (accept what they have) is not what they have come to hear.I find I also will project this future thinking in to my personal life.Allan Watts' tells us we must learn to live in the present since that is where we are and will always be!He states that we should learn to do processes solely for themselves and not for future pleasures.Judy and I recently had a graphic example of the difference between living in the moment and liVing in the future.Generally when I travel it is only to get to somewhere as fast as possible, decreasing the onerous aspect of the voyage.I took a trip on The Blue Train.The Blue train is South Africa's 9
Source: Foot & Ankle International
Author: Lowell D. Lutter
Language: English
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2470716030