“What do you want to be when you grow up?” In my high school graduation book, I remember answering this question. With the whole world in front of me, heading off to college, trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. Gathering advice from different people, reading widely, experiencing what high …Read More
Author: Dr. Joel Ying, MD
Physician-Educator-Storyteller. Integrating the power of story into medicine, healing sessions, workshops, speaking and performance.
How Do I Love Thee?
How Do I Love Thee? ~ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861) How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the …Read More
Think Again ~ Adam Grant
Why do some groups seem to thrive with conflict while other fall apart? If you are like me and occasionally suffer from being too agreeable, then all conflict is bad. I fearfully shrink away from argument and think that the situation will self-destruct. They will think I’m a terrible person. Task Conflict vs. Relationship Conflict …Read More
How do we heal medicine? ~ Atul Gawande
“Take 2 aspirin and call me in the morning.” In the pre-penicillin years of the 1930’s, medicine was simple… one person could know and do everything, but doctors could do very little. Now the complexity and the cost of medicine has exploded. How do we deal with complex systems? In 2012, Atul Gawande proposed a …Read More
Litany Against Fear ~ Frank Herbert’s Dune
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will …Read More
Florida Storytelling Festival, Jan 26 – 29, 2023
“I see you once a year. You’re like family!” I said to my friend, Morgen Reynolds, at the Florida Storytelling Festival. She’d been coming with her mother every year from Montana, and this was the third year in a row. The feeling when I saw Morgen felt so familiar. I grew up gathering every year …Read More
Affirmation ~ What are you becoming?
“I, Joel, deepen relationships and create community with my gifts of healing.” Each New Year, I settle on an intention, craft a prayer, and distill that prayer into a blessing that becomes the affirmation that I carry through the year. The affirmation calls back the entire prayer. (See my prior post.) Several years ago, I …Read More
A Friend’s Greeting ~ Edgar A. Guest
To my friends out there. May these words greet you on this Christmas Day and everyday. A Friend’s Greeting ~ by Edgar A. Guest I’d like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me; I’d like to be the help that you’ve been always glad to be; I’d like to mean …Read More
Form Follows Function ~ I’m teaching anatomy
It’s been over two decades since I walked into the anatomy lab at medical school. Immediately the memory of formaldehyde assaults my senses. Each week, I would change into the same lab outfit. At the end of the year, I threw out those clothes. There was not way to get the smell out of them. …Read More
The Cremation of Sam McGee ~ Robert W. Service
Long, long ago in a land called Texas, unemployed soldiers from the recent War Between the States rounded up herds of wild cattle and trailed them north to feed a hungry nation. Evenings along the way, as the sun set romantically in the west, the boys gathered and, accompanied by a crackling fire and the …Read More