Getting from how to why: a pause for reflection on professional life

In the course of institutional life, many may lose their sense of purpose. The daily demands of both medicine and teaching--small defeats, time pressures, bureaucratic obstacles, and chronic overload--can erode the sense of purpose and clarity of desire that infuse work with spirit and energy. One antidote for this drained state is time for renewal--not long periods of rest and relaxation, valuable though these may be, but rather a "particular kind of stopping . . . the pause for a poem." The author describes how stopping in the middle of the day to read and reflect on a poem can defamiliarize the familiar, giving the reader a fresh outlook on the ordinary day. She describes how poetry also can awaken a sense of play, a childlike openness and sense of curiosity, and a renewed awareness of feelings. To honor feeling can provide a needed corrective to the conventionalized response that has become thoughtless or bloodless or tired. The kind of play poems engage readers in can also provide a connection to the sacred, restoring the wider vision and deeper purposes without which the practice of medicine might diminish to something less lifegiving for both patient and physician than it ought to be. In her discussion of the restorative power of poetry, the author quotes several poems in full and invites readers to consider the fresh perspectives they offer.