SOFT HEART STEEL SPINE

Dr. Raj Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.

 

       

 

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Manager, Graduate Nursing Student Success Center, The Carol & Odis Peavy School of Nursing, 

Adjunct Professor, Department of Biology, Division of Natural Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics,

University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX, USA

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Abstract  

 

Stoicism is a mindfulness practice that originated in Athens in the 3rd century, BCE. As a philosophy, nearly two thousand years have passed but in today’s “stressful” lifestyle, stoicism has once again found resonance. How does one deal with all that is thrown at us by work, family, life in general? Do we sway at each perceived and real vicissitude and lose our inner peace? Or do we become so apathetic that we cease to feel for our fellows? Stoicism professes a middle path: cultivated detachment. This is achieved by willfully focusing on things that are under our control – our perception, thoughts, actions, words and detaching from things that are not in our control – death, action of others, natural disasters, and so on. This practice aimed at inner peace (eudaimonia) teaches you how to be strong in your mind and to control your emotions, not to eliminate them altogether. The term “stoic calm” perfectly sums up the philosophy. 

 

If there is any field of endeavor that can benefit for practicing stoicism, it is Nursing! Every practicing day, the nurse encounters situations swinging widely from exhilaration of seeing a baby delivered, to a patient cured and released to helplessly standing by when all that could clinically be done for a patient is futile. This series, “Soft Heart Steel Spine” is an attempt of nursing students at the Carol & Odis Peavy School of Nursing to engage in creative reflection on a stoicism principle as it pertains to their own experience. Each article in the series therefore is a unique take on a stoicism principle that may resonate with a wider audience in the Nursing field.

 

What is under our control is to run the series for as long and reach as many as we can. What is not under our control is whether it will…  

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In the third article, MSN student Tracey Mujica reflects on her evolution as a newly minted ED nurse and the soul-searching she had to do to stay efficient in her ministrations of the patients. Just as one makes sure the phone/tablet/laptop battery is always charged, one needs to ensure that the mind needs to be recharged regularly! 

 

“Amor fati”.

 

Keywords: education, nursing, coaching, mentoring, satire, ethics, morals, creative reflection