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Blog: Doctor of Arts
By coincidence, I recently had the opportunity to get to know a doctor-turned-artist. While this encounter has not occurred in person yet, I hope I will have the honor and opportunity to meet this genius doctor, one day. This occurred via email communication.
When I searched for the doctor, to learn about his extensive experience in medicine and research, I was directed to his website.
I was immensely mesmerized by what I saw: This doctor was now an artist.
That online gallery included a collection of spectacular displays of beautiful art. I scrolled through and I read the doctor’s story: Switching from a very prominent career in the practice and mastering of medicine and science, to the practice and mastering of art.
I have come across doctors who have other talents and hobbies, unrelated to medicine, in various domains, including music, art, poetry, acting and journalism. But I have rarely heard of a doctor who totally quit medicine at the peak of his or her career to dedicate his or her time to a non-medical hobby or career.
I am not talking about doctors who quit clinical work and move on into administrative or industry jobs. There are plenty of those.
But the story of this doctor is quite exceptional.
Having a talent in arts since childhood and sporadically practicing the hobby while being a doctor is difficult. To quit the practice of medicine altogether to indulge totally into the practice of arts is quite an undertaking.
In my case, I have had multiple hobbies since childhood. But being a full-time clinician, researcher, teacher, administrator and a husband and father of four children has made it difficult to practice these hobbies.
Poetry has trickled into my mind since the days of middle school. While I have written numerous poems, I have not found the time to organize my poetry or put it into poetry books. The poems remain scattered in old notebooks and paper clips. Today, a lot of them are digitally archived. I have published poems now and then via social media.
The intriguing thing about poetry is the language in which it is written.
I am bilingual: Arabic-English, with Arabic being my mother’s native tongue. My theory is that a person can master a language if he or she learns it in early childhood, say in the first 5 years or so. Other languages learned afterwards become less mastered, especially when it comes to accent.
Furthermore, the original language becomes the language that the brain knows best to process information and data. I will never forget this encounter which occurred when I was in postgraduate training, many years ago. One day, we were discussing a case with our clinic attending. During the discussion, the attending needed to count on his fingers (I forgot the details or context of the discussion). As he was almost whispering, counting on his fingers, I noted that he was saying “un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq,” etc. He was counting in French.
As I knew some French, I asked him: “Are counting in French?”
He said, “Yes.”
“Why?” I asked.
He explained that he was born to French parents and he immigrated to America when he was 5 years old. He explained that despite decades of living in America, he still was thinking and processing information in French.
There are many bilingual people around the world. I wonder if research could be done on these people to test the hypothesis.
In the absence of research, this discussion will remain anecdotal. Back to poetry, my poetic writings have solely been in Arabic. I have tried writing poetry in English, but I failed miserably. On the other hand, my daughter, Dua, writes poetry, but she writes in English. Dua’s mother tongue is perhaps more English than it is Arabic, having grown up in a household of bilingual parents. And while she masters Arabic, Dua seems most comfortable using English in processing of thoughts.
With poetry, Dua, likewise, has tried but could not write in Arabic. Interestingly, Dua and I ask each other to translate poems, English to Arabic and vice versa.
I have a long list of other personal hobbies, but I will list the major ones: Arabic calligraphy, biking, ping-pong and writing.
I sporadically practice calligraphy. And like the discussion about poetry, I could not master English calligraphy.
I have only published one piece of calligraphy, which I am so proud of, because it has a touching story. The piece was published in association with an article in the Hektoen International Journal, which is a journal in humanities, published by the Hektoen Research Institute in Chicago. The article, titled “Interviewing, Gibran, Calligraphy,” was published in the 2016 fall issue of the journal, and can be read at: http://hekint.org/2017/01/29/interviewing-gibran-calligraphy/
In the article, I talked about interviewing fellow candidates for training positions. Each fall (which is recurring this week), we interview candidates for endocrine fellowship at our division. In fall of 2016, one candidate happened to be bilingual, and she was also from Jordan and a graduate of my alma mater medical school. I was very pleased with the encounter, because the interview allowed me and the candidate to speak in Arabic and English. In the article, I wrote:
“Being a bilingual immigrant of Arabic descent myself, with a passion for my Arabic mother’s tongue, I enjoy interviewing candidates who speak Arabic. It provides an opportunity to speak my native language outside the house. Such interviews are often very fluid and bilingual, in English and Arabic, or sometimes as a mixed Arabic-English dialogue. The conversation turned to my passion for collecting scientific papers, memoirs, paintings, photos and a few self-written Arabic calligraphy frames, some hanging on my office walls and window.”
I shared with the candidate a piece of Arabic calligraphy (Figure) which is a quotation from Gibran’s book The Madman and says: “Blessed, blessed are those thieves who stole my masks.” This small book is a collection of philosophical parables and poems, available in English and in Arabic. As a Lebanese immigrant around the turn of the twentieth century, to my understanding, Gibran first wrote the book in English, and later some Lebanese authors translated it into Arabic.
Years ago, I had read only one poem by Gibran, “On Children,” brought to my attention by a colleague who had lost an adult son. But I became familiar with the quotation from “The Madman” when a coworker said that a friend of hers was looking for someone who could create Arabic calligraphy. I met this gentleman at a local Middle Eastern restaurant, and over dinner he regaled me with stories of his half-Arabic-half-Irish heritage. He was a second generation American whose Arabic parent spoke little Arabic and taught him very little of the language. Now as a husband and a father of two young children, he was longing to celebrate his Arabic roots. He came across this quote of Gibran’s and was looking for someone to translate it into Arabic and write it in classical Arabic calligraphy. I did so, and he was thrilled with the calligraphy. The quote reminds him every day to be true to himself, and he plans to speak fluent Arabic someday.”
For the entertainment of the readers, I wish to share one of my favorite calligraphy frames. The word in Arabic means “Hope.”
Biking is a hobby that I have loved since childhood, growing up in Amman, Jordan. Although I had a potentially life-threatening bike-car accident when I was in elementary school, I continued to ride bikes. I wrote a post about this accident in my Healio MedBlog published June 21, 2017, and titled “Hit by a car”:
In the post, I talked about a doctor who had previously published her story in a famous medical journal:
“Dr. Stepien got hit by a car while biking. While she does not give much details about the accident, she expressed her frustration in view of the total deletion of the accident’s details from her memory. As a doctor, she seems to be wanting to just act like everybody else who happens to be the patient. It seems that we feel so disappointed when we appear to be inept in some situation.”
I can understand Dr. Stepien’s frustration with this. I had a very similar experience at a younger age, 11 years or so. I was riding a bike in one of Amman’s most populated neighborhoods, Al-Ashrafiah. I was speeding downhill, and as I approached a street crossing, I lost control. The next thing I remember was awakening in the back seat of a taxi cab, with blood gushing out my face, blurry vision and with pains in my legs.”
Despite the accident, I resumed biking: Well, until 2014. That is when I sustained a rare vertebral fracture while biking the 8-mile track around Mackinac Island in Michigan. That is when I discovered that I had a severe case of osteoporosis (T-Score minus 3.9), which is worse than most of my patients with osteoporosis. But, that is another story for another day.
Ping-Pong is a passion that I also have had since childhood: To avoid boring the reader with the Ping-Pong story, I detailed the story in a post in my Healio MedBlog published June 7, 2018 and titled “A shared passion”:
The last hobby is the hobby of writing, which is what I am doing now. To avoid a lengthy post, and overwhelming my editor, I hope to cover this hobby in a future post.
I cherish and love the practice of medicine, and I value the sacred doctor-patient relationship with all my patients; however, I still long to practice my hobbies.
But while I am at the peak of my medical career, will I do what the Doctor-of-Art has done, quitting medicine and practicing one or more of the above hobbies?
I do not know.