Mother Teresa once said “Not all of us can do great things but we all can do small things everyday with great love”.
I feel “everyday” is a key word in her quote because virtues are like muscles of our character that need daily exercise.
With the habit of being more virtuous in our everyday actions, we can take charge of our life, redirecting its course towards greater fulfillment, success and happiness.
In my recent blog on Humility, I said Humility is one of the top three virtues needed for long term success in life in my opinion. Service is the other.
Serving others elevates one’s personality and character if practiced in the right spirit. It crushes ego during the act, and improves emotional strength. It also keeps undesirable thoughts away.
Simply put, if Humility makes us what we are, Service defines what we do.
Service started playing a larger role in my life after my medical education, when I started treating patients.
Patients place great faith in Doctors and inspire us to carry out our everyday service to them with great love and care. When we keep serving them well, great things happen in our lives.
Free service to economically backward patients is a great charitable opportunity that we encounter everyday in our profession as Doctors.
To realize such opportunities in an organized manner and treat such patients in large numbers, a project called CanCure was launched recently at our center.
Aim of CanCure is that no cancer patient should lack access to cancer specialists due to lack of money.
To make it easier for such patients and hospitals to use my charitable time, I announced at the launch cenremony that I would fully waive off my surgical fees to treat poor patients either at my center or at any Government Hospital around Trivandrum with Keyhole Surgery facilities or at Regional Cancer Center Trivandrum.
Same offer is exteded to private hospitals too if they waive off their fees and charges to the patient in need.
One more recent opportunity we got was to treat a destitute woman free of charge at our center. First with a keyhole surgery for ultra low rectal tumour to cure cancer as well as to avoid colostomy. Unfortunately this woman had a fall later and suffered a hip fracture at the neck of femur. With generosity of our orthopedic team we performed a second surgery also free of charge to set right her broken hip. We feel very good whenever we remember this instance.
Such small acts add up and help us touch so many patients which we would not have treated otherwise.
I feel Mother Teresa deliberately left her quote incomplete for you and me to explore and discover larger meaning of what she said.
What she meant in my opinion was that when we do our everyday routine with great love and dedication, they become our habit. Good habits sustain good actions over time which help us all attain great fulfillment and joy in our chosen life and careeer paths.
An apt example of this is Mother Teresa’s life itself.
Would you agree?
Take Care
