Friday, March 14 - 10:49 AM:
I was walking to the west across North Charles Street in Charles (not the) Village the other day, right at the busy intersection of 33rd. As much as I can I like to command my spirit to take note of the people around me, and sometimes this manner of being really pays off, as with the satisfying exchange of a heartfelt greeting with “all the fixins” like a smile and even eye contact. Well this day it really paid well to pay attention to my fellow human pedestrians because as I offered my greeting to someone headed in the opposite direction, not only did they give me the simple pleasure of that friendly gesture of eye contact and a big smile, but they emphatically pointed up to the sky behind me. I was compelled to comply with their suggestion and turned around to see one of the most vivid and breathtaking rainbows I have seen in quite awhile (Not the one pictured above, obviously; that one was in N. Virginia where we used to live). I glanced to see where the wonderful person who had shared this gorgeous vision with me had gone and found them standing a short distance gazing at the heavenly spectacle. They turned in my direction, I think in order to be sure that I had gotten the message. I gave a large and satisfied grin and a hearty thumbs-up and relished that moment which today seems painfully to arrive only so rarely – that moment when two perfect strangers can join, un-afraid, in the sincere appreciation of something beautiful.
I thought you might like to hear about this. My experience on the corner of North Charles and 33rd with the stranger and the rainbow makes me think of a day that right now seems so far away – graduation. The rainbow gives me hope for arriving at graduation and even that day when the NCLEX is a memory of yet another hurdle overcome in the journey of becoming a nurse.
One of the nice things about JHU SON is the mixture of students you will find here at various stages in the process of nursing education. At any given time you may find in the halls a student who is just one semester ahead of you or someone who is already a nurse and has practiced anywhere from a very short time in the profession to quite a long time and is now working on some form of an advanced degree in the field. These people also give folks like me hope that someday we will be nurses and we will be diligent to find yet more challenges to place in our way in order to stimulate more stress in our lives and in the lives of those who love us. More importantly, however, in so doing we will find more growth and an even greater ability to care for people who can’t care for themselves.
As we are learning here at JHU SON, those of us who are aspiring to become nurses are also aspiring to become a part of a health care system that is anything but a system and more of a collection of scattered and disjointed fragments that are about as effective in delivering “health care” as rush hour is at delivering the masses from their urban workshop cubicles to their suburban domiciles. Here at Hopkins we are continually being challenged to actually “think” about this so that we may not only become nurses but also active participants in finding a solution to such a mind boggling and monumental problem that is effecting us all. It is not just a campaign issue that will find its value only in the rhetoric of the election process and then go away. It is not a question that can be answered merely by choosing the right candidate for President. It is the sort of thing that can only hope to be addressed if it becomes and then remains important to lots and lots of people, nurses in particular.
I am realizing that there is so much more to becoming a nurse than a nametag with the letters “RN BSN” on it and four or five patients to look after every shift. Becoming a nurse perhaps ought to be viewed more like the privilege of becoming a citizen of a nation with all of its inherent rights and its responsibilities. In this context, consider these words of the Senator from Chicago, Illinois, Carl Schurz as he spoke about the American citizen in 1899 with my changes in parenthesis:
I confidently trust that the (nurses of today) will prove themselves…too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of (false pride in the profession): (“ANA/NANDA/AMA, right or wrong!”). They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of (nurses and their patients) will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of (true nursing practice): “Our (profession) – when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.”
Isn’t that what being a nurse is all about?
The original qoute of Senator Schurz can be found in the book: The True Patriot by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer, 2007: Seattle, Washington. www.truepat.org