Becoming the Silence
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Division
Gulf Coast
Hospital
HCA Houston Healthcare Clear Lake
Document Type
Other
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Video of me playing my composition on the piano
Keywords
Silence, Medicine, clinical skills, compassion, ethics, patience
Description
Three silhouettes crossing the dunes mirror the daily walk of medicine. We enter vast terrain not to conquer it but to move with it. In clinic and on call, resilience is the quiet stamina to advance one careful step at a time; honor is the promise to place the patient’s story before our agenda; the desert’s silence is disciplined listening that lets faint signs emerge: a subtle murmur, a hesitant pause, a lab value that doesn’t fit the wind’s pattern.
At the piano I rehearse the same virtues I need at the bedside. Hand independence becomes cognitive flexibility; phrasing becomes the pacing of a difficult conversation; dynamics become titration. Practicing a deliberate breath before big musical peaks trains the parasympathetic steadiness required in codes and family meetings. Accepting mistakes, then re-entering the piece without judgment, is how I recover after imperfect days. The instrument asks me to shape sound without gripping for control, to lead with intention and to follow what the moment offers.
Piano, a wellness strategy, grants protected minutes where attention is single and the nervous system can downshift. Repetition becomes ritual; ritual becomes refuge. Motor flow clears residual adrenaline; unhurried rubato resets my internal metronome after alarms and beepers. I leave the keyboard with clearer hands, steadier speech, and a mind tuned to notice small changes. By walking the desert of sound, I return to medicine more present—resilient, honorable, and at ease with the vastness we’re privileged to cross alongside our patients.
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