It Takes So Little

At some time in our lives, we all need to be told we’re good or shown the way.  A simple story about giving kids from Oakland’s toughest neighborhoods a chance to rise above the violence in their communities strangely touched me and compelled me to write.  As I do this, I am not that far from Oakland.  I have heard enough to tell you that the culture of violence described is not exaggerated. Patients who see me for marijuana permission are happy and delighted they do not have to drive there.

So there are children who grow up in a culture of violence.  I see adults.  Not too long ago, I was seeing adults for social security evaluations in Los Angeles. Many of them had been caught in crossfire, perhaps shot on their way to the supermarket or even in front of their own homes.  They told me they did not know why or by whom, and sometimes they still had bullets in them somewhere.  Other times it was just a memory that so overwhelmed them that the quality of their post-traumatic stress disorder was like the sort of thing that you see in Vietnam veterans.

Neither Oakland nor Los Angeles is a war zone.  I am ill at ease when I try to understand why.  It was Canadian colleagues and friends who told me this was American and had something to do with our “heritage of lead'” — the birth of our country in a revolution as opposed to their clinging to the golden mace of royal power.  I try to understand but never quite have.  If a few generations ago, someone here found it necessary to resort to violence to reach their ideals, this was not an acquired characteristic transmitted in our DNA.  I thought folks sought peace as something precious.

So we have kids growing up in this mess.  I am not sure how this translates to our tradition of random violence, like school shootings. Since it is not in our DNA it must be in our culture.  Maybe one way out is creating a counter-culture.  It takes something to create a culture, counter or not.  I hear a lot of people talk about positive thinking and action.  One guy, from somewhere around Oakland, got enough positive messages to get through medical school. In turn, he reacted to the kids he saw and set up some opportunities to raise their self esteem and get some mentoring. These ideas are not high tech, and they are not new.  They are simply human, one-to-one ideas, and they do seem to work.  Of many government and educational sites, this one on the impact of mentoring nails the idea.  Personal testimonials are behind the wild explosion of this kind of program.  It is good for a young human to know someone who has been where they want to go.

I remember walking down a corridor at the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard and seeing photos of great physicians; a few 18th but mostly 19th century physicians.  They were all male, authoritative, foreboding, and nobody who looked like anything I wanted to be like.  My nurturing mother had a few characteristics I thought might be relevant; someone once said something about a doctor having the “hand of a woman.”  Years later, in Paris, I read the casebook of an ancient Roman female physician.  I could tell how hard she was working to observe well.  I loved her, as I loved the women who did neurological exams over a hundred years ago using a brush with a single camel hair, with patience it was believed back then to which no male could aspire. Nobody in my family was a doctor before me. I never had to deal with coming from a violent background; only from a middle class one.  My Harvard man Father-of-Blessed-Memory desperately wanted to leave behind the vision of a less than stable musician’s life in favor of something middle class.  He never went for his mother’s desire to be a dentist.  I never made any real sense to either of my parents. I had no real single mentor, although I was at least friends with my female professors in medical school. There were plenty of times I wished I had a mentor, or somebody nearby to tell me I was Good Stuff.  I was very good at husband choosing.  He is a few feet from me as I write this.  He always tells me I am Good Stuff. Telling a kid who is in a violent subculture that he or she is Good Stuff, giving a feeling he or she can “rise above” is – well, good stuff. Somehow altruism, particularly from an “in loco parentis,” a generation ahead, feels good for both concerned.  It is cheap and easy on the interpersonal level; hard, only because it is all too often a countercultural move.  It is humanistic culture in the face of crushing violence that surrounds us in a culture increasingly dominant. Say something nice and good and encouraging to a kid.  Simply said, be Good Stuff.