'Synchrony is the superhighway that leads to connection and to kindness.'

On Words | Personal Reflections – III

While taking some little time off to delve deep into a few interesting reads that connect with the power of words – both fiction and non-fiction, I chanced upon this lovable read from Brian Goldman, a veteran emergency room physician, who has had quite a highly successful career in ‘setting broken bones, curing pneumonia, and pulling people back from the brink of medical emergency.’ The book is titled, The Power of Kindness: Why Empathy Is Essential in Everyday Life.

I found it so very pertinent a read, more so, as it comes from the pen, the mind and the heart of a practising medical doctor! 

Yes! Although we’ve had the likes of Anton Chekhov, medical doctors by profession, who’ve given us some immortal classics in world literature, still, works of non-fiction from off the pens of such doctors, based on their professional acumen that speak from their rich experience, are quite few and far between!

But before taking the plunge, I would like to make special mention of three lovely people who were quite instrumental in putting down my thoughts on this post that gels well with the power of words in connect with ‘the power of kindness, and the power of empathy vis-a-vis medical doctors and hospitals!’

One is an amazing Professor friend, Dr. Archana Sardana, Head, Dept of English, Anna Adarsh College for Women, Chennai, who’d gifted me with such an intense read, written by a neurosurgeon - a book that, i should confess, has had a profound, transformative impact on my sensibilities altogether. I remember, Dr. Archana’s car driver driving down all the way through the mazy labyrinthine cityscape, with this lovely read on him, and calling me up at least four times before he could ascertain my location and hand it over (this life-changing read,) right in my hands, that particular evening, at around 7 pm, on 31 January 2018! 

The book is titled, When Breath Becomes Air and it was written by Paul Kalanithi, a renowned neurosurgeon who gets terminal lung cancer, and passes away, almost midway through the writing of this, his highly inspiring, moving memoir, which has been in the Numero Uno spot on the New York Times Nonfiction bestseller list for eight weeks in a row! An amazing case of a neurosurgeon turning to the therapies of literature, after learning that from thence on, after having been diagnosed with the disease, each and every breath has become even more precious for him!

After having earned two degrees in English literature from Stanford, Paul Kalanithi attends medical school, where he is weighed down heavily by the question, ‘What makes human life meaningful?’ And this pertinent question makes him take to the pathway to becoming a neurosurgeon, thus helping him see his profession less as a job and more as a sacred calling!

And hence he says with confidence, I don’t think I ever spent a minute of any day wondering why I did this work, or whether it was worth it. The call to protect life  -  and not merely life but another’s identity; it is perhaps not too much to say another’s soul  -  was obvious in its sacredness, he quips!

To cut things short, towards the end of the book he predicates how healthy habits for life, that are highly subjective in their very nature, like empathy, hope, love, striving and virtue are by all means higher and nobler ideals to life, than the ideals enshrined in science, which, though highly objective, and although it may provide us with the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, is yet ‘unable to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.’

The tears spontaneously trickle down your cheeks even as you read page by page into this so intense and so realistic memoir of sorts! I would say, each of us as humans, should really go through the pages of this wonderful book with pen in hand and a notebook for jotting down notes!

Thanks much to Dr. Archana, I also passed on this intense Paul Kalanithi read to a few other friends of mine who’ve found it such an amazing, life-changing read!

Bill Gates also endearingly writes about the book in his personal blog, by confessing in the title, ‘This book left me in tears,’ and goes on to add, in his review, ‘I was super touched by it, as was Melinda and our daughter Jennifer. In fact, I can say this is the best nonfiction story I’ve read in a long time.’

Coming back to the power of empathy and how doctors grapple with this wonderful concept in their medical life, Brian Goldman’s phenomenal read titled, The Power of Kindness: Why Empathy Is Essential in Everyday Life, is such a balmy read for the soul! An intriguing read meet for anyone who wants to be healthy, happy and be an empath!

Mr. Madhuvalan is to the far right! Pic courtesy: Ms. Jenny

The second person I’d like to acknowledge on this post would be my cousin Mr. Madhuvalan, a software engineer based in Chennai. A couple of days back, at our little niece’s (CJ as we call her) birthday bash, on 08 June, where we had a memorable rendezvous with kith and kin, we both opened up on various topics galore, culminating in how one could possibly de-stress, and on the benefits of de-stressing! Mr. Madhuvalan is so passionate about the Aviation industry, and so he was waxing eloquent on how Air Traffic Controllers gain their mandated holiday time as ways and means to de-stress themselves, away from their humdrum, daily, habituated grind! He also added to say that medical doctors in particular, needed to de-stress much, as they also, in like manner, deal with the precious lives of their patients. One small stroke with the scalpel, under duress, would spell the difference between life and death, he quipped, talking about the importance of a de-stressing mechanism for people in the medical fraternity.

It is in this connect that Brian’s book assumes greater significance for me! Brian himself admits to the therapeutic effects of a de-stress for his medical career!

As a doctor, I have made plenty of mistakes, most of them due to a fatigue-related failure to make the right diagnosis, he admits!

Thank you Madhu brother! I'm so happy our discussions have proved so highly blogworthy!

Well, yes! Brian begins his book by asking a very pertinent question, that’s so intriguing and so highly validating!

‘Am I a kind soul?’ He asks!

He adds to say,

‘From what I’ve told you about myself, I sound pretty kind. So how come I’m asking? Because doubt has crept into me. I have felt this way for a long time. That I’m too stressed, too busy, too preoccupied with the errors I make at work and in life, too anxious and too self-absorbed to think enough about others to be kind to them. And I’m not alone. As I look around me, I see the same problem everywhere’ he quips.

Then he gives his yummy connect with the robusta, the barista and the bistro in tow!

Brian speaks -

You order a decaf latte. The barista repeats your order word for word. A minute later, he’s forgotten it and asks you to repeat it. When you finally pick up your beverage, one sip tells you he got it completely wrong.

What these and many stories have in common is lack of empathy.

It seems everyone has a painful story or two to tell. A recent study by University of Indiana psychologist Sara Konrath found empathy among today’s college students has declined by about 40 percent compared to their peers 20 or 30 years ago, with the biggest drop after 2000.

Then he opens up on the buzzword amongst developmental psychologists across the world today, on the topic of Interactional Synchrony, which I found so highly interesting!

Over to Brian -

The word synchrony means “a simultaneous action or occurrence.” For instance, it may refer to the matching of rhythmic behaviour between people. Synchrony is an important topic among developmental psychologists. In 1974, William Condon and Louis Sander published a groundbreaking study in the journal Science in which they observed the interaction between newborns and their parents. They found that as early as the first day of life, newborns move in sync with the sound of a parent speaking.

Interactional Synchrony in demonstration!
These are sample snaps from videotape recordings of two-three week infants.
The results have indicated that babies aged 3 to 27 days old
could imitate both facial expressions and manual gestures.

Later, Andrew Meltzoff from Oxford University and M. Keith Moore from the University of Washington demonstrated that babies as young as three days old imitate the facial expressions of their mothers. Thus, newborns mirror their parents’ faces, and their parents mirror theirs. It’s one of the earliest examples of what developmental psychologists refer to as interactional synchrony, an essential part of the process by which babies become attached to their parents.

Synchrony is also found in dance and music and in shared rituals such as chanting in church. If you have ever performed the wave at a baseball or football game, you have taken part in a mass example of behavioural synchrony. Similarly, if you’ve ever met someone and just clicked with them, you have experienced interpersonal synchrony. The next time you visit a coffee bar or a restaurant, watch twosomes who are seated together. It’s not hard to spot those who share synchrony; they’re the ones whose hand gestures and speech patterns mirror one another.  

Studies have shown that people in sync have stronger social bonds. They are more likely to empathize with and be kind to one another. This is true between friends and acquaintances. What may surprise you is that it is also true between therapist and patient.

A 2014 study by Zac Imel, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Utah, found that therapists get in sync with their clients. The more they adopt the speech patterns of their patients, the more they empathize with them.

Synchrony is the superhighway that leads to connection and to kindness.

You can learn something meaningful about a word by considering its opposite. The antonym of empathy is apathy. The most obvious antonym of kindness is unkindness, although meanness, churlishness, greediness, ill will, self-seeking, and malignity are also opposites.

I need to know why I can’t be kind more often. Was I born without the wiring inside my brain? Or did I have it and lose it? Am I too busy, too selfish, too stressed, too preoccupied with self-doubt about my clinical skills and other abilities? If it’s in my nature and in the hard-wiring of my brain to be kind and empathic, then how do I get these qualities back?

And that’s exactly the essence of it all, contained within the 200 odd pages of this gripping read, that I would call, a ‘charter to empathy’!

Nope! No spoilers for y’all! The book is available on Amazon and on a host of other book selling platforms online for y’all to grab it rightaway!

The third person whom I’d like to acknowledge on this blogpost would be Prof. David Albert, one of my lovely colleagues in the Department of English at MCC!

I still remember vividly, this incident that happened years and years ago, in College, when dear David accosted a guy who was frequently running into lousy mischief of all sorts! The student under discussion, used to take pleasure in bullying his classmates, taunting them for no reason, take jibes at them for no reason, fight with them for no reason, and bunk classes in a row, for weeks and weeks, at his will and wish to entertain himself on his vain foibles and affectations! He was also highly into some ‘notorious habits’ that quite prove detrimental to life in the long run! 

Prof. David, I remember well, called him up to his chamber, and told him, ‘My dear boy, just accompany me once, to the ICU ward or the CCU Ward of any hospital right here in our vicinity. And well, I shall personally take you there! There, you will witness for yourself, how valuable and how precious your life is! You will understand how important it is to live your life with careful prudence and diligence! He added to say, the best place to learn life is in the hospital, my dear boy, where you would find hundreds of patients battling for their precious lives, writhing in pain, languishing in agony, wailing in torment, longing for empathy, longing for love and above all, for their healing. And you are here, wasting away your precious time, precious money of your parents on idle trifling, dangerous habits, and harmfully addictive things, hurting others in the process and living your life in utter contempt, disregard and vanity!’

How true his words prove!

So much for the power of kindness and empathy in a teacher, which, again, the author Brian Goldman explicates with such finesse in his 216-page read!

To be continued…

image courtesy: psychologyhubdotcodotuk, cbcdotca, aspenwordsdotorg