Looking Up

Staying oriented in life and in medicine

I got to share this story in the blog for the Travis County Medical Society’s Physician Wellness Program this Sunday. I know a lot of you Campfire friends don’t get those emails, so I’m sharing it here, too. I hope you find something you like in it!

At age 18, my buddy, David, and I scaled the outside stucco of a hotel in Cancun, Mexico and soon found ourselves ten stories up, lying on our backs on the hotel roof, looking at the night sky. It was a terribly stupid idea—one of many we had back in those days. But once we were up there, David taught me the major stars and constellations of the summer sky. Cassiopeia, Draco, the Little Dipper, and of course, Polaris, the North Star.

Back in Houston after our trip, I was determined to remember what David had taught me. Every night after dark I would crawl out my window (sorry, Mom and Dad!), onto the roof of our house and look up. Despite the weird purple hue from the Houston skyline and the overwhelming light pollution, I found I could still make out most of the major stars of the summer constellations. I studied my hometown stars like a textbook, and I stared at them long enough that the pattern became forever etched in my mind.

When I went off to college in rural Virginia a few months later, I found the night sky looked quite a bit different—much less light pollution, way more stars. In fact, the brightness of all these stars now visible made it harder for me to pick out the constellations. I also noticed the constellations were a bit out of position relative to the horizon at this higher latitude. But as I took time to find the north star and re-orient myself, I was soon able to match this new night sky to the one I had looked at on my roof back home so many times. Far away from home, I found a great comfort in being able to look up at the night sky and see some old familiar “friends.”

For two and a half decades now, I’ve been a stargazer. When I find myself in new places, I look up. I look for the north star. Oddly, looking up always grounds me. I remember a night backpacking in the Redwoods when a chance glimpse of part of Corona Borealis through an otherwise cloudy sky revealed to my same buddy, David, and me just which way we had been traveling.

Looking at the stars in Argentina a few years ago really threw me. There were a few familiar celestial faces to the north, but up above me and down to the south were constellations I had never seen before (nor since!). Another time outside Rome, so far away from our Texas skies, I remember the great reassurance I felt looking up and seeing the same old Sagittarius I knew from home.

William Cullen Bryant (portrait above by Wyatt Eaton, at the Brooklyn Museum) wrote about it this way in 1832 in his Hymn to the North Star:

On thy unaltering blaze
The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,
Fixes his steady gaze,
And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

The metaphors from all this star talk come easily. When we feel lost in life, when we feel far from home, when we seem to have lost some of our supports or to have wandered off course, it’s important to re-orient ourselves to our north star. What is it in life that has pointed you in the right direction? Is it friends? Maybe family? Is it your home? Maybe it’s a faith tradition? Maybe it’s your personal core values, or your sense of calling or mission?

The same can be true in medicine. Do you remember your north star in medicine? What inspired you to pursue this path back in the day? What did you write about in your medical school application? Sometimes it’s hard to even think back that far! In what ways can you get back to that old north star?

I have felt lost in life and in medicine many times. I imagine we all have. Look up from where you are, re-orient yourself to your north star, and get grounded again. Then move forward in the direction that calls for you.

• How do you re-orient when you feel off course?