Selflessness.

An esteemed professor held us after class for a few extra words and spoke with precision, “In medical school, you must put yourself first time and time again. If you’re not careful, this will become who you are. Practice selflessness as often as you can.”

Selfishness loves to become muscle memory. It sneaks up in the beginning stages. It comes like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, pretends to graze in the pasture amongst the other virtues. It promises better grades and better sleep. It emphasizes your worth and your effort. Then suddenly, when you’re complacent, it bites you.

Selflessness, the killing of the will, takes a lifetime to master, but is accomplished moment by moment. My interest currently is global health through the lens of family medicine and obstetrics. I want to care for the full scope of an individual and their family, with the skills to take a patient from their mother’s womb to daily living and breathing. I was struck a month or so ago with my inconsistency. I claimed to want to serve others, especially those that have been displaced or mistreated, yet my life as a medical student looked like complacency. It seemed like every moment was for myself as I studied, meal prepped, and exercised, on repeat. In the early weeks of school, my peer had approached me with an opportunity to serve refugee kids in Fort Worth. It was an easy ‘no.’ I was simply too busy. This nagged at my heart as I considered the career I was dreaming of. I stopped dead in my tracks many weeks after my friend’s offer and realized that her offer was the answer to my discomfort. I can pursue the populations I want to care for without a medical degree in hand. I can practice selflessness now. I signed up that afternoon for the ministry and began the lengthy process of background checks and interviews.

Since, I have been seeking to implement this effort into more and more moments of my academic career. How can I serve this friend? How can I honor this professor? How can I surrender my own interests for theirs? This attitude is central to osteopathy. Manipulative medicine begs the question, “How can I use my body to bring physical healing to yours?” Traditional medicine entreats, “How can I use my knowledge of pharmacology to cure your ailments?” The applications of selflessness in the field of medicine are endless. However, it takes all my might as I work towards the day when selflessness is my muscle memory.

We have a program in our medical school that has great intentions but a broad lack of buy-in from the student body. The students huff and puff as we find our seats for long, required sessions. Last week, during a ten-minute break in the middle of the session, I gathered my friends in a circle. Like a professional suspension of play in American football, we put our heads together in a huddle on the lawn. I spoke soft and slow, half-joking, half-serious. I posed the question, “do we really believe our time is more valuable than the presenters who prepared this information for us?” We chuckled awkwardly, but we all knew the right answer. People matter. Their efforts matter. It is easy to hide within a crowd of 200+ discontented students, but much harder to justify our attitude. I firmly believe that my actions in this season reflect who I will become. I want to choose to become selfless. I want to choose to become a person that honors other people. I know that if I do not choose to become that person, my professor is right: I will become, by default, selfish. I will groan in my hospital’s patient safety meetings. I will lament at the thought of another on-call interruption to my life.

I find it outstanding that I get to choose who I am becoming. I find it all the more wonderful that I have chosen to be a selfless osteopathic physician. I know that I must keep choosing this, every day, in each moment.