Wednesday I woke up, looked at my phone and felt the floor drop beneath me. I felt sick.
Many of us now face a harsh reality: The country we thought we knew is not the country we really live in, and the hopes and ideals we felt were so clear are not the hopes and ideals felt by much of the nation.
I won’t pretend to fully understand what happened. We’ll spend years dissecting how our expectations were wrong, how so many of us seemed to miss the tidal wave of emotion that swept across the United States. But I’m not ready to think about that.
Right now, I’m deeply worried about what happens next. As a medical student, I think a lot about healthcare, and it seems all but certain that the progress we’ve made toward providing affordable care to all Americans will be erased. I worry about my future patients, the ones who can’t afford to pay for the care they need but come anyway — risking bankruptcy. I worry even more about the patients I won’t see, the ones who can’t afford to pay for the care they need and don’t come — risking far more than bankruptcy.
And right now, what’s most knotting my insides is the thought of what this election represents. The feeling I can’t shake is that this vote was the voice of millions saying this country is not for people who aren’t like them — people like my family and many, many others. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” So goes the poem, the words on the Statue of Liberty speaking the same message symbolized by the colossus itself. A beacon of hope, only today the beacon seems to shine just a bit less brightly.
But then I remind myself that many who cast their ballots were not, in their minds, actively choosing bigotry, but were disenchanted and wanted to somehow make their voices heard.
I remind myself that the majority of our country did not buy into the politics of fear and voted otherwise.
And I remind myself that, when we woke up Wednesday morning, the United States was the same country it was the day before. This doesn’t mark a sudden overnight change in the attitudes of our nation; it has merely revealed them. When we woke up Wednesday, the sun did indeed still rise, and this is still our country.
To my classmates: Yes, many of us now face a reality that we’re not happy with. But we are the generation poised to change that reality. And that is particularly true for us as future physicians. We are responsible for changing that reality. This is not when we give in; this is when we begin.
We go back to work, and we work harder than ever. We listen with a newfound need to better grasp the issues facing the world. We fight with a renewed determination to advance the social justice causes in which we believe. We learn with an emboldened resolve to become great doctors and great leaders.
We must remember that our weariness today cannot become an excuse to slow down. We must remember the extra miles to go before we sleep so that the care we will one day deliver is not merely adequate. We must remember the compassion and empathy that led us to this field, even when the nights grow long and the cases routine. We must remember what we’re working toward.
We must remember all of this because our training is as important as it has ever been, because the more broken, tired and angry the world seems, the more it needs to heal.
Above all, even faced with the clear power of fear and bigotry, we all must continue to push ourselves to be better human beings. If the occasion is piled high with difficulty, we must rise with it. When everything seems at its lowest, we must still go high.
Today I remind myself of something Gandhi wrote — amidst an even more tumultuous and trying time, but with a sentiment that stands forever.
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.”
Nihaal Mehta ’14 MD’19 can be reached at nihaal_mehta@brown.edu.
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