The beloved Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hahn offers this wisdom in The Miracle of Mindfulness:

“The manner in which you get ready for work, go to work, and the way you are while you are there affects not only those you work with, but also the quality of your work.”

He reminds us that everything we do in our lives shapes our work. He shares a story of tending his garden and being told by a scholar not to “waste time” growing lettuce when he could be writing poetry. But for him, the two were inseparable. Mindfully growing lettuce, eating, washing dishes, these ordinary acts nourished his ability to write.

“The way someone washes the dishes reveals the quality of his or her poetry.”

This insight speaks deeply to me, especially in the context of healthcare, where the work is both meaningful and demanding. When I consider how much of our lives is spent working, I am struck by how essential it is that our work be infused with presence and purpose.

Although I am now retired, I spent 47 years working full-time in nursing, primarily in home care, education, palliative care, leadership, and Mission Integration. Throughout those years, I often reflected: if I am going to work this hard, I want to end each day knowing I have made a difference, not only in the lives of those I served, but also among my colleagues.

As a new graduate, I worked for four years on an oncology unit, where I accompanied patients in profound moments of suffering. That early experience shaped me in lasting ways. My patients were my greatest teachers. They taught me about living, about dying, and about what truly matters: compassion, tenderness, and small acts of kindness.

I came to understand that the relationship between caregiver and receiver is not one-directional. It is reciprocal. Both are touched, and both are, in some way, healed in the sacredness of that encounter.

Fill my heart with love,
that every teardrop may become a star.
~Hazel Inayat Khan

Affirmation: All things are possible through the healing power of love.

Shared by Liz Sorensen Wessel
Watercolor by ~liz