Visceral, doctors, basketball

I’ve alsways considered that one of the most visceral experiences one could have would be to be a doctor. To put your hands inside someone and to connect pieces of flesh to save a life would be a very intense endeavor.

Something happened recently that gave me another perspective on enhancing wellbeing by reaching into a life.

I helped another Peace Corps volunteer coach basketball.

I was working with the volunteer who I’ll be replacing in three months [Billy] and he coaches a high school girls baketball team, among tons of other stuff.

There are generally not girls athletic teams around here, and so what Billy has been doing is a new thing for the town. It was really impressive to see the discipline and group coordination that the girls have picked up through the basketball team. As anyone who’s played high school sports knows, it’s hard enough to manage kids who have been in organized sports their whole lives.

Instead of reaching into a body, and restitching arteries or sodering bone, working with these youth through this basketball team is like touching a mind, and connecting movement with decision making to creat definitive action and confidence in existence.

This was the visceral part of the experience. To see young people flee hesitation and start to connect more fully to themselves and the world, and to be a part of it by stepping into their lives with goals, discipline and sweat.

That was an epic last sentence.

Sent from my iPod