Unit Section1Exercise 2Witnessing revisitedMeeting Mr. Right
In Unit 1, we discussed various types of ‘witnesses.’ An essential component of witnessing is compassion. Read the following excerpt from Rachel Naomi Remen and answer the discussion questions.
Rachel Naomi Remen , “Meeting Mr. Right”
During a long ago trip to Canada, I visited a history graveyard and came across a headstone inscribed: “Here lies George Brown, born a man, died a gastroenterologist.” I could not have been more than twelve or thirteen at the time and I remember being inspired by this. Since medical expertise was so highly respected in my family, I had thought this was a step up. I am no longer as inspired as I once was. Perhaps the worth of any lifetime is measured more in kindness than in competency.
One of my former clients is a psychologist and a fine athlete who ran every morning in a park near her home before going to her office. She often met a colleague there, a well-known psychiatrist. Without any formal arrangement, they had run together at about the same time for many years. After she was diagnosed with cancer, somehow her running companion was never there. My client is a strong determined woman and despite a difficult course of surgery and chemotherapy, she continued to run every day. After a few months of running alone, she called the psychiatrist at his office, but he never returned the call.
About a year after the completion of her chemotherapy she took a different path one morning and saw the psychiatrist running up ahead. Being twenty years younger, she overtook him easily. As they ran side by side, she told her old running companion that it had hurt when he had not called back. The professional community they both belonged to was small and almost everyone had known about her cancer. Surely he had heard. The psychiatrist’s answer had shocked her. He had replied, “I’m sorry. I simply did not know the right thing to say.”
I asked her what she would have wanted to hear. She smiled sadly. “Oh, something like, ‘I heard it’s been a hard year. How are you doing?’ Some simple human thing like that.”
From: Rachel Naomi Remen, “Meeting Mr. Right” Kitchen Table Wisdom Riverhead Books: The Berkeley Publishing Group 275 Hudson Street New York, 100014 1996 www.penguinputnam.com.pp. 42-43 With permission.
Study questions
- Explain in your own words what it is that the patient wanted from her fellow runner.
- Why did the psychiatrist stop running with the patient? Describe a situation in which you had feelings of avoidance, similar to those of the psychiatrist.
- Give examples of situations in which "witnessing" (in contradistinction to curing) might be therapeutic to the patient.
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