“So what makes you choose to love?”
They asked me like I knew the answer, like I knew how. But the truth was, my greatest enemy each day is myself, and I wonder all the time, how something like Medicine, could be so glorious and ugly, damning and brilliant at the same time.
Yesterday, a group of medical students met with me after work to interview me for a book project they had embarked on. Entitled “Project Inspire”, it would be a compilation of inspiring stories of doctors used to raise funds for a worthy cause. They wanted to know more about the humanitarian mission work I have been involved in, and my future dreams. I gladly accepted the interview, without realizing how little I know about missions, and loving the needy.
“So what makes you choose to love?”
That question completely stunned me, after I had gone on garrulously about what I had seen and learnt over the years in missions, which only made me realize how little I know about mission work, and loving people in the first place. We talked about Charity Tourism, about the stain it leaves and the harm it brings; we talked about medicine, how it really does bring out the worst in us when we become housemen and are forced to work under pressure beyond our physical limits; we talked about going against the flow to love our patients and nurses in an environment that encourages one to identify people by their profession and bed numbers instead of their names. Then came the crunch question, and I was speechless.
“So what makes you choose to love?”
I knew the right answer- it had to be God. Yet, the words fumbled around my tongue and spilled our clumsily, in dribs and drabs, beause I didn’t, still don’t know what it means to love people.
“So what do you mean by ‘just love the people’?”they asked, after I replied that very often, what people need is not another fancy medical set-up, a Programme in the mission field, but really, just friendship, a smile, dignity.
Again I was speechless, because for all the interviews, media coverage or speaking engagements I’ve had, I honestly feel I know so little of what it means to love, what it means to help the poor and the needy, what it means to make a difference to the world around me.
The clinic was a madhouse today. I got angry at one of my nurses, reprimanded a rude patient, and went home feeling like I knew nothing about love at all. So what if I had travelled to a few countries around the world? So what if I had raised some money for some causes? At that moment, when I came stark naked before myself to answer truthfully, I realized…
… that I knew so little, if anything, about love at all.
Why am I, instead of the hundreds of missionaries sacrificing their lives on the field, to be interviewed about loving the poor? Why am I, who gets angry and annoyed and so easily exasperated at work, being asked about how one chooses to love? Why am I, who knows so little about love, asked what it means to love.
I realize, I don’t know anything much about love at all.
Love. Love is when my nurse still smiles at me and comforts me when I’ve been rude and ungracious. Love is the busker who sings in the tunnel even though I lavish in his music and walk right by him. Love is the arms swung wide open, of muddy, smiling children, whom you think ought to have forgotten you, but have not, because they know you travelled to see them.
Love is my patient who shakes my hand thankfully even when I’ve been a tad too crisp with him. Love is him turning back and saying, “Doctor, sorry for taking up your time. Thank you so much.” (which really breaks my heart to hear, because I didn’t make him feel important enough with me.) Love is the little children who miss you but forgive you for not visiting them again. Love is the missionaries who are so grateful for a week of your time spent with them even though they’ve slogged there their whole lives, and made even more effort to host you in your short intrusion into their lives.
If anything, I’ve been a greater recipient of love than I ever have been a giver.
“So what makes you choose to love?”
Even though I am frail. Even though I am weak. Even though I try so hard and still fail, again and again, every day, in different ways.
We love, because He first loved us.
1 John 4:19.