Ownership

I was recently reading a summary of a biography of Dr. Albert Schweitzer. If you don't know who that is, that's just fine - you're probably my age with parents that aren't as old as mine nor are they in the medical field ( my mother told me about him ). Schweitzer was an individual of deep-rooted spirituality, whose life was dedicated to service - most notably his hospital in West Africa, where he eventually died. He was fueled by the sense "...that we must not regard our lives as belonging to ourselves alone."

...interesting thought... why not?

The Shaft

Why do we place so much pressure on young men in today's culture to date when they may very well not want to? I've thought about this recently since spring has descended upon us - everyone comes out of hibernation and LO! the opposite sex never looked so good and summer relationships are beginning to take hold. With this recent resurgence of courting, especially when held against the contemporary dating trends (or rather the falling off of them), we, as bright young women, generally tend to renew our efforts in nudging the young men of our acquaintances to get off their duffs and formally socialize with young ladies.

This is a bit cynical, but what if boys don't ask girls out simply because they don't want to? Are we really to begrudge them for not doing something that we'd normally not do as well? We tend to not go out with those who we do not already have some inkling of interest in (be it plutonic or something else favorable), or are otherwise leery of - why not allow that of the men? What if they're just not that into you? Is there some unwritten code or law of social propriety that dictates that men must date you or give you a chance? I have yet to find such a document, but as a friend suggested to me once, this lack of regulation of modern dating tactical foreplay has made dating harder and more scarce than easier.

Odd to think that things were easier when there were more rules.... but if you examine it further, if nothing is expected of you, if there's no pressure, what else other than self-motivation will push you to complete the task? In considering us in our procrastinatory comfort zones, I propose self-motivation is the only thing at this point that will save today's dating culture. Since this is the way the wind seems to be blowing, it's easier to sail with it than try to reintroduce antiquated societal courting customs that will not work with this generation.

So, is that it? Psh, H*** no! Combat by making yourself more desireable and marketable - in good and Godly ways only. I am in no way suggesting that you throw in the towel and completely start catering to the whims of the opposite sex - they're hormonally driven and as we all know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You can't please everyone, but you can please yourself and then go out to find that puzzle piece that completes your picture.

Just... don't get offended when the boys don't ask you out....

The 21st Century Seabiscuit

From my muses of prose at the NY Times, I felt this was one description of the events that actually gave some credit where credit was due (and personality to boot).

(The article may be found at this web address: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/sports/othersports/03derby.html)

Rob Carr/Associated Press

Jockey Calvin Borel celebrates Mine That Bird's win at the 135th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Saturday.

Mine That Bird Uses Shortest Route to Win Derby

By JOE DRAPE

Published: May 2, 2009

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Sometimes this game brings you to tears. Sometimes it feels right to be wrong. And always it is better than O.K. when the tears streaming down your face are caused by a man in a black cowboy hat and an almost handlebar mustache, a Cajun jockey with more horse than book sense and a scrawny $9,500 gelding.

Chip Woolley, Calvin Borel and Mine That Bird, an improbable — no, impossible — 50-1 long shot, did just that Saturday, running away with the 135th running of America’s greatest race, the Kentucky Derby.

Horse racing has had some bad big days recently.

Last year, the filly Eight Belles was euthanized on the racetrack after finishing second here. When the 2006 Derby winner Barbaro broke down in the Preakness, he brought greater public attention to the sport’s safety and welfare issues. Early Saturday it appeared to be more of the same: I Want Revenge, the morning-line favorite, came up lame in his left front ankle and was scratched.

By 6:30 p.m., when Mine That Bird squirted through a hole in the rail and skipped from the muddy track into the lane all alone, the 153,563 at Churchill Downs checked their programs to see who the heck the No. 8 horse was.

By that time, Borel and this horse he hardly knew were on their way to the winner’s circle for the blanket of roses. In 2007, after Borel guided Street Sense to a Derby victory with a similar rail-skimming, last-to-first trip, the nation was introduced to this humble, emotional man with a grade-school education and a Ph.D-sized heart. Borel, in turn, was introduced to Queen Elizabeth II at a White House state dinner.

As soon as Mine That Bird crossed the finish line six and a quarter lengths ahead of 18 others, Borel’s tears flowed with the warmth and power of Niagara Falls. He patted, hugged, hollered and dripped tears on the gelding he met for the first time Monday. Finally, Borel kissed a rose and lofted it toward the heavens in honor of his late mother and father.

“I wish my mother and father were here to see what I have accomplished in my life,” he said an hour later, dissolving in tears once again.

While it took Mine That Bird just 2 minutes 2.66 seconds to cover the Derby’s mile-and-a-quarter distance, it took his trainer, Woolley, a lifetime and a couple of days to occupy horse racing’s most hallowed real estate below Churchill Downs’s twin spires.

The 45-year-old Woolley, a former bareback rodeo rider, loaded Mine That Bird in a van and hauled him behind his truck from his base in New Mexico, stopping at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, Tex., so his horse could gallop a couple of miles.

Those were hard miles, especially because Woolley is on crutches after breaking his leg in a recent motorcycle accident. In fact, last week Woolley and Mine That Bird’s owners, Mark Allen and Dr. Leonard Blach, were pointing Mine That Bird to the Lone Star Derby next weekend. Instead, they decided to dream big.

“I had no real feeling about how we’d do, but we came here to be competitive,” Woolley said.

On Friday, Woolley confessed that he was just happy to be here alongside Hall of Famers like D. Wayne Lukas, Bob Baffert and Nick Zito. He was amazed that horse enthusiasts stopped him in restaurants and knew that Mine That Bird was, indeed, the 2-year-old champion last year in Canada. Allen and Blach paid more than the $9,500 Mine That Bird fetched in the auction ring — $400,000, to be exact, after he won four races in a row.

Why buy a gelding? Mine That Bird does not have the cushy life of a stud awaiting him. Allen and Blach are not going to make millions in the breeding shed.

“We wanted a racehorse, not a stallion,” Allen said.

Couldn’t you at least get a deal?

“There was no haggling,” Allen said with a no-nonsense western twang. “They wanted $400,000. We paid it.”

It looked like a bargain when Borel started sanding the rail heading into the far turn, picking off one, two, three and, finally, 15 horses. The final hurdle came with an eighth of a mile left when Mine That Bird bulled through a sliver of a hole inside Join in the Dance.

“I wasn’t worried,” Borel said. “He’s a small horse and I knew I could squeeze him through.”

Baffert’s Santa Anita Derby winner, Pioneerof the Nile, was closing in the middle of the track, but it was much too late. He finished second.

“Those cowboys came with a good horse,” Baffert said.

The Illinois Derby victor Musket Man and the Arkansas Derby champion Papa Clem clunked up for third and fourth position. But all three are destined to be footnotes in one of the tallest tales about the Derby. Beyond the match race with War Admiral, no one remembers the many horses Seabiscuit turned back.

No, Mine That Bird earned a first-place check worth more than $1.4 million for his cowboy connections and returned the second-largest win payout in Derby history for his few and true believers — $103.20 for a $2 bet. Mine That Bird, a son of Birdstone out of the mare Mining My Own, has captured five of his nine career races.

Best of all, the little-gelding-that-could allowed Woolley to blink tears back from behind his sunglasses, tip his black hat and linger over how his improbable road to the Derby had ended. Before 6:24 p.m. Saturday, he was told, no one outside the tumbleweeds of New Mexico knew who Chip Woolley was.

He gulped, then swallowed.

“They’ll know me now,” he said, as prickly as a cactus.

Yes, they will.

John Gress/Reuters

Jockey Calvin Borel celebrating aboard Mine That Bird as they win the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Saturday.

Here's to the victor, quere es poder. Salud.

Lessons Learned From Disappointment

Disappointment is sort of a unique feeling, or at least I've found it to be such. It has as many "dialects", if you will, that love has (i.e. depends on what elicited it), but at the core is the same overall feeling of .... not regret, but of....failure. It doesn't matter what failed, anything from another person to cookies will still produce that all to familiar result, but with different flavors that leave a slightly different taste in ones mouth, possibly directly correlated to how much of an emotional investment was placed into the subject. Sometimes that taste is bitter, sometimes it's dashed or denial, other times it's moderately expected, and at times it's especially the taste of humbling.

It's that humbling aftershock I believe to be some of the most potent, especially when you don't see it coming (oh heavens, yes, lol). Much like how the tongue feels as a result after eating too much pineapple or one too many habañero peppers, it leaves one feeling vulnerable for a time before the post-traumatic analyses begin to figure out what went wrong and if there's any chance of saving face. Its that post-traumatic analyses I believe to be the pivotal piece to the piece of resolving disappointments aftermath. Without it, one sets themself up for wallowing in self-pity, which we all know is destructive in its own right.

From the most recent disappointment analysis I've conducted on myself, I've come to realize a few things:

1. Sometimes, you just need to fess up that you'd been had. It's hard to admit that either you assumed something that wasn't correct or evident, so stick to the facts (because we all know what happense when you assume).

2. It's okay to hope and have faith in something, but be realistic about it. Although...somethings require a leap of faith and hope...

3. Don't be afraid to call a spade a spade - just make sure you have the evidence to back up your assertion.

4. Move on. I know women especially are devils on harboring ill-will (we want our justice SERVED), but you know what, the sun also rises and that means another day and another clear slate. If one opportunity blows up, it probably wasn't for you anyway, learn why it happened and look forward to the next adventure. Nothing kills me more than we people refuse to try again.

So next time you find your self confronting your garden variety disappointment, don't worry - it's not the end of the world. I promise. Just means you'll have to be smarter for next time.

What It Means to Heal

I’d like to start with an anecdote, if I may. When my oldest brother, with whom I’ve very close, was in medical school, he’d often complain about the types of people he’d see during his rotations (the biggest patient population that my mother and I would tease him about was pediatrics, because he felt like he couldn’t talk to them intelligently). My mother and I subsequently took it upon ourselves to educate him during his early medical training on what it mean to truly be a doctor. We accomplished this in the traditional Watkins way, using irrefutable logic mixed into friendly banter and gentle reminders when appropriate, to get our points across that being a doctor extends beyond the science. Mind you, my brother isn’t an unfeeling individual at all, he has a very big heart, but it needed some higher education, if you will. Fast-forward a few years. During his residency, he related two experiences to me that signaled to me that he had softened a bit and had, in my opinion, grown as a physician.

The first experience, he called me specifically at the end of one day to tell me that I’d be proud of him. Naturally, I was curious. He proceeded to explain to me that he had just gotten off a night shift in the care units where he had gone in and checked in on everyone of his patients personally, turning off their televisions as he left so they could sleep. To one patient in particularly, he read aloud a small stack of cards they had received in the mail before turning out the lights. The second experience, he emailed me last year after working a shift at the children’s hospital with a little story of a little girl who had to get an MRI:

A little present for you - I was working in the MRI scanner today and took care of a little 9 y/o girl who came in for a repeat MRI brain for evaluation of her seizure disorder. What made me think of you today was the little girl came in clutching a stuffed saber-toothed tiger in her arms (ie. Tiggy). She looked very cute with it and I promised her her tiger would be with her throughout the scan even though she'd be under general anesthesia. Since the tiger itself contained no metal, this wasn't a problem. The scene was so memorable that I had to [tell] you…the little girl under general inside, and the readily identifiable tail of her stuffed saber-toothed tiger lying on top while she went through the study. Don't let it ever be said that I don't have a soft spot. =)

(FYI, “Tiggy” was my own stuffed tiger that I use to haul around with me everywhere when I was little). I told my brother the same thing after each of these experiences, “Now you know what it means to be a doctor.”

I apologize for taking a page there-bouts to tell you about my brother, but his metamorphosis is the thing that always comes to my mind when I think about true healing because, to me, it demonstrates that healing goes beyond the science. Much like many things in this life, it is the marriage of art and science. It is impossible for healing to be a truly perfect science because people are inherently an imperfect science – we aren’t clear-cut equations, but living probabilities. As a healthcare professional in two related realms, this is extremely important to me and my practice, and no matter how hard I try to dissociate myself from it a bit, I can’t help but somewhat “adopt” my patients/athletes/clients. I put so much my time and myself into them, how can I not without being a complete sociopath? Healing is a holistic practice, in whatever proportions deemed appropriate. At least in my mind its suppose to be.... (lol insurance companies may say otherwise)

Funny thing is, also,.... I don't hold that medicine has the market on healing, either.... but that's another story for another time.