Author: Dr. Joel Ying, MD

The modern world has created so many avenues of expression. What we say, do, write, publish, post, email, tweet, text, or vote for are all simply extensions of the voice that allow us to transcend the limits of space and time. With this power, we express our thoughts, feelings, and longings into the world. We …Read More

In the words of Maria Popova: “We live in a world awash with information, but we seem to face a growing scarcity of wisdom. And what’s worse, we confuse the two. We believe that having access to more information produces more knowledge, which results in more wisdom. But, if anything, the opposite is true…” While …Read More

In The Practice of Wisdom: Five Quests, Dr. Arthur Kleinman writes a chapter on “The Quest for Care.” The book takes its origin from a long-running course at Harvard, “Quests for Wisdom: Religious, Moral, and Aesthetic Experiences and the Art of Living in Perilous Times.” Team-taught by four professors in disciplines ranging from psychiatry, social …Read More

“I’m just going to give up,” said a friend, “I can’t figure out who anyone is.” Voting is in essence predicting the future. Past, Present, and Future are Inextricably Linked. Any estimation of the future is at most a guess, and at best an educated guess. In the face of indecision, I often do one …Read More

“There is one thing that all of us are going to experience, and that is death,” wrote my friend, Kate McKinnon, in her recent newsletter, “Most people, including myself, find this an uncomfortable thought, with good reason. However, there is a growing movement of people meeting to talk about death and break through the taboo …Read More

It had been 8 years since I returned to Jamaica, the country where I was born and lived until 6 years old. I had never been away for that long. Even after moving to Florida, my parents would send my brother and me to spend summers with our grandmother. Each year, the extended family would …Read More

At a Veterans’ Day event a few years ago, a soldier explained that she was from a military family with three generations of service. She herself joined the army and served as a medic, training as a physician’s assistant. Her two brothers served in the army and marines; she had cousins that served in other …Read More