The Heart of Paul Farmer
This is a reaction paper on Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. This is the story of a man who devotes all of himself to helping, healing and bettering others. Indirectly commanding the reader to analyze him/her self and ask am I doing my best? Addressing the question, what are two or three scenes that are most compelling to you personally? The scenes I have chosen to write about jump out of the page in the first few chapters showing the heart or character of a man bound and determined to do his best to change the world, one patient at a time.
Dr. Paul Farmer a man of great intelligence, who in lieu of being conceited was humble. Not the pseudo-humble nonsense you are bound to encounter in daily living. He in the true sense of the word was humble. Recognizing who he was before God and man, nothing more nothing less. A scene where this attribute struck me was in Chapter 2 with his patient, as we know him named Joe. When Dr. Farmer cradles himself against Joe, a HIV positive man who smoked, was an alcoholic and drug attic and begins speaking to him like its his sick child or friend. Kidder writes, “The way he stared at Joe’s face just then seemed both intent – as if there was no one else in the world …” (p. 14). His ability to have a million and one places to be, but be wholly focused on being in that moment leaves nothing to be desired and everything to strive for. In this moment all he cared about was helping this one man, who as it seemed to me was not entirely that interested in helping himself. Dr. Farmer talked, man to man, with this man. He did not attack or accuse him. Laughed with him. Not at him, or behind his back. This man, this doctor was a man with a heart of golden compassion. He was not a man bound by the rules of the average man, he lived his life outside the box and we should all learn to do the same on some level. The chart he made for Joe was strangely familiar to me. Not that I have seen a chart like...