Editorial

from ACMS Bulletin December 2022

USPS Forms

Something to Look Forward To

Deval (Reshma) PaRanjPe, mD, mBa, FaCs

nlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant is famous for many things, but perhaps among E his most enduring contributions are his “Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.”

I would add “something to look forward to”, which is quite different from “something to hope for.” “Something to look forward to” is a certainty, and unlike death and taxes, a pleasant one at that.

Once, during a crazy clinic day, I met an elderly woman who had undergone many eye surgeries and had still lost vision to an end-stage disease. She was no ordinary person; she held multiple Ph.D. degrees and had traveled the world multiple times in her career. At this point, she was alone in the world; blind, weak, wheelchair-bound, and terribly depressed about this state of affairs. She was tearfully despondent over rapidly losing what remained of her eyesight, and I tried my best to distract her a bit.

I asked her what her favorite place in the world was, and she replied without hesitation: “Scandinavia.”

“Why?”, I asked, expecting her to cite the Northern Lights, or the fjords, or the glaciers, or perhaps the food (Definitely not the lutefisk.)

“Because the people are actively kind to each other there. They look after each other.”

I was floored.

It struck me that despite her technical blindness, this lady had more vision than many sighted people in this world. I told her as much, and she laughed (This was a victory for both of us that day.)

The physical cause of her despair was obvious. I thought about the emotional cause of her despair. She thought she had nothing good to look forward to, only misery, isolation, and darkness.

We all have something to do; the practicing physicians among us often have so much to do that we may not always recognize the privilege while we have it. The non-practicing and retired physicians among us have something to do even though it may not be medicine; other outlets and activities appear to pass the days. It is never too late to find something useful to do what brings joy and comfort to yourself and others.

Most of us have someone to love, and if we don’t, it’s never too late to find someone to love. Love can be romantic, platonic, parental, fraternal, filial, or general. It can be dispensed with surgical accuracy or with scattershot joy. Like the Scandinavians of the woman’s memory, it is enough to love one another; in fact, it is the only thing.

Sometimes having something to hope for is a wonderful thing---the giddy anticipation of what-if---fantasizing about life working out fantastically well. You can hope to win the lottery and retire (and then find something to do.) You can hope for someone to love. As long as you have a dream, you have something to hope for. But dreams are not guaranteed, and dreams can change. In the case of my lady in the wheelchair, dreams can seemingly die.

That’s where “something to look forward to” comes in. It’s a virtually guaranteed pleasure. For most of us, this can range from seeing a friend at a lunch date, to seeing one’s spouse and kids at dinner, to a dinner out, to a weekend getaway or a vacation. It can be looking forward to seeing your family at the holidays or looking forward to being alone for a change with your thoughts. Nothing in life is fully guaranteed but choosing an easy win to look forward to can make all the difference in trudging through the daily trials we face.

My lady in the wheelchair happened to be a psychologist and a therapist. She understood full well what was happening to her and why she felt the

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way she did and that she needed to find a healthy method to cope. I gently offered her the prospect of low vision services to help her make the most of the vision she did have. I told her that others in her situation, after the initial shock, learn with support to adapt and live fulfilling lives. She said she understood all that intellectually, but that emotionally she was not in a place to accept or make the most of these services. Yet. She was allowing herself the luxury of grieving her loss which, in itself, is wisdom.

From her I learned this lesson: allow yourself to grieve whatever loss you must, so that you can enter a better frame of mind and accept the “something to look forward to” that is out there waiting for you. Relentless positivity, which is the dominant mantra in today’s world, may not be the answer. There are stages of grief that must be traversed in order to achieve and receive the bounty of Kant’s three rules of happiness.

For my part, I wish you something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to, always.