“You are the meanest person ever,” her voice laughs playfully even as she loads all the pre-teen seriousness into the sentence. I pass a large family on the beach. Parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins move like ants around a mound of beach umbrellas to and from the sweetness of the sea. I smile inwardly as …Read More
Author: Dr. Joel Ying, MD
Physician-Educator-Storyteller. Integrating the power of story into medicine, healing sessions, workshops, speaking and performance.
FGCU Storytelling 2022 – 2023: A New Season
I felt as if something woke up inside of me. That first time that I heard someone tell a story, one person in front of an audience, holding our complete attention, I was so fully captivated that I thought to myself, “I want to be able to do that.” For a moment, my mind took …Read More
This Is Going to Hurt ~ Adam Kay
The double doors burst open breaking the anticipatory silence. The ambulance had called ahead. The paramedics rushed the gurney into the emergency room bay. One person was on the gurney doing chest compressions. One of the other voices yelled, “62-year-old African American female found unresponsive…” As the medical student, I had been prepped by my …Read More
Pushing a Peanut up a Mountain
Have you ever felt like you are pushing a peanut up a mountain? Bill Williams knows how you feel. In 1929, he pushed a peanut up the 14,000 feet of Colorado’s Pike’s Peak Highway… with his nose. Why? For a bet, of course. It took him 22 days, a bag full of peanuts, knee pads, …Read More
Drinking Alone In The Moonlight ~ Li Po
Li Po has been called the god of poetry, but he called himself the god of wine. Born in 701, more than one thousand years ago, during the great cultural flowering of China’s T’ang Dynasty, he wandered across nature’s landscapes and found the spirit of the immortal in his poetry. With more than a thousand …Read More
Zentangle, meditate with art
I’m addicted, but I suppose there are worse things to be addicted to. I’ve discovered the world of Zentangle. I picked up a book many years ago on the way into the bookstore. “Oh, that looks interesting, and it’s on sale.” Years later and only a couple weeks ago, I’m visiting a friend for a …Read More
How to Get Your Brain to Focus ~ Chris Bailey
I’m resting on the recliner. Without realizing it, I pick up the phone. Unlock the screen and click on the email app. It’s almost as if some entity had taken over my body. I know there’s no new email or text. The phone has no alerts, but something inside of me is searching. If I …Read More
The Answer to Life the Universe and Everything
“How old are you?” we asked as we gathered at the Thai restaurant for a birthday dinner celebration. I was already debating between Red Thai Curry, that delicious explosion of delicate coconut and hot pepper spices, or the old standard of Pad Thai noodles. “Forty-two,” he said with the same look that a child might …Read More
When is the doctor coming?
Wearing a face mask covers the patch of gray that is now my beard. When the lady at the cash register confuses me for one of the college students, I smile inside. I suddenly realize that the mask makes me look decades younger… and I like looking younger! As middle age has stealthily set in, …Read More
To Thine Own Self Be True ~ Shakespeare
Polonius gives advice to his son, Laertes, in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet. Laertes is leaving Denmark to study abroad in France. Polonius states that he only has a “few precepts,” but his long-winded speech goes on and on as a sort-of comic relief in the middle of the tragedy. In high school, I recited this speech …Read More