Sunday 11 October 2009

Winston Churchill tops my all-time favorite list of writers, wordsmiths, and politician/orators. He was a connoisseur of cigars, scotch, and sarcasm; man, I would have loved to sit out on my back lanai and share a stogie and finger of single malt with him. I think he was such an effective leader of his nation during WW II because he had known personal defeat and he had experienced war as a young officer during WW I. He realized the price of victory in war as well as the cost of not achieving it. His writing and spontaneous quotations, however, are my favorite part of his legacy. Apparently, he had a famous hate/hate relationship with Lady Astor, and during a dinner party at which they were seated alongside one another, and during which he had consumed a healthy quantity of scotch, she apparently told him, “Sir Winston, if I were your wife, I would put arsenic in your tea.” He calmly and dispassionately responded, “Lady Astor, if I were your husband, I would drink it.” Well played.

I recently came across another somewhat jaded quotation of his with which I had not been familiar.

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”

I think he was talking about me. I often stumble across a truth or opportunity, and only later does the importance or profundity of the moment strike me. Such has been the case with my job. I knew upon receiving the assignment that it would potentially offer a nice balance of clinical medicine and academic challenge. I recently stumbled across an opportunity with our team, however, that I hadn’t envisioned, but seems so incredible, in retrospect. Late last week, while I was performing an administrative dance with some CENTCOM leaders, which did offer a fair share of staring, blinking, and entertaining gut checks, my team was doing something far more important. They met with a provincial reconstruction team that is attempting to grow a crop in Afghanistan that would potentially become a foodsource that could address much of the malnutrition in this country, the most significant enedemic health care crisis in Afghanistan. I didn’t realize it until I was safely away from the opportunity to make any impact whatsoever, but the concept is brilliant. It addresses the three most fundamental needs in this nation, to my simple mind. You grow a crop, creating an indiginous agricultural economy. The product alleviates malnutrition, the greatest health care concern in country, and at the same time provides an alternative to poppy/opium production, depriving the Taliban of their source of income. Brilliant. It is a cool opportunity to make a difference, but even more importantly, it allows the Afghanis to help themselves.

By the way, credits to John Cusack in Hi Fidelity for perfecting the all-time greatest, all-time greatest lists.