Telling Our Stories: My Story 3 - Cooperation

My Story 4 - Cooperation

Our Family loves to play Skip-bo, from my 95-year-old father, down to our children and their cousins. We may play anywhere from 1 to 3 rounds a session. You can't really play this game without someone "winning" or "losing." However, we don't go to the extent of counting the value of cards and adding up scores that way, which can add another layer of competitiveness to the game. We just settle for whoever gets rid of their stack of cards first. Then the winner, especially if it is my wife, invariably makes remarks about how it is just luck, referring to which cards you were dealt and what the opportunities where that presented themselves as the game made it  s rounds.

When I was brought up, for reasons that had to do with whatever they had inherited from their backgrounds, our parents never pushed or taught us to be competitive. There was a certain level of understanding that we should do our best, but this referred to all of life and more to academics then things like athletics or hobbies, which can also become opportunities for competition.

Somehow, around the time my wife and I began to raise our family, there was a movement in society toward non-competitive games. We learned of a small company in Ontario that marketed such games and acquired several of them. One involved players working together to build a tower with blocks. Another involved working together to climb a mountain, figuratively of course, on a strip of felt. But one that was perhaps the most fun and the most challenging was a game that had been developed to parallel the ever popular and competitive Monopoly. However, instead of acquiring properties and amassing large sums of money through rents etc., this game, including the strategies and what happened with the cards that were stacked in the center, focused on the benefits of cooperation. Obviously, in a sense, there were still some competition as, if I recall correctly, the more you cooperated, the more you benefited, a.k.a. won.

I am not athletic, and no one in my family of origin ever really pursued or excelled at any sport. However, I do recall admiring my father's ability in softball when I was a child. When it came to my ability, I probably peaked at soccer when I was in junior high. Part of that was because I was still smaller at that age then some of the older players with whom we played together in our village's schoolyard. I played some softball with my fellow nursing orderlies when I was working at University Hospital in Saskatoon. I even proudly wore our green windbreaker, with tour team name Ozarks, on it, referring to the fact that the university is rather high on a hill on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River there. 

I also became fairly good at volleyball. Even though I might not have been the quickest or best as a frontline player, I was often able to deliver a series of serves that helped our team rack up points. This was all learned on an outdoor volleyball court, As we had no gymnasium in our small school, or any level patches of pavement or concrete on which to play, I never did learn to play basketball, as it was not until after Grade 10 that we moved to the city. Somehow, we never played football there, so I never learn to play that either. Living on the lake, we learned to skate and enjoyed that and the number of games that opened up, including, of course, as a Canadian, hockey. It was all just at the fun level though. Later in life, when I was no longer doing much skating and rollerblades came into existence, I tried my hand at that for a while, skating around the neighborhood. That was a good workout.

In medical school, I played a little soccer again on our class team. However, at the same time, I started into curling and that was my sport for a number of years. Even there, I never developed enough skill to really warrant moving beyond the lead position. Another game that we learn to play when I was in junior high was table tennis. Somehow, for a physical break, both for herself and me, my daughter and I got into paying quite a few rounds of that when she was in high school.

We tended to develop interests in non-competitive sports. When we were children, living on Lake Winnipeg, we love to row our large 20-foot oak and cedar yawl on the lake. Later, I learned to canoe and enjoyed that for a number of years. At various periods in my adult life I tried jogging, but it never lasted more than six weeks. I just never got into it. Surprisingly, even though we lived on a lake, I never developed much skill in swimming. After I learned to cycle, I enjoyed that for a number of years and would even ride my bike to medical school or to my residency postings and work. Lately, I mostly just walk, something we did from the time we started school.

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Another aspect of competition that can develop is what some would refer to as ‘the pursuit of excellence.’ As I mentioned above, I did learn that one should try to do one’s best in life. There was a sense that this was even related to our faith and that God expected this of us. After all, Jesus gave up everything and poured his whole life into his ministry, eventually pouring it out for us on the cross.

I tried to do my best in my schoolwork, and was certainly always at the upper level of my class. One of my main interests as a child, and still, is art and I try to do well at that. Likewise, with singing and making music. Ultimately, I have tried to be a good Bible student and teacher.

When I became a physician, even already in training, one became aware of the competitiveness in this field. In training it took the form of those, particularly our seniors, who were able to remember and quote the latest in medical knowledge, making those of us who did not do so definitely feel somewhat inferior and lacking. However, as time went on and I saw some of these individuals become what the profession would consider successful and there careers, I saw that it was often at the expense of marriage and family life, something I did not want to pursue. I guess my experience in family life growing up within our own family of origin and extended family, and also being quite conscious of the families around us, made me see family as more important then that kind of success. 

What I was really seeing of course was the importance of relationships and community. This understanding was deepened and developed further in the years that I spent within the community that was Canadian Mennonite Bible College at that time. I began to learn about balance in life and see that as more important for one's overall health and that of one's family.

When I became a physician and began to raise a family of our own, together with my wife, I was determined not to let work take precedence over family. I worked hard, but I perhaps never studied medicine at hard in my off-work hours as some of my contemporaries would have. That did not help me become what the profession would have considered an excellent physician, at least when it came to academics, research and publication. To this day, I don't know how some of my colleagues did it. Perhaps they just were more intelligent and capable than me.

Indeed, as I have sometimes looked back at my life, I have wondered if I have sometimes overdone the concern for balance. Perhaps I should have poured myself into my career more and become a better and more capable physician, at least medically. On the other hand, I believe I have been a good physician in terms of being an individual, a person, who worked hard at relating to and communicating with the patient and/or their family who were in front of me, giving them my undivided attention at the time. I may not have learned and perfected the latest skills and strategies in terms of therapy as a psychiatrist. However, I believe that who I was as a person trying to relate to them, giving them unconditional support and thus maintaining hope, often did as much therapeutically as following the latest method of any particular school of therapy would have.

Contentment versus Excellence

Contentment versus Excellence

As a physician-in-training, I already joined the student chapter of the Christian Medical and Dental Society (CMDS) of Canada. My activity level in the organization declined when I graduated and went into rural practice, simply because there were not enough physicians nearby to meet with regularly enough to form anything resembling a local chapter. Winnipeg, where I had been as a student, was a 90 minute drive away. When I moved to Brandon after 7 1/2 years in this rural setting, I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to form a chapter there with others who had been involved in their pasts as well. So it was though, that one year it was our turn to organize the annual provincial CMDS retreat. I think we were more in charge of the logistics than the contents, at least in its entirety. The topic had to do with excellence, and there was some debate about it from the side of those promoting it and those who had other thoughts.

This is an issue that I have struggled with for a number of years. I felt that God called me into the medical profession; it was nothing I had ever had my sights set on. It is a profession that has been challenging intellectually from the beginning. I have made it through with a lot of hard work, more than because I have any particularly superior level of intelligence. Thus, for me, it has always been somewhat of a struggle to maintain professional competence, let alone strive for what the profession would probably consider excellence in its broadest sense.

I attend conferences and take part in other activities with the aim of keeping up academically and professionally. However, I have never been an active researcher nor have I written anything noteworthy for publication. I may have made a few small local innovations but nothing of any magnitude or noteworthy in a larger way. When I later actually went back and successfully completed a residency re-training program to move from Family Practice to Psychiatry, I by default fell into a place where some would consider me an expert because I am now defined as a specialist. Indeed, I have even become somewhat of a sub-specialist, because my practice focuses on only children and adolescents, along with their families. To be sure, with the experience I have gained over the years, I do know a thing or two. However, even here, I would not consider myself a great practitioner of the art.

In part because this career was not something I chose, I must admit I have never been that passionate about it, as my wife knows all too well. My passion as a youngster and young adults was car design. However, as a Christian, I could not see that as a worthwhile career goal in a world that had much greater needs than that someone put their energies into designing cars. I had actually thought of architecture, as we would generally accept that we need to live in buildings. When I was even younger, and somewhat in overlapping years with my interest in cars, I had thought of being an ornithologist, one who studies birds. I still like birdwatching and taking good photographs of birds. I do the same with automobiles to a certain extent, but I limit that because for many reasons automobiles are not something I think I should be putting my energies into.

I have to confess also that I have not in some ways put as much into my career as I could have. I have not been at the vanguard of invention and innovation. Some of that was for two other reasons. I attribute these to the fact that I had learned a thing or to about life before I ever got into the medical profession because I came to it later than many of my colleagues. By that time I had learnt about the need for balance in life. For me, this somehow translated into not putting everything into my career. Even as a student and resident I had seen what happened to the personal lives of people who did that, and it wasn't where I wanted to go. The other point was somewhat related and had to do with privacy and regarding the independence of my family and personal life. As a husband and father I wanted to do my best in those areas. As a Christian, I also felt the need to be active in the church. Then, the need for balance also led to my continuing to pursue various other interests such as art, photography and music. The end result was that there was not a lot of room left for striving for excellence in my profession. Rightly or wrongly, my energies were being channeled into a number of different corrections and just did not allow for that.

Then I began to look at the whole issue of living the simple life and contentment. These are both principles that I, as an Anabaptist Christian, believe our Lord Jesus illustrated in his life and that we are therefore to follow. If one is content with something, if one wants to keep something simple, where does that leave the pursuit of excellence? I think many of us would agree that when we look at many of the advances, the so-called progress, of our increasingly complex society, beginning with the agrarian, then the industrialization, technological and now information-oriented society we live in, we have no more time for one another and we are no happier. We are told that we work harder and longer hours, that in most cases both partners of the family unit are working and that we get less sleep than we used to. To be sure, in some ways, with the infrastructure we have in place in our developed Western society for the provision of our shelter with its modern comforts, our water and sewer systems, our protection as well as distribution of food, life might be easier. However, I am not sure that we are any happier after a day at work bringing home the groceries or the "takeout," as is more common nowadays, than the caveman who came home with the fruits, nuts, grains or meat that he had caught for his family that day. We certainly have a lot more to pay attention to, or should I say be distracted by, to tend to and to take care of or look after than they do. Mind you, we don't have to be on the lookout for vicious wild animals or enemy clans at all times.

So what do you think? If we believe that we should be content with our lot, and try to live a simple lifestyle, is there room for excellence? What does excellence mean in that context? It is an obvious question I have not yet answered, and I have already started on the road to retirement from my profession!