Most of us feel passionate resignation during the dog days of winter with no sunlight, short days, too cold to go outside. We tend to feel gloomy and often that reflects on our behavior toward ourselves and others.
Depressions are higher during winter months, episodes of cabin fever are high. Yet this is because many of us feel passionate resignation toward winter. Yet what we should feel is passionate hope and passionate faith, because we all know brighter days are coming. We all know the sun will rise again, spring will come, the days will get longer and warmer.
Yet it's hard to find passionate faith and hope during the winter. Yet those who do are happier and this resonates in their demeanor and how they treat others. A positive demeanor resonates a positive demeanor. When a baby smiles, for example, one has to work hard not to smile back.
Many people have passionate resignation about death. They see death as the end of their life and therefore the end of days are hard and often depressing and gloomy. And this resonates through us, and those around the dying with passionate resignation also feel gloomy.
Yet we should feel passionate faith and hope about death. We should know that with death is not everlasting nothingness, but everlasting life and life with peace and with Jesus. Studies show that people who believe in Jesus are happier and are happier patients (I wrote about this here). Those who are passionately faithful and hopeful about death resonate faith and hope and therefore happiness in others.
I had an experience with passionate resignation at work recently. I was at a meeting and I was feeling hopeless and lost because a doctor was refusing to allow RTs and RNs to use their individual thoughts and experience to the benefit of the patient
She said, "I don't want nurses deciding on their own what to do for the patient, when what they decide is against hospital policy." She was talking about order sets that mandate certain things be done to patients with a certain diagnosis.
I hate order sets because they decrease individualism. I think nurses and RTs should be allowed to make individual decisions based on the patient and given the circumstances. I wasfrustrated. I believe protocols are better because they encourage positive outcome based medicine to improve patient outcomes and improve RN and RT morale.
I wanted to quit dealing with the administration. I wanted to quit the committee. I actually wanted to walk out of the meeting, because if a doctor is going to have that attitude then what's the point of me even being there. Doctors thinking like that make us RTs feel passionate resignation. She actually believes people are stupid, and only an expert (her) should be able to make decisions. Everyone else is stupid.
Then I decided that passionate resignation only resulted in apathy, decreased confidence (I couldn't look at her let alone talk or negotiate with her), and no chance of progress. I decided it's better to have passionate faith and hope even though passionate faith and hope are hard to obtain. I took the harder path, the noble path, and the better path. This resonates hope and faith in others.
This is the only way to better patient care. We must have faith and hope. We must have confidence? We must have optimism? Lest we will fail and they will win.
I think one of the philosophic recommendations someone once told me about was to think positive thoughts about people before you approach them. you should do this especially with people of whom you do not agree with or care for. The idea here is if you think positively -- have hope and faith -- your good feelings resonate and you will be well thought of and liked and respected.
Plus by thinking good thoughts about the person (however hard that may be sometimes) you are less likely to allow them to drag you into their pessimistic and gloomy world, and the less likely you are to say something you might regret, something that might slow or stop progress.
Once people learn to respect you they will develop a feeling of passionate hope and passionate faith. We must all have passionate hope and faith. We must not take the easy path of passionate resignation. We must have faith and hope and know that death does not mean we are taken away from God and his people. We must know that with death comes eternal life.
We must not meet our fate with resignation. We must know the facts, and know what we believe in, and me must keep moving in a direction of hope and faith.
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