Letters to a Young Doctor.... first in a series

Letters to a young Doctor… the first in a series

“What do you wish you knew when you first started practice?”

“Everything”

Hello,

There are so many things that I wish I had known when I started in medicine, things that unfortunately are unknowable until you have spent some time in practice.There are some things that you cannot know until you have walked this path for a while.It is like a pair of shoes you plan to take hiking, you try them on, walk around the store, climb the fake rock to see how they fit going up and down, and make your best guess.The felt good while you walked all over the REI, looking at everything, but when you hit the trail you find they are not quite right.The break is a little too far forward on the foot and so after 20 KM the midfoot is sore, as are your toes.There are so many things like that in the world, they require first-hand experience to understand…..

They were kind and offered to put me up for the weekend. I did not know them, and they were trusting that this stranger in the house would be alright. That is the principle of Couchsurfing. People generously open their homes to strangers passing through to spend a night. I was coming back to Princeton for another Hakomi weekend, and the place I had stayed previously was not available. I put my name out with my plans for my weekend of education, and I got several offers from strangers to host my stay. Each one was kind, generous, and unique. However, one was on the bus route I used to get to the Yoga Center where the training was taking place, and I was intrigued. A family of four from the French Alps staying in Princeton for a couple of years, and their house was 50 meters from my bus stop. At the end of the weekend with them, my life had been forever changed.