Poiesis is a Greek term that evolved into the word poetry in English. According to Wikipedia, in philosophy, poiesis is “the activity in which a person brings something into being which did not exist before. Etymologically derived from the ancient Greek term which means to make.” The word is used as a suffix, as in the biological term hematopoiesis, the formation of blood cells.
In the book All Things Shining, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly say, “Everyone should seek to be a craftsman whose responsibility refine their faculty for poiesis to achieve existential meaning in their lives and to reconcile their bodies with whatever transcendence there is to be had in life itself. The craftsman’s task is not to generate the meaning but rather to cultivate the skill for discerning the meanings already there.”
The art and craft of being a physician and finding meaning in our care of others are to make poetry out of our lives.
The wealthiest and most intellectually gifted doctor I know often hassles me for helping the homeless. For years he’s asked me, “Steve, what do the homeless want? They don’t just want housing; they just don’t want to be like everyone else. They don’t know what they want, so why do you bother to try to help them.” Our verbal and written conversation has extended for decades.
Just before Christmas, I received an email from him after I sent him an article from the County Department of Health numerically outlining the severity of our local homeless populations. In his email, he said, “I try, very hard, to tolerate your bleeding heart B.S. You say you help the homeless. How do you help the homeless? Almost, if not all, non-profit entities are B.S. The only thing you do is act like you are doing something. My eyes show me that there are a thousand times more homeless than ten years ago. You achieve nothing. Your charities achieve nothing.” He also says he despises the homeless and doesn’t give money to any charity as he does not trust the distribution of the funds. He also gives no money to schools, hospitals, his family, etc., for the same reason.
My response to the most prosperous doctor I know on why I help the homeless:
What you call “the great unwashed” are the sick, the ill, the down and out, the mentally disabled, those with other substance abuse and mental health issues, the jobless, the lazy, and the lost fill our streets. How are they treated? They know how you feel about them. They feel your displeasure. They feel your anger. They feel your distaste for them.
You find these people impossible to care for because you are approaching these individuals as if you were an orthopedic surgeon. Let me set your bone. Let me operate to fix you, and then you can go on with your life. Their life is not a broken bone that needs to be set straight.
We cannot fix everything. We don’t try. What we try to do is to care for people. We try to show compassion.
Compassion fatigue is every doctor’s reality. We often face patients who challenge our ability to be compassionate, such as the homeless. It is easier to reject people from your life than meeting them where they are and actually walking with them — not walking in their shoes but walking beside them to treat them with the dignity that God’s fellow creatures deserve.
It is hard to empathize when the homeless experience is so far removed from your own experience. But we are one earthquake away from being homeless. So, is their experience so beyond your imagination that you really can’t grasp walking in their shoes?
The question isn’t why I help my fellow man, homeless or not homeless. The real question is, why don’t you help them? You of infinite IQ and infinite money. You give advice but have a hard heart, and honestly believe in your hard heart. You write that you would rather send money to an animal shelter than a homeless shelter for people. It’s easier for you to help an animal shelter because an animal has no soul, and an animal has not made choices, good or bad, that placed them in harm’s way and onto the street.
You argue that human beings cause their own misfortune, and a human could be more like you if they had worked harder or followed directions or gone and stayed in a mental hospital or a prison. But an animal cannot be like you, so you don’t judge the animal as harshly.
Maybe you don’t agree, or perhaps it confuses you. For clarity, let me introduce you to the thoughts of kindness. For whatever reason, I have chosen in my heart to accept you, warts and all. You don’t need my acceptance, nor do you care if I accept you for who you are. My opinions are not on your radar. You know, despite our disagreements, that I care about you as a human, as a man. Right or wrong, that is my gift to you. You neither need it nor need to accept it. I give it freely to you.
I don’t know each homeless person as I know you. But I choose not to turn my back on them. I decided to open my heart, time, and wallet to them. Maybe it is just a waste of my time. Perhaps it is just a waste of my money. Perhaps I am an enabler and make the life of the homeless worse through my actions.
But just as I embrace your spirit and your life, I welcome the spirit and life of all I can try to help. I don’t try to help everyone. I neither can nor do I choose to. But I feel I can help some.
You fashion yourself as the unredeemed Scrooge. Yet, you miss the point of the story. Scrooge was not the hero at the beginning of the story; he was the hero at the end of the story when he gained wisdom. The grand theme of “A Christmas Carol,” is: how you treat others, changes their destiny, and it changes your destiny. The grand theme of our lives … what we make of our lives … it is our life masterpiece. This is our life poetry. To help all — especially the “least of those” in our communities.
To make a difference.
If your vision of caring can be more expansive, you will be surprised how you can help change the destiny of others and, ultimately, your destiny. Caring is our poetry as doctors. It is what we make. It is how we change our world and ourselves.
Steven Kamajian is a family physician.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com