on life & science

"Science has cast a deep shadow over our ideas about life. We may even have allowed science to define life for us, but life is larger than science. Life is process, and process has Mystery woven into it. Things happen that science can't explain, important things that cannot be measured but can be observed, witnessed known. These things are not replicable. They are impervious to even the best-designed research. All life has in it the dimension of the Unknown; it is a thing forever unfolding. It seems important to consider the possibility that science may have defined life too small. If we define life too small, we will define ourselves too small too."

-Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather's Blessings p. 345

Anyone who has read this blog or knows me, knows that I'm a big advocate for science. It affects all of life and how we live it, so much of it unknowingly. But reading this book and particularly this passage reminded me that it is easy to put a false label of truth on science. Science is not truth. It is the pursuit of it. And there are so very many things that do not fit in science's little (but expanding) box. And if we strive to define who we are and what we see by what we know, well, it ends as Rachel (who is a doctor I might add) states with us defining our lives and ourselves too small. Science is a tool to explore and observe the world, not a way to define it. And that makes me like it all the more.

you

Dear Geneva,

I've been thinking about you lately. Was it all just a dream? My perfect summer of beautiful views, creamy cheese, rich chocolate and the best internship a girl could ask for. Oh how I miss you! Every once and a while it just hits me. How could a girl be so lucky? You changed and shaped me in ways I am only now beginning to see.

Hoping I'll be back many more times.

yours,

M

this fall

It's ironic that the season that means the world around is dying, that the cold is coming on, that dark days and grey skies will invite themselves to stay could be so beautiful and could ignite such promise of renewal, change, and hope within me. And while I feel such stirrings in spring, autumn seems to speak to my heart in a way those green little buds sprouting up never can.

Maybe fall is made more sweet because there are dark, cold days ahead.

On libraries

"Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast, marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. U front was the desk where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off away were Tibet and Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mongolia, calmly toting fragments of Peiping and Yokohama and the Celebes. Way down the third book corridor, an oldish man whispered his broom along in the dark, mounding the fallen spices..."

-Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

you know you're a WHO intern when... part ii

• after 7 weeks you still wear that little, light blue badge like a metal of honor. "Why yes mr. security guard, I do have a shiny badge to show you"
• someone asks where in the organization you work and you've finally got down that you're in the SPP unit, in the DNP department, in the NMH cluster even though you're not exactly sure what all the letters stand for. So many acronyms
• google translate is the most viewed page on your web browser. Czech, Russian, Romanian, French, Spanish, Polish, Indonesian, Portuguese, you name it, I've put it into google translate
• the difference between 79 degrees and 89 degrees has never become so apparent. neither has the fact that I really liked air conditioning. (I realize this is not that hot, but it feels that hot when your sitting at a computer with a big glass window across from you baking you like an ant under a magnifying glass)
• you get told by an expert to check the news that evening... there will be exciting news announced in his field. You're not really in the know, but you feel like you're in the know
• you get the opportunity to meet Margaret Chan, who as it turns out, is extremely personable and rather fashionable.

And one only micro majors would understand:

• you're doing research for a paper and come across a lovely article in pubmed entitled, "Tales of the Rabid Squirrel." yes.

my peace with europe

"Every American who wants to know who he is must make his peace with Europe."

-Crossing to Safety, p254

two weeks. Two weeks left of my internship and three weeks left in Switzerland and I'll be leaving on a jet plane back to America.

This realization has induced a quiet, but steady thump of panic in my heart. Panic because there is still so much I want to do here. Panic because I miss home and wish I was already there. Panic because I'm going to miss here so much. Because I have so much left to learn. Because I can't wait to see or at least be in a more convenient time zone for the people I love lots and lots. Panic because I'll have to go back to eating American chocolate (this, naturally, is the cause of most of my worry).  Panic because life is picking up again and I am having to leave this quiet, safe haven Geneva has been for me to face it.

I read the above quote in my book today. The narrator was referring more to coming to understand that you are a product of so much history and art that has happened in Europe, but for me those words are personal. This time has and continues to be such a mix of emotions, such a time of reflection and realization, of newness and adventure. Here in Europe I am making peace with so many things.

I took a walk tonight around my sleepy little neighborhood, thinking about my life and my time here and my peace-making. Because my time is not yet over, I still have more to do and mull over. Thoughts are only half-formed, my peace not complete, but I am and will continue to be, so grateful for my summer in Europe.

You know you are a WHO intern when... part i

• you step onto the elevator and you have no idea what language the person speaks next to you will speak.
• the halls are lined with hundreds of publications about everything you could imagine in the health world.
• all you can think about is how great it will be when you're a big fancy public health professional and you can get your own Lancet subscription (having access through a university isn't good enough. I want that sucker to have my name on it and be delivered to my house where I can read it cover to cover like a YA vampire novel. A girl can dream). For now you just drool over the online pdfs and wish you had time to read all the articles.
• someone jokingly asks you how the who is (not the W.H.O.) and someone in the room says, "you saw The Who?! When? Where?"
• the bus becomes your best friend.
• you eat sausages in baguettes to represent hot dogs in buns for the 4th of July.

Welcome to Geneva, Introvert

I've gotten in all sorts of trouble for being so quiet around here. Oops.

Geneva. So many things to love about Geneva. Well, of course, it's beautiful here. Much of the city is modern, but some of it is the Europe of your dreams. Old buildings, green pastures, red shutters, cows with bells, chocolate (the chocolate!), cheese (the cheese!), mountains and so much more. I live in a sleepy little suburb of Geneva that could not be more beautiful. Everyday I pass the same two old women with at least 4 or 5 dogs between them. I love that saying "bonjour!" to them each morning has become a part of each of our routines.

The WHO. Getting to be surrounded by people who do meaningful work, going to lectures on things that interest me, getting to learn about so much and be a small part of such a big thing... well, it's pretty great.

I've been reading Susan Cain's book, Quiet, about introverts. As you may have noticed, introvertism is somewhat of a cause I've taken up. But really everyone should read the book. Because if you aren't an introvert, you know one. So much of what she talks about in the book deeply resonated with me.  It's pushed me to examine a lot of my personality traits, approach situations differently, and love some of those things about myself that kind of make me a hermit sometimes.

So with that frame of mind, I've been thinking a lot about my time here. About diving into the thick of things, about exploring, about preparation and caution, about making friends and connections, about reading at lunch or sitting by someone new, about being true to yourself, about finding balance. I wish I could articulate my thoughts here the way I want to, but for reason I just can't quite yet. Maybe someday.

love from Switzerland,
M

my own spring

These past few weeks felt like an ice storm on the frozen tundra.

This morning I woke up with an awakened sense of who I am and why my life is beautiful. Something is alive again within me that has been laying dormant, waiting for this season of pain and stress and hardship to pass so it could bloom once again.

I've been given beauty for ashes.

M

love letters to DC

Dear DC,

Thanks for being such a great city. Thanks for having so many free activities, great food, and so much to do. Thanks, most especially for hinting that spring is around the corner with cherry blossoms and warm days.

yours for now,

M

PS I'll forgive you for snowing tomorrow, but only if you promise to forget that silly business from now on.

Dear girls in my office,

I love that we spend our time discussing if the IT guy is dateable and which one of us could date him. Thanks for making work so much fun.

sincerely,

M

Dear Foggy Bottom,

First off, thanks for having such an amazing name. Each time I here it ringing from the intercom on the metro I smile to myself. That's is my stop. Thanks for being home to work and school and making my life so convenient. I love you and all your quirks like the man who smokes his cigarette in the same all red outfit everyday or the kid who belts songs right outside the metro with no shame.

heart,

M 

Dear ladies of the Mormon Mansion,

I love that you're always up for an adventure and that we get called the pack of gazelles. I love that we cook brownies at midnight and purchased three different kinds of ice cream to go with them. I love that we can laugh and cry together. And mostly I love that anytime someone has an event we are all there, giving our opinions on clothes, curling hair last minute, grabbing purses, lending shoes. The six of us make great team.

xoxo,
M

south by southwest

sometimes those graduate school things and work things and study things wear you out so you jump in your car and you drive.

Along the way you think and sing and laugh and talk to your friend for three hours on speaker phone and then you get to the place where the peaches grow and it's like coming home because there are people here that know you.

***

I work with women who have cancer.

I watch these women spend their lives going to doctors appointments for months on end. I watch them lose their hair. Surgery, radiation and chemo take their strength like thieves in the night. Then I watch them pull their lives back together. Wearing wigs, doing yoga, working in between treatments, meeting with each other, breathing in and out.

***

The busier I get, the more tied down I get, the more I need to be here in the present and focused, the more my feet want to move, the more I want to leave all this stuff (this "stuff" being my current life and responsibilities) behind. Is it all worth it? Somehow backpacking in the Grand Canyon or eating Belgian Waffles in Belgium seem like much better uses of my time. I have so far to go before I'm an actual grown up, but I'm not sure I'm a fan of this grown up stuff. The choices I make have much larger consequences. I am becoming the person I'll be for the rest of my life. It's pretty heavy stuff, you know?

So in order to counteract such serious business I hide a large cardboard cutout of this season's The Bachelor in my roommate's closet. I have pizza parties with my roommates that result in our house full of smoke and all of us laughing (and coughing) so hard we can't breathe. I dance it out in my room to "Tainted Love" or pound my feet on the pavement to "I Love You Like a Love Song." I read late into the night when I should go to bed and eat brownies for breakfast as I rush out the door with wet hair. I hope these things never change.