Setting Aside Complaints

Too much effort kvetching about what was and what is.  Not a great way to proceed with a New Year.  Of course, to fix something there has to be both awareness and recognition that there are benefits to having something other than status quo.  Depending on our personality, tilting at windmills can be invigorating or disheartening.  Some of us just like immersing ourselves in friendly combat, with the result less important than the quest.  I might be one of those people who would get bored if every experience was to my liking.  Other people's ineptitude, at least my conclusion that they are inept, energizes me to attempt a repair.  Sometimes it is better to vote with your feet and move away from the irritant but it is the persistent response to irritants that  form pearls.

Disaffected Doctors.  Disaffected Jews.  No shortage of either.  Designed my forum for a benevolent form of verbal combat.  The year ahead has all sorts of opportunities though I'm far from certain which end points enable those currently irritated to be content.  So I'll select my own pet peeves first and be sympathetic to professional assaults on other doctors or that come my way.  And always offer something better.

Right now I am ready to give myself another leave of absence from AKSE.  The Aliyah Sound Bites finally got to me.  Sen. Hruska commented on a Supreme Court nominee some time ago that mediocrity needs to be represented on the Supreme Court.  Most of the press, and even his colleagues, disagreed with that position and the nomination never came to Senatorial consent.  Mediocrity is highly represented on shabbbos morning.  Undoubtedly at other times too, which is why my attendance at events and divestment of committees continues.  Not that there aren't some glorious moments.  A superb sermon by a congregant last week, a full Torah reading done expertly by a congregant this shabbos.  Yet I do not particularly like sitting through the service, particularly the Torah service whose cadence has been shattered and the morning lengthened for some sort of minor running commentary.  I sent my assessment to the Ritual Chairman who is usually responsive but have heard nothing.

No more expression of irritation, just an absence to get something else instead.  Though I might miss the battle, I have other forums for self-expression of my Jewish experience.

Medically I am ready to write off some of the housestaff, particularly over issues of discharging patients without adequate provision for what follows the hospital.  One has gotten sufficiently repetitive to report as an individual for patient safety but by and large it may be better to just let the free market have its assessment after they graduate.  Scheduling in the office, another irritant, not worth the battle right now.

So what really is worth the battle?  And do I benefit from the process irrespective of outcome?  Probably but let me set this stuff aside for a month or so and reassess.