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Tag: self awareness

Do Dogs Watch Oprah?

As an incurable compulsive introspect, I tend to brood, ponder, contemplate, and (of course) muse on “big ideas,” such as:
• What makes people choose things which cause themselves harm?
• Are some people better people than others, or are they just more skilled at hiding their problems?
• Is pain really a bad thing, or is our aversion to it a sign of human weakness?
• Does God ever wear a hat?
• Do dogs watch Oprah?
• Why did I put “big ideas” in quotes?

Tough questions.

Lately I’ve been contemplating the nature of human awareness:
• Is self-awareness (the ability to think of ourselves in the third person) a uniquely human trait, and is lack of self-awareness the essence of mental illness?
• Is empathy, or other-awareness the highest of human traits?  Is this what the biblical idea of being “made in the image of God” really means?

Yeah, that’s a lot deeper than about dogs watching Oprah.  The second of these questions seems to be a very important dividing point in people’s ability to have good relationships with others.  Our ability to put ourselves into the place of others, pondering their motives, thoughts, and emotions, goes a very long way in helping us develop deep relationships and avoiding causing inadvertent pain.

It also seems to be a trait that is in short supply in our health care system.  I am amazed and deeply disturbed by how callously many of my patients have been treated by some of my colleagues.  Patients are seemingly treated as a commodity, a necessary evil required for billing of services.

I do understand that doctors and nurses are drained of their ability to show compassion by a system that puts them in an adversarial relationship with patients, hospital administrators, insurance companies, lawyers, and their fellow doctors and nurses.  That feeling of burn-out in me was one of the big reasons I left my old practice.  Either I had to change my compassion, or my situation.

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