Back in another time, in another life, when I used to be on call for accident and emergency in one of the busiest teaching hospitals in the UK.
In those days (in the mid 90’s) I would get calls in the middle of the night to stitch up people’s faces for any number of reasons.
On several occasions I found myself stitching up one person while the person who had caused the wound was in the adjacent cubical and they were still shouting at each other.
In circumstances like this you sometimes wonder what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and whether you should bother making a good job of things at all.
In those circumstances I used to reassure myself that I was carrying out the work for myself so that I could see the end point, the end result, which was good and something I could be proud of and I was learning in a better way, another skill.
I found myself in that position again today.
Having a conversation with someone on the phone that I didn’t want to have which took much longer than I wanted it to but then realised that what I was doing was helping other people by having that conversation and stopping them having to have it and so that made it easier.
As always, we can have one narrative that says, ‘this is unfair’ or one narrative that says, ‘I’m doing this for a reason’ and the second one is always better than the first.
Blog Post Number - 3218
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