Sunday 22 November 2015

Albert inspired

I was inspired by my my paediatrician at age 5. (my paediatrician inspired)

At age twelve, my standard six teacher brought the story of Albert Schweitzer with lots of passion to our attention and this story truly was a source of inspiration for the rest of my life.

Albert Schweitzer was a super successful doctor, philosopher and musician. He was born in the Alsace very close to the border between France and Germany. He coined the term reverence for life, which means standing in awe for all living creatures and seeing in each of them their intrinsic worthiness and value. I will write something on that later.

Even though the reverence for life concept is fantastic and speaks to my soul in a big way now, it was not that which gave me so much inspiration at twelve. What so dearly inspired me, was that in his late thirties (1912-1913) he spent all of his wealth (double the amount of most of our superb philanthropists of the 21st century) and almost 100% of his time -and also his wife's time- to establish a hospital for the poor in Lamberéné, Gabon (Africa).

The story and its details (which can be found about anywhere on the internet and in about every bookshop selling English titles), were giving me a WOW-experience. WOW, that is so great. It moved something deep inside of me and lighted a flame in my soul to move out of Belgium, after I would have reached my ambition to become a medical doctor (a paediatrician).

At that moment a very logical choice would have been the médecins sans frontières (Doctors without borders), but fate seemed to have something slightly different in plan...

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Note: even though Albert was definitely not perfect - he received critiques as  well-, I think it would be worth for any medical student to read about his wonderful achievements. :-)
 

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