At 22:35 22/12/2005, you wrote:
>When I joined my practice 20 years ago, I had a big pair of shoes to try
>and fill. The outgoing partner was much loved by his patients and
>admired by his colleagues. Nothing seemed to worry him, he was confident
>and reassuring, and said the most outrageous things to his female
>patients who all knew he was joshing and loved him for it. How, I
>wondered, could a man have such an unworried yet caring manner?
>
>I only learned this week from a patient that he flew a Hurricane during
>the second world war. Touching the face of God* - a good preparation for
>the life of a GP.
>
>Mike
>
>* (Thanks to Julian for introducing me to Gillespie Magee's poem.)
Thanks to Gillespie Magee for writing it :)
We stand on the shoulders of great men, and mixing metaphors I agree
that it is difficult to fill their shoes. They were the idle youths
of the 30s, the spoilt children of the rich and nouveau riche, the
boys who wanted to have fun and the best looking girlfriends, and no
doubt some who saw the military as a chance to move at least one step
up the pecking order.
They rose to a challenge in a way that we have not been called to do,
in a way that no few of their generation failed to meet, and in a way
that many of us would fail to meet. Many died. Many were
broken. Many endured and learnt. Some found greatness either
transitorily or (rarely) more lastingly.
In general we are not the descendants of the broken, but of the
survivors of a thousand generations. Their luck, and almost always
something more than luck too, is one of the many blessings they left
us. The question each day is how we value and use those
blessings. Do we preserve what is good and build for the future or
do we squander and dissipate what was so hard won?
We have different challenges, but they're no less important to those
who follow us, and I'm not really sure they're much easier than those
our forebears faced. Perhaps the only real difference is that we
live longer and have more time to consider our mistakes?
Julian
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