“Altruism is innate, but it’s not instinctual. Everybody’s wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped.”
David Rakoff
Altruism can be defined as the belief in or practice of selfless concern for the well-being of others.
Moments in time like the COVID-19 world pandemic bring about a host of questions and a host of behaviors in our worldwide community.
What I love about our physician tribe is that a worldwide crisis like this provides an opportunity for our altruistic nature to rise to the top and shine. In every country and corner of the world, physicians are selflessly in the thick of seeking to protect the masses as well as heal the sick.
Our collective switch is flipped by this pandemic, as we shed the burdens of modern medicine, and sprint towards needy patients. This resonates with why we became doctors in the first place, helping the sick.
But it’s not just about us, as we need all levels of society to cooperate in order to maximize the full mitigation plan that has been organized by World Health and American public health officials. This includes federal, state, local, and community leaders of all political persuasions. It includes businesses both large and small. It must involve every sector of life from healthcare to retail stores, banking, utilities, transportation, education, and food supplies. Everyone has a stake in this, and everyone has an opportunity to make a difference in their own way.
The public crisis does tap deeply into our collective sense of unity and well-being as a human race. It pulls at our sense of morality as our individualist tendencies have to become subservient to the good of the masses. This is no time for selfishness. It is the simple actions that make all the difference like when my wife contacted all the housebound in our neighborhood today, seeking to resource them with any needed supplies while they safely sheltered during the crisis. This kind of activity happens all over our great country in the community after community. So many beautiful stories that are untold and unknown. That’s the power of altruism as its actions are not meant for recording, rather they are meant for the simplicity of doing good for the sake of doing good.
We do need to shelter away from our population in order to keep them from getting sick, while simultaneously mitigating the peak of the pandemic. Public health terms like social distancing, quarantine, and sheltering are being burned into our collective brains. What I especially appreciate is how our typically highly individualistic American culture is dutifully responding to this dictatorial directive from our leaders. They are complying due to thinking about the life of their neighbors over their own liberty. Noble and powerful. In my estimation, it’s what makes our country so special. Altruism is built into the fiber of our culture.
And it’s that burning altruism that forces me to move in the opposite direction of the masses. I am drawn to the front lines as we battle with this killer virus. When the patient with a fever, cough, and shortness of breath calls for help, I don’t wonder, “Why me and why now?” Rather, I say to myself, “This is what I was made for compassionately moving towards my sick and hurting brethren. There is no age, gender, race, economic, political, or religious profiling in my movement. It’s pure and simple, I want to use my training, skills, and resources to help those in need.”
I am so compelled to act on this calling that I am willing to place myself at risk to contract the illness. I certainly am wise enough to seek to follow all personal protective protocols, but I fully accept the risk associated with intimately contacting and caring for patients in my clinic, in their cars, in the hospital, and pretty much anywhere.
On top of that my wife and children are very aware of their risks in connection to my calling. In a pandemic like this, they know I can “bring it home” even while they follow the community shelter protocol. My altruism bleeds into their lives. This is pretty typical of most physician families, for better or worse. Most people just see physician families as “having a good life”, but the reality is that those families also engage in the altruistic calling of a physician in their home as well. It just comes with the territory. Never do my wife or children question, “Do you really need to go to help all those sick people, and risk getting sick yourself?” They know my purpose, calling, and identity has squelched any sense of self-preservation.
I don’t fear contracting COVID-19 in terms of illness or death, I fear contracting COVID-19 because it would force me to remove from the battlefield for at least 2 weeks. Those who have been quarantined know this pain, but for me, it would agonizing to watch from the sidelines.
Physicians, our communities need us during these days when we are all called upon to lay aside our personal liberty for the greater good.
This is what we were made for. It’s why we became physicians.
