|
Shelton G. Hopkins, MD
President's Page
Summertime
It’s summertime, and
the Texas legislative show, including the encore presentation,
is over. Medicine and the State enjoyed wins and suffered
losses. Maybe cuts will allow better future reallocations
when the economy and tax revenues improve, or maybe they just
set back health care for the impoverished, public education
for all, and the number of residents being trained in Texas,
and thus the future number of physicians for Texans. We’ll
just have to wait and see. This is when I make the first plug
for you to get involved in the legislative process and to
give to TEXPAC. Please get involved the next time around,
and give to TEXPAC now and again and again.
It’s summertime and, somewhere,
the livin’ is easy. Actually, although the number of
people living in desperate straits is at an all-time high,
the percentages living the good life are better than ever.
I recently had the pleasure and privilege of touring several
grand chateaux in the Loire River Valley. During the tours,
it’s easy to imagine oneself as the duke or the prince
or even the king, living life at the top of a social structure
shaped like a flat pyramid. A moment’s reflection reminds
one that an enormous number of courtiers, courtesans, soldiers,
artisans, cooks, muleskinners, and assorted go-fers were needed
to support the aristocrats’ wants and needs. And the
whole structure was built on the work of the miserable peasants
— those poor folks. But let’s face it: what could
be better than having the finest clothes, the best wines and
foods, the grandest architecture and gardens, and legions
of servants? Well, how about a warm room in the winter and
a cool room in the summer? How about clean potable water?
How about well- and safely prepared food from all over the
world, including cheap spices for which Francis the 1st would
have paid a fortune? How about a nice hot bath and flush toilets?
Fabrics that are comfortable? True, I still could go for the
legions of servants, even though the paper work involved with
servants is a tad more extensive today. I’m just not
sure what I would need them to do that modern technology doesn’t
do better. Your computer simply works better than the carrier
pigeons (certainly not as cool, though, and you can’t
eat your computer once it gets a bit old). I noticed when
these old chateaux were purchased by wealthy folk in more
modern times, the first thing they did was lower the ceilings,
panel the walls, and put in wooden flooring, except in the
famous rooms, which were saved in the original state to impress
the guests. So the bottom line in comparative easy living:
if you live in the developed world and you are not in grinding
poverty, you live more comfortably than the First Renaissance
King or the Sun King. Of course, the aristocrats did enjoy
some perks that are not now easily available to most of us.
As Mel Brooks so aptly put it in “History of the World,
Part I,” “It’s good to be the king.”
It’s summertime, and we’re
in Texas. That means it is hot! That means that, if you can
arrange it, you get out of town. San Miguel de Allende used
to be a Dallas favorite — maybe down a few notches now
with the threat (perceived or real) of violence. Colorado
and northern New Mexico still are high on the list. For those
of us who work, however, those are nice places to visit now,
until you get out of the car around Vernon on the return trip
or off the airplane at Love Field or DFW. A wilting blast
of heat and reality hits you: vacation is over.
Now that the energy from the
cool weather has dwindled, it’s a good time to lie back
with a cool one and contemplate the Big Questions. Don’t
worry about answering them until around October, when the
temps are in a reasonable range. Now is the time for musing,
for searching for that “Mmmmm” moment, not so
much a “Eureka!” moment. Why are we here? What
is the nature of love? How is medicine a noble profession?
Why do some cooks believe they must put beans in chili? (Not
all summertime musings have to be profound.)
The reality is that we cannot
KNOW these things. We only can approximate an answer, and,
most importantly, learn to live with the unanswered questions.
We feel a sense of purpose in life, we experience love, and
we are ennobled by our practice of medicine. That may be all
we can say without turning into Sophists. And while those
truths may not seem like adequate answers, they’ll get
me through another Dallas summer.
Enjoy the summer, and, as you’re
musing on the Big Questions, think about being a bigger player
with TEXPAC and DCMS.
back
to dmj archive |
