Healer or money maker?



But tell me, your physician . . . is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?” - Socrates.

 

During a period of unemployment, I paid a visit to my dentists surgery. I couldn't get to see my regular dentist and acceded to seeing another dentist. At the end she rattled off lots of treatments I 'needed' then asked how I would like to pay.

 

Her assistant told the dentist I do not need to pay as I am currently unemployed, to which the dentist backtracked and said that in that case I should be ok for another 6 months, just come back next week for a cleaning.

 

For two weeks she was on the sick, by the third week I was told she had left the practice. Whether sacked for gross misconduct or left from shame/guilt I do not know.

 

The question Socrates asks of a physician is a valid one, whether doctor, dentist, optician, et al, are they a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?

 

The temptation for a professional healer to make more money from their patients is great. We have no way of knowing if we are being lied to or the truth is being bent in order that our healers can extract more money from our purse.

 

Even with an ethical code of practice, even if swearing the Hippocratic oath, how can we be sure these people do not succumb to temptation when taking money from us, or the state for that matter. How can two dentists in the same practice at the same level of qualification find one with many faults and another with none?

 

The healing profession demands a far higher level of virtue from us as people, something that should be considered before entering the profession, rather than seeing it as a cash-cow. Yet how many of us can truly say we put the pursuit of wisdom and virtue before material trifles and financial gains?

 



The scheme of life



Diogenes Laertius is quoted as saying that our possessions are mere trifles. That our human body is simply a vessel of clay containing a quart of blood.

 

What Diogenes was attempting to put across was that, over time, in the long run, our 'possessions', even our body, is of no real concern. They will age, decay and eventually be left behind.

 

The only real possession which we own is our character and our scheme of life. How we live our life, what we do with our life, how our actions impact and impinge upon others, that is what we must protect and that is what we must pay attention to.

 

The pursuit of wisdom and virtue need supersede all other worries. How do we cringe when asked what our job is. When we have to tell people it is low paid, menial work and they are in a better paid job with higher social status.

 

A job is just another way a person grabs hold of what we are. But we are not our job, we are not our title, we are our character and our character can be what we choose to make of it.

 

We can choose to moan and groan, to complain about our lot in life or blame others for our circumstances. We can choose to flatter others as a way of ingratiating ourselves in to their favour. Or, we could accept responsibility for who we are, where we are and devote ourselves to the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, not to be better than others, but simply to improve our character and our scheme of life.

 

What sort of man spends more time on his car than his character? Or a woman that spends more time in the beauty salon than on her character?

 

If your only true possession is your character, who you truly are, then don't you owe it to yourself to devote loving care and attention on what really matters?