Smile more.

The most powerful word in the universe is “anyway”.

As in, you mess up, but God loves you anyway.

You make mistakes, but God believes in you anyway.

You are a sinner, and God wants you anyway.

“Anyway” is what makes love, well, love.

Because love doesn’t depend on behavior. It doesn’t depend on performance.

 Love sees you and chooses you.

Love makes up its mind to be for you.

Love loves you anyway.

– Jed Brewer

 

Something in the atmosphere changed when I shifted hospitals and departments. Maybe it was the pace of life, the people, the culture, the style of doing things, something altogether intangible or a combination of all the above factors… But it disoriented me in a profound way. Perhaps it was the few traumatic encounters I had back-to-back at the beginning or the hostility I had faced at the start which threw me so completely off course and left my spirit battered.

 

I just couldn’t be myself.

 

My defenses were constantly high and I was always on high gear.

 

Perhaps it was the hundred-hour work weeks or the stress… but I knew they weren’t the main reasons, because the previous rotation was far busier. Something in the atmosphere had changed, and it shook my crystal globe into a snow-stormed frenzy.

 

I was on yet another 32-hour marathon call last night when that bubbly, chirpy voice called out to me.

 

“Doctor Wei Jia,” she said in mandarin, “You must smile more.”

 

She beamed at me.

 

I loved her. During my third week of work in this new setting when I had faced a couple of nasty encounters and was under duress, I had left the hospital with a tear-stained face after yet another discouraging day. Seeing me in the corridor, she did not avoid me. Instead, she called out to me, “Wei Jia, ni yao jia you ah!” You can do it.

 

She beamed at me. She always beams at me. From time to time at work, she would always flash me a cheeky smile, saying hello to me not just when she needed me to ink up medications or see a patient or do yet another post-operation review. She would say hello to me because she wanted to see me smile, too.

 

I was on-call yesterday and feeling  low. Just the day before, I had finished a marathon of a 32-hour call which left me feeling giddy and zonked out, and here I was again doing yet another 32-hour call before leaving the next day for a medical mission trip to Indonesia. Nurses were calling me continually, “Doctor, please come”, “Doctor, what should I do?”, “Doctor, can you please prescribe something for the patient?” and I felt tired and harangued.

 

I hated the way I felt at work, burnt out. I hated working out of fear. And I hated the way I sounded over the phone to nurses- crisp, monotonous, curt at times. There was pressure from the top, which came from pressure higher up.

 

I missed the previous hospital. There, the workload was twice as high, yet, I was mostly on top of things. The nurses loved me and I loved them. Why did I now feel so frustrated. There was internal strife within me.

 

“Doctor Wai Jia,” she beamed at me, smiling and giggling her cherubic smile. “You know I notice something about you. When you get stressed, you can come across as being quite curt to others, you know.” She said this to me beaming in beautiful mandarin. “You must smile more. You know, we have the choice to be happy or sad each day, so why not choose to be happy?”

 

Then she giggled.

 

This was S, my beautiful nurse, who always gave me an encouraging look, smile or word of affirmation whenever I needed it most. Tears welled up behind my eyes- in guilt because of the poor witness I had been since this surgical posting started, in pain because of the battery of awful incidents which had piled up since work started in this place (how could I even begin to explain how I felt), but most all, because of how she touched me.

 

She had no reason to be honest with me. This could have cost her. But love is like that. It takes risks, it tells the truth, it believes the best in you. True love is honest, and Honesty is the salmon against the current, that leaps across obstacles to get to where it wants not because it has to, but because it wants to. Love is like that, it tells the truth not because it has to, but because it chooses to, for another’s good.  It pierces through the veils of disguise and shades of grey. It shines through the densest of walls to make them like glass. Love never hides.

 

I felt terrible at once. I knew what she said was true. But I was also tired. And hungry. And in need of someone to simply say thank you, you’re doing a good job, you’re not wasting your youth away just running mindless errands for patients you will never see again in your life, you’re not pushing your limits physically and mentally for nothing, you’re doing your best and you’re doing a good job. Now that we have student interns attached to us junior doctors, I see the value of praise and affirmation and lavish as much of it as I can on them. I want them to know I value them not for what they can do for me, but for who they are. Back at my previous hospital, I had a good reputation even before I started work- people had heard of what I had done outside, they were encouraging and loving and affirming. Here, where things are vastly different and nobody knew me, I had been labelled slow and overly-cautious and an underperformer from the start. I was greatly discouraged after round after round of being hit in the boxing ring. And I think I let that hurt harden me, and slowly turn me into the people who hurt me and whom I despised the most. In turn, in my unforgiveness, I had unconsciously despised myself. Pride became my shield.

 

“Why do you tell me this?” I asked her.

 

“Because. Just because,” she would not stop beaming. “Because I know in the inside, you’re a good person. Ni ben xing shi hao de.”

 

Ben xing. In mandarin, it means your innate character. She believed, in love, that innately, I was good.

 

Why should she? What had I done for her?

 

“What are people saying about me?” I asked her.

 

 

I stood there, surprised. Gossip and spite are convenient fuel for fire. Why didn’t she join them? Why did she choose to believe one rumour over the other?

 

She kept beaming. “Just smile more, Doctor Wai Jia. There will always be more work but work will always be done. Smile. Think of all the kids you help. Look at their lives and ours, aren’t we so much more fortunate? Someday, when you go on a mission trip, tell me okay!”

 

I see you, her smile said. I see you for you. I see you for your flaws and imperfections, your disabilities and handicaps, your foibles and failings. And still, I see you, for who you are innately, in spite of what others say about you, in spite of what I see and hear myself, in spite of the reality of things.

 

And my tears spilled out, because of hurt and shame and my own frustrations with myself and work in this season of life, but more, because of what she had shown me.

 

Love. Love loves you anyway. Love doesn’t grade you on a scale of 1 to 10 in a monthly evaluation form like we are graded in the hospital. Love doesn’t say you get your marks subtracted because you were rude in this instance. Love doesn’t compare you against a better yardstick. Love chooses you. Love roots for you.

 

Love takes the risk to say I want the best for you and I will be honest in order to give that to you, at my own risk. Simple because I want you to be a better person. 

 

And you beamed and you beamed and you called my name through the night, whenever you saw me, just so you knew I wasn’t alone and that you knew you believed the best in me: I wasn’t trash. I wasn’t the doctor with the attitude problem. I wasn’t slow or incompetent or mean. I was just, under stress, needing a bit of encouragement and honesty and a hug. And you hugged me and I went on through the night.

 

“Wei Jia!” you said in mandarin across the ward corridor, “Yao kai xin! Yao xiao!”

 

Be happy. Smile more.

 

I will, dear. I’m going to Indonesia tomorrow morning on a medical mission trip to serve little dirty children and destitute women and elderly people and I will bring back the smiles of that land when I return to work next week.

 

Thank you, for loving me this way.