Sometimes, when you work in a hospital, you get comfortable. You learn your coworkers’ names and get to know them on a personal level. You form friendships. When you catch breaks in the workflow, you sit near one another and have conversations about anything and everything under the sun:
How’s your daughter’s new school?
Found any good recipes for the diet?
How’s the addition on the house going?
What are you watching on Netflix these days?
While these interactions feel commonplace in any other setting, they’re strange in a hospital because you can look up from your conversation and literally see someone’s life falling apart ten feet away. It’s an anomaly that never ceases to amaze me. When you look up and see it happening, there’s an understanding that you leave the conversation to go help; you can always finish talking later in the shift.

The more I think on this, the more amazed I am. But I’m not so much amazed that this dynamic exists in hospitals; I’m more amazed that it doesn’t exist everywhere else.

There are always lives falling apart around us.
There are always emotions bubbling under the surface around us.
There are always people in need of skilled caregivers around us.
It’s always there if we can just tune our eyes to look for it.
If we can just condition ourselves to set other things aside for a moment and step in with compassion and companionship and hope, how much better of a world could this be?

This is what I attempt to do in bar settings.
It’s not so much about having a script or a plan or a set of skills.
It’s just a matter of being aware of the world around us and paying attention to the people who inhabit it.
It’s a matter of looking up from your table and taking note of the person ten feet away whose life is falling apart.
It may be the most obvious in hospitals, but it’s happening everywhere.

Let’s be bringers of peace for these people,
and if you’re in this sort of situation yourself,
I pray that bringers of peace will find you there.