The absolutely trustworthy is seated in the heart.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
While sitting on a park bench overlooking Manhattan’s East River, I first consciously appreciated that we think with both heart and mind, though I didn’t use those terms. While enjoying a cup of coffee, a buttered onion roll, and a newspaper, an ad fell out of the paper and onto my lap. I was 26-years-old, and this 5”x7” pre-printed insert on glossy, beige card-stock changed my life. It described a premed program at Columbia University for college graduates who were interested in going to medical school but were missing the required math and science courses.
I was working in the marketing department of a newspaper representative firm, had an apartment in Manhattan, and I had no interest in changing careers. I’d already worked at a logging camp in the Alaskan wilderness and as an elementary-school teacher with a Master’s degree, both at an inner-city school in Brooklyn and at the Waldorf School of Garden City, a private school on Long Island.
While reading about the program, an image of a man having a heart attack came to mind. He’d want, it seemed to me, a physician with expertise in diagnosing and treating his condition. He’d have other concerns, as well: How does this heart attack change my life? What do I say to my family, friends, and colleagues? How do I go forward? I thought he’d discuss these questions with the physician caring for him, not with a psychiatrist.
This combination — a career with intellectual demands and an equally strong inner component — spoke to me so powerfully that I instantly knew I’d apply to the program, and the ideas I developed that day have marked my career. I try to address my patients’ medical needs as well as their mental well-being. This work, I now see, calls on my thinking with both heart and mind..