YOU ARE A REMOVER OF OBSTACLES

A brief story about an appendix, Ganesha, and expressing daily joy.

I had my appendix removed last year. Leading up to it was the most excruciating pain I have ever experienced. Waiting in urgent care I was roaming about shadowboxing, trying to 'fight the pain'. I was delirious and dehydrated, and unsure of a diagnosis.

After determining that I did in fact have appendicitis, I was rushed to the Cedars Sinai emergency room in Los Angeles. The entire process of that room was painful. From the perspective of a systems thinker - it felt like someone had asked the Disneyland imagineering team what the anti-patterns are for queueing - and implemented it. Nurses and doctors are literally having to sort through prioritizing trauma, and you have to advocate for why your needs are more pressing. Only after getting through that gauntlet (and only through the fierce determination and insistence of my wife) - was the care excellent.

My laparoscopic appendectomy was at 1am, all went well. I wake up in a spacious hospital room in the morning and have a bevy of visitors, one of which is the Director of Nursing, checking in.

In a post anesthesia haze I couldn't help myself from telling her the following story:

"Have you ever been to Bangalore in India? The traffic is terrible.

If you thought the 405 was bad - imagine 8 lanes of traffic at a standstill, where almost every mode of human ground transportation is sloshing together, from the largest to the smallest. Truck, bus, van, car, tuktuk, motorcycle, moped, bicycle, oxcart, cow, pedestrian.

And everyone is honking. All the time. It is a cacophony you would only wish upon your enemy.

Many drivers have a small totem of Ganesha - the Hindu god who is represented as having the head of an elephant - sitting on their dashboards.

Why is he there? Because one of his superpowers is being a REMOVER OF OBSTACLES."

I point at her dramatically, my arm rising up from the bed, still attached to an IV drip.

"That is what YOU are - a remover of obstacles.

Every single person here is meant to express their daily joy. The joy of a job well done, and of helping another human being in their time of need. Everyone plays a critical role in the operation of the whole system.

Your job is to reduce friction. You remove obstacles so that everyone can perform at their highest level, expressing their daily joy."

She patiently smiled and thanked me for my post-op monologue. With three holes in my abdomen taped shut and an organ lighter - I was kicked out by the afternoon, grateful.

So remember:

YOU ARE A REMOVER OF OBSTACLES.

Go forth. Have an amazing week.