today while making the rounds an RN jokingly chastised another RN for
not having 36 pieces of flare
after a certain confusion ensued and finally I broke my general silence with
"she's noting your reluctance to excel at the irrellevant", when they
still looked confused so I clarified "you all need to see office space."
to which the nurse smiled and high fived me and half the people giggled
knowingly (something surprisingly absent during her transparent
comment, but thats another story).

but I like that. the strings of pop culture that permeate even the most
serious parts of society. a nurse in a ICU quoting an obscure movie. a
doctor humming under his breath something I suddenly recognize as slayer as
he charts a patient's progress. winks and knowing looks and gestures to
the outside world of the particular circles we run in, when we are not
doing what we are doing here, when we are not taking care of such very
serious business. and I miss many of them. I mean, if you are quoting
garth brooks or noting a moment in american idol, I'll miss it as sure
as another will reflect a damningly blank stare when I make a headbutt
joke in reference to the world cup. and thats fine. I like that too. I
like that we all have our thing. our things. I like these moments, not because I
like to feel special, pr because I like to find people of unique tastes, or because
I simply enjoy the brevity it brings to the day. I like it because we
all exist on so many levels. nobody is just an advertising agent or an
investment broker or a streetwalker or the man in a ditch, applying the
first stages of CPR. I mean, that is part of them. yes. and often a
large of them. what one chooses to do with 1/3 of their day is irrefutably
relevant and to claim different might call forth a serious need to
examine how exactly one values time's passage in life.

but more to the point, as much as what our work says about us. it is
not all of us. and we can't leave life or love or tom petty behind as we
procede with our daily chores. and we don't need to. when I meet you I
want to see your complexities. the part of you that understands that
your unbelievable propensity to crunch large amounts of data into an
elegant stream of reflective knowledge and your desire to get naked and run
into a waterfall and that pile of skater magazines in your basement are
all you. they are why you do the things you do and the way you do them.
they are your ability to wade in many depths, they are what will save you
at the end of the day when it's all too much and you can't look at
another latte or take another dying patient. they are the reason that we
love eachother instead of merely tolerate eachother and take solace in yet
another warm body as we go about our mechanical practice of getting
things done.