School of Medicine Commencement
May 5, 2007
University Center, Macon
PASSAGES
By: R. Kirby Godsey
I join a chorus of congratulations as you step across these monumental thresholds of receiving these advanced degrees in the health professions. Commencement addresses are a part of your ritual of graduation. My role is to stretch your patience and to quiet your soul before this evening of irrational exuberance takes over. In this eager interlude, I want to cause you to think about your personal story. I have watched closely, more closely than most, the birth and nurturing of this School over these past 25 years. This School of Medicine was created to change the story of your life and to change the history of healthcare in Georgia.
As you gather here on the boundary between years of achievement and years of expectation, think about your own experience – where you have been, why you are here at this moment, and where you go from here. We celebrate this Commencement barely in the shadows of tragedy, where, in another University not far away, the lives of young and eager students and promising professionals were ended by the rage and bitterness of a desperate young man. Our dismay and disbelief left us, as a nation, silent and weeping.
We should be reminded that our stories are usually defined by a very small cadre of events, often unpredictable, events that change us forever – some heroism, some compelling teacher, some indelible relationship, some small decision, some irrational encounter. We are never quite the same. It turns out that people and events are the hinges on which our personal histories turn. People and events. Some of your stories will tell of providing counsel for someone who feels beaten down. Some of you will find yourself caught between doing what’s right and doing what will get you by. Some of you will face conflict in coping with complex healthcare systems. For some, no longer will people allow you to be Natalie or Emmet or Laurie or Nicholas. You will be Dr. Baker and Dr. Bowers. You will be Dr. Cochran and Dr. Moseley. Doctor will become your first name. You will even begin to introduce yourself that way. “Hello, I am Dr. Durkin.” But hear this word: The initials M.D. will not be large enough to capture the whole story of your journey. Your stories will indeed, in part, be shaped by your labors as health professionals. But they will also be shaped by laughter and wonder, by moments and mysteries. They will be sobered by fear and grief. One thing is for sure: your story will be unlike any story that has ever been written. You are composing an up-close, flesh and blood kind of story, a story that will experience human triumph, a story that will surely take you through dark valleys.
What is so significant about this stirring moment called graduation from Medical School is that everything that got you here might be described as prologue.
As you chart your course beyond this prologue, I want to offer you three pegs on which to hang your white coats – three stakes in the ground, to which you, as healthcare professionals, as nurses and doctors and therapists can repair and regain your bearings. Never doubt. From time to time, we all lose our way. So I offer three brief words to serve as lights to help you find your way home.
1. First. Pack this truth in your little black bag. Presence will be more powerful than prescriptions. Listening will be more powerful than speaking.
The world and even your profession will want to turn you into medical mechanics, doing what is expected, behaving almost like robotic health professionals. That is not all bad. We need more more competent professionals, but the world, especially this world, needs a lot more. Your role increasingly will be to diagnose problems and prescribe solutions. Your ability to analyze, and to assess, and to understand problems that contribute to human disease, your ability to set forth programs and methods and medicines that will alleviate malevolent human conditions is a rare gift.
Even so, despite the rigor and the depth of your learning, your most important asset will ultimately not be what you know. Your most important asset will be who you are.
You see, the world today, this world that is being increasingly defined by violence and incivility, a world where fear hovers nearby and global unrest seems pervasive, a world where we have higher and higher healthcare costs that are matched by more staggering human misery. This world needs not only your competence and your skill. It urgently needs your ideas and your creativity. It needs your humanness. Your presence, your intelligence, and your integrity will be your most important assets.
It will be tempting to allow yourself to be reduced to a mere tool of the profession. I say to you: You are far more. You are a person with profound insight and intuitive understanding. People, above all else, need the power of your being here. You bring not only your knowledge. You bring your spirit and your mind. You bring your wisdom and your passion to every problem, and making a difference with your wise and passionate presence will change everything. Presence will be more powerful than prescriptions. What you hear will be more powerful than what you say.
2. A second word, a second peg on which to hang your white coats. Put it on your wall. Hope will be more powerful than healing. Our greatest legacy will not be the healing salve which we administer or the answers that fall so easily from our lips. The hope – hear the word, hope – the hope which you foster will be your most enduring legacy. Hope is what keeps our human stories alive and when people give up hope, their lives begin to waste away. So, while medicines will help to heal our fragile bodies, only hope can ultimately heal the human spirit.
Being here from the first day a student was admitted to this Mercer School of Medicine, I remember. I remember Mary Ray, who nurtured and shepherded a young boy who was the light of her life. The light of her life went out too soon. In that painful loss, Mary searched for a shred of meaning to stem her grief. She found meaning and hope, in part, by helping us begin this School of Medicine, so that you could wear these hoods and receive these diplomas. She wanted you to help her little boy. I remember more than 25 years ago when a simple woman, living on the margins, would rise early in the morning to make ice cream to sell for pennies on her back porch, steadily collecting her coins in a jar. One day, she walked to the University, bringing this jar of coins and said, “I want to help us have more doctors.” Her name was Mattie J. Leek. But more important than her name was her human character. She had the will and the courage to participate in a modest but revolutionary way in creating a spring of hope.
You see, we are not essentially in the medicine or the counseling business. We are doing something far more important. Hope is the generative idea of medicine. I believe that people can likely live longer without food and water than they can live without hope. To put it bluntly, you and I are not potion peddlers. We are hope peddlers. Put it down. You will be somebody’s best hope. Put a sticky note on your diploma that says, “I am somebody’s best hope.” So, your highest calling is not simply to cure disease. Your highest calling is not simply to bandage the wounds or to solve the difficult and knotty healthcare problems that confound us. Your highest calling is to be a voice, to be a hand, to be a face, to become a reservoir of hope in somebody’s life. We should never diminish the powerful role we can play in healing the wounds, in alleviating the suffering, in listening to the hurt, in overcoming the trauma, but hang your coat every night on this peg of truth: In our world today, our greatest gift will be the hope we engender. Hope will ultimately be more powerful than healing.
3. A third and final word, a third peg on which to hang your white coats. Paint this truth on your rainbow. Giving will be more powerful than gaining.
We should not be foolish enough to diminish the significance of acquisition – acquiring knowledge, acquiring friends, acquiring influence, even acquiring wealth – all very good things. Yet, we should resist the treacherous inclination to calculate the worth of our being here by the knowledge, the influence, or the wealth we have acquired. When we live chiefly to know more, to be more, to have more than anybody else, our human stories become corroded with arrogance and self-importance.
Defining our lives by acquisition alone inevitably leads to a descending spiral of defeat and loss, because of this one immutable truth: All acquisitions are temporary.
Giving is so powerful in transforming our human stories because of two realities. First, giving requires freedom. Giving means letting go and when we cannot let go, we do not possess. We are possessed. Giving is the ultimate act of freedom.
Second, giving requires the ability to see yourself beyond yourself – to see that you did not arrive at this moment by yourself. We are all drinking from wells we didn’t dig and living in houses we didn’t build. Let us find the courage and grace to see beyond our inward preoccupations. Arrogance and possessiveness chain the human spirit. Grace and courage set us free.
So, as you go, do not forget the very human part of the story which you are beginning to write. Reach for the courage to come out from behind the façade of your profession or your position, to be a person freed from the tyranny of unbridled ambition and self-importance, a person who embodies respect, a person who connects with civility and compassion. In the final analysis, your life will be shaped far more by the care you give than the net worth you gain.
These three: Etch them onto your wall, stitch them inside your coat, make a magnet for your refrigerator. These three:
1. Presence will be more powerful than prescriptions.
2. Hope will be more powerful than healing.
3. Giving will be more powerful than gaining.
God bless you on your journey.
About the Speaker
R. Kirby Godsey became Chancellor of Mercer University on July 1, 2006, after serving 27 years as the institution’s President and Chief Executive Officer. During his presidency, the University experienced unprecedented growth in enrollment, endowment and academic programs, becoming a dynamic and comprehensive institution of 11 colleges and schools with a national reputation for academic excellence. One of his first initiatives as president was the establishment of the School of Medicine, which is celebrating its 25th year of educating physicians. Recognized and honored as a national leader in higher education, he is well-known for his community leadership that has led to the revitalization of the downtown Macon area and the cultural arts. He holds five degrees, including a PhD from Tulane University, and three honorary doctorates. A prolific writer, he has authored three books.