It is intimidating to people that it will make a difference if they write something. I don't intend it to be an intimidating idea. I think it should be as easy as writing for a blog, or a newsletter. You may later think of writing an article for a journal or a book. It makes no difference whether you write a few paragraphs or an essay or a poem. Just keep on writing.

The main idea is that by writing something you are putting a small observation out into the world, an idea perhaps. Not just writing it for yourself, but trying to put it in front of at least a few people you make yourself a member of that larger community. You open yourself to think through what you are saying and hear what others have to say about it. That is really fundamentally important.

All this will help you in not ending up just being cogs in the machine. And, that it is very, very easy to become. Though I studied writing, I did not really write till I became a doctor. I feel medicine is more physically than technically taxing. It can become a grind and one can become a cog, even while being successful, in a machine, and lose the larger sense of purpose.

Writing has helped me to step back and think through personal problems, and those of the institutions I work for.

Image: Medical staff on their way to a surgery at UCLA's Mattel Children's Hospital.
Photograph: REUTERS/POOL/Krista Niles

Also see: 1857, The First War of Independence

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