Archives for August 2020

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

Thich NhatHanh

In Jon Kabot Zinn’s book In The Spirit of Mindfulness, there is a chapter entitled “What Is My Job on the Planet with a Capital J?. He recounts the tale of Buckminster Fuller that led to the discovery of a whole new field of chemistry. It is a powerful lesson to stay true to your unique gifts and purpose. He concluded the chapter with this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson and I find it inspirational. Applied to our discipline, staying true to what Nursing uniquely has to offer is what offers the most to our patients/communities.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession…Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Although these times are extraordinary, it is the ordinary in our practice that has always taken my breath away.