Jun 28, 2016 | Books
In Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande, surgeon, 2006 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, writer for The New Yorker, reflects on what it means to excel and be successful in medicine. The MacArthur Foundation website states that the Genius awards go “to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” It’s a very suitable description of Gawande, who in his writings is greatly concerned in making medicine better.
Gawande is also an eloquent speaker and speaks on many occasions to students. At the end of this book, he includes five suggestions that he likes to give on how to be a positive deviant, an outlier that outperforms and stands out from the majority. One of these suggestions is to write. Here is Gawande on why you should write (emphasis mine).
Write something. I do not mean this to be an intimidating suggestion. It makes no difference whether you write five paragraphs for a blog, a paper for a professional journal, or a poem for a reading group. Just write. What you write need not achieve perfection. It need only add some small observation about your world.
You should not underestimate the effect of your contribution, however modest. As Lewis Thomas once pointed out, quoting the physicist John Ziman, “The invention of a mechanism for the systematic publication of ‘fragments’ of scientific work may well have been the key event in the history of modern science.” By soliciting modest contributions from the many, we have produced a store of collective know-how with far greater power than any individual could have achieved. And this is as true outside science as inside.
You should also not underestimate the power of the act of writing itself. I did not write until I became a doctor. But once I became a doctor, I found I needed to write. For all its complexity, medicine is more physically than intellectually taxing. Because medicine is a retail enterprise, because doctors provide their services to one person after another, it can be a grind. You can lose your larger sense of purpose. But writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness.
Most of all, by offering your reflections to an audience, even a small one, you make yourself part of a larger world. Put a few thoughts on a topic in just a newsletter, and you find yourself wondering nervously: Will people notice it? What will they think? Did I say something dumb? An audience is a community. The published word is a declaration of membership in that community and also of a willingness to contribute something meaningful to it.
So choose your audience. Write something.
May 26, 2016 | Books
Summer’s here! Since I’m solar-powered, I’m all charged up for a season of fun. How about you?
Summer’s the time to try new things, experience new adventures, and explore new worlds. This is true for my reading selection as well. Maybe it’s because my circadian rhythm is still calibrated to the academic calendar. I’m usually a nonfiction, idea books type of reader, but for summer, I like to venture out to travel books, selected fiction, biographies–more story-based books. Here’s my summer reading list for 2016, taken from my antilibrary–the books on my shelf that I haven’t read. If you’ve read any of them, please let me know what you think! And I’d love to hear about what you’re reading too.
Summer Reading List
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks
I got this book for $1 from Half Priced Books. Score! I recently finished another of Sacks’ book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales, which is the scariest book I’ve ever read (will tell another time). With this and his essay collection, Gratitude, I’ve concluded that I enjoy his writing tremendously. Oliver Sacks had a poetic voice in telling human stories, a virtue that I find existing in my favorite authors. Uncle Tungsten is about his childhood and his love for the elements in the periodic table (in fact, in Gratitude, he wrote about his personal collection of these elements and how he thought about aging something like traversing across the periodic table, each atomic number matching his age). It’s probably the perfect mix of nerdy and poetic for me.
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
In my household, I’m usually the book buyer. But this one is my husband’s, also an engineer and fellow nerd. This is the only book I’ve seen that he read enthusiastically, sparking all kinds of conversations about technology and innovation at home. Apparently, it’s the kind of book that makes you want to build a plane. We’ll probably repeat those conversations when it’s my turn to go through the book.
Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande
Having listened to Atul Gawande’s audiobook, Being Mortal, I’ve grouped him together with Oliver Sacks (and Paul Kalanithi and, my guess, Siddhartha Mukherjee–see below) as medical practitioners who are also excellent writers. They seem to reflect deeply on the human experience as they encounter individuals in medical crises, and this is an amazing trait. I look forward to hear more from Gawande.
Beauty Is A Wound by Eka Kurniawan
Eka Kurniawan is an acclaimed Indonesian writer whose works’ translations have been increasing rapidly over the past year. The books themselves have been published for many years in Indonesian, but only last year were this book and another one, Man Tiger, translated to English. I read Man Tiger last year, and it is a spectacular piece of literature. I’ll be reading Beauty Is A Wound in Indonesian, my mother tongue.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Yes, I am so late for this one. I have a copy and it’s about time I read it.
Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
Gotta have a brainy book on the list. The first time I saw this book, it was at a bookstore. Its catchy neon green caught my eye. Sure enough, its topic of thinking and the workings of our mind was one of my favorite reading subjects. Over the next few days, I kept thinking about this book and I finally bought it online. Imagine my surprise when I saw the hidden text on the cover. Pssst…Hey There. Yes: You, Sexy. Buy This Book Now. You Know You Want it. These texts were so subtle that you couldn’t see them on the physical book cover, especially if you didn’t know they were there. So did I buy this book because it subliminally tricked me into doing so???
Notable New Releases
Or, books I would buy right now if I didn’t have some 50 unread books piling on my shelf. They sound so interesting!
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space by Janna Levin
Two things that make this book super appealing: gravitational waves and women in science. I was among the thrilled and goosebumps-covered people when on February 11, 2016, the LIGO scientists made the public announcement that they had detected gravitational waves for the first time ever. Their observations confirmed Einstein’s theory from 100 years ago. The fact that the science works is simply amazing to me. This book is the story of these LIGO scientists and their work through decades of trying that finally bore fruits this year. I’m also thrilled that just this year, there have been super interesting books written by women in science!
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee’s first book, The Emperor of All Maladies, was a best-selling book on cancer. Here, he writes about the history of how the gene was and is being continually discovered.
Walking the Himalayas by Levison Wood
Stories of adventurers discovering the world at a pedestrian’s pace have fascinated me since I read Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between. It brings into view an intimate story of humanity that we don’t usually see through the regular media.
So there goes my reading list. What are you reading this summer? Please share in the comments below!
May 17, 2016 | Books, Thinking Better
Between Jerusalem and Athens is a 7-part essay series on worldviews.
Since last year, I’ve been thinking about meta-questions: What caused us to think in a certain way? Where did ideas—those I subscribe to and those I don’t understand—come from? What influenced the prevailing thoughts in a given society? What are their strengths and shortcomings?
You may say it’s an exercise of intellectual empathy, an attempt to understand others and myself, and to learn the vocabularies by which we can converse across different worldviews.
Between Jerusalem and Athens as a title represents this cross-cultural look at the world, which is probably more a reflection of me than of the world itself. Jerusalem and Athens are not to be interpreted as two ends of a spectrum—the ideas in this series of essay extend beyond these—but as an analog of the cultural blends that shape my thinking. Jerusalem is an analog of the East, although there are many versions of “East”, which influences me through my heritage, birthplace, faith, and early education. Athens is an analog of the West, the intellectual culture inherited from ancient Greece, in which my life and work are immersed. Between Jerusalem and Athens is also a tribute to Abraham J. Heschel, whose writings have opened up new horizons in the way I see faith and spirituality—a peek into the philosophy of Judaism.
The 7 essays in this series, split into 9 posts, are descriptions of the world through my lens. Looking around, I see a siloed world—academically, in the workplace, spiritually, personally, in public service, media—segmented based on certain artificial categorizations. In many cases, these categories and classes have helped us focus, analyze, and make much progress as a species. But they are not without downfalls, as the categorizations may turn into barriers, dividing people. These essays are my response to the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, and my quest to find solutions by exploring other worldviews.
On avoiding single-mindedness and telling a one-sided story. “The danger of a single narrative comes when it is accepted in pure disregard of other possible narratives, solely labeling something as good or bad without acknowledging the alternative.”
On the silos of knowledge that prevent communication and collaborations across artificial barriers that are much needed to solve complex real world problems. This is a vote for multidisciplinary thinking, the widening of the scope of our thinking beyond conventional academic categorizations.
On the separation between the mind, body, and soul—the components that make up our humanity—that causes an unfulfilling life. Addressing the need for a balanced development on all aspects of our being.
On the reality that two seemingly contradicting experiences can coexist at once. A precursor to the last essay below.
Asian and Western cultures are descendants of two different ancient philosophies, namely the ancient Chinese and Greek cultures, respectively. This essay is on the core principles of each culture and how they affect today’s societies.
This post highlights the key findings of Richard Nisbett’s social psychology experiments, observations on how specifically Asian and Western minds differ.
The chronicle of an Indonesian in America. This is the story of my upbringing in the East and my cultural experiences after moving to the West.
Continuing the story with my life in the West and the re-discovery of the East.
When a paradigm categorizes things too much and has difficulties reconciling paradoxes. Real life is messier than theoretical analyses.
There is a book that I return to many times, titled Education by the insightful Ellen White. Its profound first paragraph never fails to strike me every time I read it, and it serves as inspiration for the essays above. It is an argument for a life of learning that is wide is scope, multidisciplinary, practical, and well integrated. This, to me, is the perfect way to end this series.
Our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range. There is need of a broader scope, a higher aim. True education means more than the pursual of a certain course of study. It means more than a preparation for the life that now is. It has to do with the whole being, and with the whole period of existence possible to man. It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers. It prepares the student for the joy of service in this world and for the higher joy of wider service in the world to come.
Image credit: FreeImages
