JANUARY 30, 2023 – The other day I attended to some light “work-work” against the backdrop of a recording by Itzhak Perlman performing Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D. I hadn’t heard the piece in a while, and it evoked many memories; nothing specific, just remembrances of how great music has edified my life aboard this planet. These recollections soon expanded in weight and volume to distract me from the “work-work,” which I laid aside to gaze out the window. My focus progressed from the snow-blanketed yard to the Rocky Mountain snowbank along the street to the Sierra Nevadas lining the other side to the towering fir trees behind the house across from ours. My sights then lifted to the ethereal blue above the earth. Soon I was 20 again.
Back in the day, I used to imagine being worthy of a great stage, where I could “speak” to fellow members of the species in the way that Perlman could with the Prokofiev. This fantasy, however, had no wings, no lift, no possible chance of flight. I hadn’t been born with any special talent to accompany the desire, and perhaps more important, I lacked the compulsion to practice scales and arpeggios 23 hours/day and to develop my (immature) musical soul during the remaining hour—all from the age of seven. Make that five.
But I also dreamed of “being great” at a million other things, not realizing that quantity guaranteed mediocrity in everything. It was a recipe for frustration, manifested in regret linked to shortfalls in dedication.
Thanks to the past year of medical adventure and, just as critically, simply to passage of another year, I’ve jettisoned regret and accepted my lack of consistent dedication. Consequently, life has been transformed from a succession of half-strivings to an unbroken line of delight in observing human achievements. Whether I hear Perlman play Prokofiev, watch Mikaela Shiffrin win a World Cup race or read another riveting book, I marvel at the intrinsic wonder of great human achievements.
Today I benefited directly from largely unsung greatness: two people “being great” as nurses at a Covid vaccination clinic. Because of my “special status” as a post-transplant patient, my Covid vaccinations/booster follow a different protocol from the norm. The nurses at the specialty clinic granted me special care with great cheer, competence and efficiency—and not because I was a person of achievement, “great” or otherwise, but simply because I was a fellow human being. The one who administered my third primary vaccination did so with such skill, I felt absolutely nothing: when the band-aid was applied afterward, I joked that I had to confirm she’d actually given me the shot. Before I was released, the nurses made sure I was scheduled properly for my bivalent booster two months out.
As I re-entered the cold and walked into the minus 17 windchill to my car, I felt grateful awe for nurses “being great”; and for the vast network of achievement in medical research, engineering and patient care—as critical to human health as Perlman playing Prokofiev is to human edification.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
1 Comment
Ha! I knew you would get used to vaccinations!
Many of the trained pros are so good at it that one feels (almost or completely) nothing. The first time that happened to me at our Highland clinic, a young man, probably not an RN, but certainly highly trained, he instructed me to “relax your shoulder” – I casually twitched my smallish muscles – he said “no, really relax – just go limp” – which I did after concentrating on the task. then he put a band-aid on the shoulder and I said – what about the shot? Which had of course had already given. Amazing – and much appreciated by me the squemish.
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