Recently I was discussing the SAT with friends and we came to the conclusion that it is more a test of endurance rather than intelligence. Spending hundreds of dollars and hours preparing for this standardized test, students across the country feel pressure to perform well in order to get accepted into a good college. I think that everyone I know took the test at least twice. I even know someone who caught a cold each time she took the SAT. Those colds could have been coincidental, but she always blamed them on the mental strain induced by the monotonous and tiring test. Now, as Plan II students we all probably scored relatively high on the SAT. I did not do poorly (please excuse the double negative) and when I think about it, the questions on the SAT were straightforward. Nevertheless, I felt as if my scores—supposed measurements of my knowledge—never measured up to the scores of my academic peers. This brings to question not only the validity of such a test but also the meaning behind the copious attention given to scores. Parents and teachers drive students to score as high as possible and sometimes disregard the importance of other activities. Many colleges address the errors of only viewing one side of a person (test taking abilities) by including essays and interviews in the application process. As I was applying to schools my senior year, however, I constantly saw that I was viewed as a test score and I sometimes wondered if my grades, GPA, and SAT score mattered more than my passions. This pressure to produce satisfactory numbers seems to parallel the strain medical students feel when they see that “demonstrating that you can manage the workload is far more important than showing that you can be compassionate”(Medicine and Compassion 3). Too little time and too much work produces more than just stress. It creates an environment in which inherent compassion and caring for others becomes difficult.
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It appears that the problems doctors encounter in bringing compassion to medicine also stem from uniting all parts of life. Last semester we concluded that both the left brain and right brain are necessary to experience life fully. And this semester Chokyi Rinpoche points out that “if we could have a better balance between the development of intelligence on one side and the development of a loving [. . .] frame of mind on the other, this world would be far more harmonious”( Medicine and Compassion 22). The rest of Medicine in Compassion contains further instances of balancing different aspects of human nature. We can practice in conceptual and non conceptual ways, and try to separate the perceived and real. We must move away from dualistic thinking and free ourselves from attachment. We discover that the key to compassion is emptiness. At first this idea of emptiness seemed contradictory to the unity that the balancing encourages. I now see that emptiness actually means that we accept everything in a natural way.
Beyond the need for unity to have compassion, I also notice a small need for experience. In discussing suffering during class and in the Ram Dass discussion boards, many stated that we have not experienced much suffering. I think that it can be difficult to relate to a suffering individual if we have not actually experienced similar pain. Afterall, “everything we perceive is the result of some prior condition or confluence of circumstances” (Medicine and Compassion, 65). Of course, this limitation of perception is where sympathetic imagination kicks in. We can use other experiences of pain or suffering to imagine what kind of suffering someone feels, and we can use the imagination to feel true compassion. That is why I said a “small need” for experience. . . to a certain extent some experience can come through the sympathetic imagination.
((Touching different textures of fabrics is a childish but enjoyable way to increase experiences))
I think that this need for small experience is why humans are so curious. Babies and young children burst at the seams with their questions and curiosity in exploring the world. While some of that childhood wonder is lost as people mature, people still thirst for knowledge and new things. Even today, for instance, my friends make fun of me for needing to touch the all the different fabrics of clothes when I go shopping. Maybe it is because “the moment [I] see something lovely, there’s an impulse to touch it, to become involved and fascinated” (Medicine and Compassion 43). Now I can justify my love for fabric textures as a way to increase my experiences. Nonetheless, I do not need to justify a silly habit. Instead I can use the wisdom in Medicine and Compassion to further my journey to become a better person. . . and maybe one day be a compassionate doctor.
