Beyond Memorial Day

Posted on May 30th, 2006 by markgoulston

Guest Post by Mark Goulston

Memorial Day has come and gone.

For most of America that means raising all the half-masted flags back to full height and returning to “business as usual.” For people like my friend, Jane Bright, it means returning to “living with life never being the same again.”

Jane’s son, Sgt. Evan Ashcraft, was killed in Iraq on July 24, 2003. She told me that the only thing that enabled her to keep her anger from consuming her were her son’s letters telling her that all he wanted to do when he returned home after the war was to help people, especially returning veteran’s. Evan no doubt had looked into his fellow soldiers’ eyes as well as the eyes of the people in Iraq and saw the pain and suffering and wanted to do something about it.

Years ago at my university, I heard a professor tell our class that if people could look into the eyes of their enemy and see the person underneath the foe, that war would cease.  Some years later during my training as a psychiatrist, I heard another spin on the power of looking into another person’s eyes and perhaps the need to look away. Thirty years ago I was consulting to the cancer ward at UCLA and was seated in a conference room with a brilliant attending research oncologist. We were waiting for oncology fellows, residents, interns and medical students to arrive to discuss cases on the unit.  He knew the name and pathology of every cancer; he didn’t know the name of any of the patients or for that matter, the medical trainees.

“You might want to work on your bedside manner,” I told him, feeling compelled to point out that he was serving as a physician role model as well as an expert diagnostician.

He fired back at my impertinence, “If I looked into the eyes of these patients and saw the fear and hell they live in, I would not be able to focus on what’s most important to me, namely finding a cure for cancer. That is why I leave the hand-holding to people like you.”

I understood his point, but was never comfortable with it. Looking into the eyes of people and seeing fear, pain, anger and hurt will distract all but the coldest of hearts from their goals. However it might also direct those with the power to change things to focus on what really matters.

Jesus said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” What if we applied this to leaders of governments and corporate America and said: “Let that leader who sends a country’s youth into war, spend a week with the family of a soldier father, son, brother, mother, daughter or sister who never came back alive or physically in one piece” or “Let that corporate CEO in his 40’s or 50’s who makes $100+ million in compensation spend a week with people of the same age that have been laid off, who won’t be getting hired again soon” or “Let that head of health insurance company whose medical, mental and dental expenses are all reimbursed spend a week with a family of a parent, adult or child whose condition is not covered by the health plan they purchased that put money in that executive’s pocket.”

I can understand and even allow that oncology professor’s point about not wanting to be distracted from finding a cure for cancer. I have more difficulty letting that leader, CEO or health insurance executive off the hook from seeing the “real” results of some of their decisions.

A philosopher once said:

The measure of a civilization is
how it treats those who have hurt it.

Maybe that needs to be modified to include:

The measure of a civilization is
how it treats those who are hurting in
it.

Evan Ashcraft never got to come back to America and do what looking into the eyes of others compelled him to do. His parents however did by founding  The Evan Ashcraft Memorial Foundation.

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