My doctor is a caring one. She listens attentively, asks about my health goals at every wellness visit (and means it), and tells me to take a few deep breaths before checking my blood pressure. She appears to be in her forties—slim, athletic, a runner, maybe. Drawings by her children, or perhaps her youngest patients, hang on the door and walls: rainbows rising from clouds, suns without tears or needles, alongside not so neatly arranged informational flyers. When I leave, she hands me paper slips for labs and follow-up appointments, a small ritual at the threshold. A couple of times, I forgot to complete it.
There is a copy of a Thich Nhat Hanh book in her exam room. I imagine it as an amulet, or maybe a mantra, quietly working on her behalf: “I am a continuation, like the rain is a continuation of the cloud.” She cannot be anything less, anything more. In fifteen minutes, she is expected to earn my trust, understand me, connect the dots, and spill them out—systemically, mindfully. The impossible. She might as well be a genie in a bottle, granting three health wishes and then teaching me how asking for too much leaves me with less than I arrived with.
While I wait for her, staring at the book, I wonder what time and billing constraints do to mindfulness, to systemic thinking. Can anyone sustain the necessary dosage of floating attention, of attunement, long enough to catch the inconsistency, the revelation, the aha, while staying on script and on time? How can she do good work this way? It must be the amulet, I think—the transitional object.
During one visit, I mention data from my smart ring. It shows my heart rate dipping late at night, perhaps explaining why I feel so tired the next day. She looks me in the eye and says, “I am not trained to read these devices. If you tell me a symptom, I can look at that.” She does not ask to see the data. The amulet fails.
I don’t remember what we talk about after that. I am distracted by the ring, the book, the rainbows, the clouds, the sun—and then the rainbow again. The health flyers might as well be falling from the ceiling, like propaganda pamphlets in war movies, and I wouldn’t notice. The genie escapes the bottle, exposing my arrogance: my wish to control everything, to outsmart illness by staying ahead of it, by changing the game and making it harder for my doctor to keep up. She does not have time to be curious, to linger with me, to look at the data, to align my ring with my health goals.
I have had other doctor visits since then. I still wear my ring, but I no longer mention it. In a way, it has become my own amulet—signaling what goes unspoken, the gap between what could be and what is. A small, magical object holding the secrets of my health.
I am a continuation, like the rain is a continuation of the cloud.
Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash
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