GUEST EDITORIAL
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Summer is here and it's time for a family vacation! Time
for getting to know my teenager again -- time for our kids to get reacquainted
with us. But -- with all the bills, and the tremendous needs of my patients
(they depend so completely on me...), I would feel guilty taking time
for myself. Perhaps I will just spend a few less hours in the office and
take a long weekend with the family. I could afford that, and surely my
patients would understand. The kids will probably be involved in activities
with their friends anyway.
Early one morning several years ago, while walking in the
Loma Linda hills, I came across Dr. V. Norskov Olsen, then president of
Loma Linda University. He seemed to be looking over the little town of
Loma Linda from a very nice vantage point. He pointed down to the campus
and asked, "Jim, where is my office?" While I studied the scene,
he continued, "When I'm in that office it seems like the center of
a great organization; now I am just a few hundred yards away and cannot
find it." After a brief pause he continued, "It's good to get
away; it brings things into perspective."
Leonardo da Vinci was a genius who excelled in many areas
-- painting, sculpture, architecture, engineering, anatomy, and philosophy
(to name a few). He was always involved with multiple projects and left
many unfinished. In one of his notebooks the following advice is given
for workaholics and others:
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation; for when you come back to your work, your judgment will be surer; since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power of judgment…Go some distance away, because then the work appears smaller, and more of it can be taken in at a glance. The lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
James Crawford, SD’60, MPH is Executive Associate Dean, School
of Dentistry, and Associate Secretary of the General Conference of Seventh-day
Adventists Department of Health Ministries
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