Acting Doctor

Photo Credit: Steve-eilertsen.com

The line fell flat and I didn’t get why. Just the previous night, the same line with the same pace, inflection and volume got huge laughs from the audience but that night, nothing, except perhaps a polite chuckle. The only difference? I paused for an extra second to deliver the punchline and that killed it. The following night I used my original timing and the laughs were back. Could comedy be that clinical? Apparently so. And if timing proved to be important in my Acting, that only increased in medicine.

If a patient has a heart attack or a stroke, the two expressions you will hear are “Time is (heart) muscle” or “Time is brain.” The same intervention delivered too late and the effect is lost. I still remember pounding on the chest of a 32 year old heroin addict brought into the Emergency Room in cardiac arrest after an overdose. Every chest compression was filled with the knowledge that time was slipping away and when our team could not revive him, time stood still as the time of death was called. A young life gone too soon. Could a phonecall have prevented this overdose? Could a visit have come sooner and found him in better shape? We’ll never know.

Here’s what we do know. Timing is not simply about chance:

“Choice” “Judgment” and “Control” all imply deliberate action. Although we are not always in control of when certain things happen, we are in control of the timing of most things we do in our lives. But how conscious are we of that responsibility? Timing matters. Have you ever sent a text with either really good or bad news and had that one person who responds two days later saying all the right things, but somehow it doesn’t have the same effect? Timing.

I’m reading a provocative book right now “A Path Appears” which lays the case for how to make a meaningful difference. In the current chapter, the authors describe how tough the conditions are in a certain Native American reservation where up to two thirds of the male population are alcoholics. The unemployment and drop-out rates are unbelievable. So where do you time your intervention? The authors argue that trying to address unemployment before you’ve dealt with the fact that many children are born with fetal alcohol syndrome affecting their cognitive abilities is bad timing. Intervention can work but must be timed correctly.

As important as timing is, it is not adequately taught in school where the focus is on bodies of knowledge. But that knowledge is useless if not delivered in time to prevent a suicide or simply make a moment or day meaningful.

With timing in mind, I have taken a new approach to weekend activities with my boys. I used to schedule things I did with them where it made sense in the day, usually after taking care of my business earlier in the day. Reasonable right? But there was room for other things to interfere with the plan or I would get tired and I would not always get to things I wanted to do with them. Now, I start with them. Today we did big waffle breakfast, chores, an hour of reading together, countries of Africa pop-quiz and swimming back to back. This change in timing makes a difference in two ways: I am more likely to spend more time with them and that’s always a win, but I also convey implicitly that my time with them is so important that I start my day with it before anything else.

Timing makes a difference and it is a choice I am learning to be more deliberate about. And where it is not in my control, I have found peace in these words “He makes everything beautiful in its time.” Ecclesiastes 3:11