I wish there was a way to remember, every single day, that we are all connected and that we are only as good as the sum of all our parts.  The hospital where I am a student serves a lot of at risk patients.  We scan numerous people with chronic, awful illnesses that are often behaviorally contracted.  Lots of Hepatitis C, lots of AIDS, and lots of Cirrhosis.  And it is so easy when I am in a room with a patient who has contracted AIDS to blame them.  To go to that place in my mind where only derelict, irresponsible people get themselves sick.  Disease is like that; it's easy to make someone who is ill not like you because it means maybe (just maybe) you're less likely to get the disease.  If only idiots get AIDS, then somehow white folk like us are safe.

But as I go through an exam (and our exams are LONG) and I begin talking to the patient, I find we have much more in common than not.  I find we may agree on politics or a favorite food or simply in relishing these last days before winter hits.  The things that unite us are so much more gargantuan than the things that separate us.

And then, inevitably, I find myself thinking about what it would be like to grow up in the really rough parts of Denver as a young, black female.  Having worked in Denver Public Schools, I know that the education is about as thorough and quality as a safety check point in a small, off-the-map airport.  I know that a lot of my students didn't have a parent at home because they were working two jobs just to pay rent.  And I know a lot of my students were lonely.  So terribly, desperately alone.

And if you do the addition on that equation, you find a really lost, scared human.  And it is no wonder, really, that they may find themselves in bed with someone they shouldn't or sticking a needle full of something in an arm.  It's no wonder that when kids like I was sit at the kitchen table with their parents, working on their homework, another fraction of the population is searching for any place and any person to call home.

And so I remind myself, again and again, that we are all so much alike.  If only we could listen long enough to appreciate just how much we should love one another.  And we should, truly.  It's not some cheesy, stereotypical line.  It is the truth.  What we owe one another, every single other living thing in this universe, is the love, compassion, and respect of acknowledging them in whatever place they may find themselves.

Let's be clear that life is hard.  Life is so, so, so impossibly demoralizing.  It is full of loss and sadness and sometimes a desperate loneliness that seems like it will never dissipate.  But life, above all, is beautiful.  It is two lovers sitting on a park bench, holding hands in the moonlight.  It is the irreversible love of a parent for their child.  It is the ridiculous connection we're capable of with the natural environment.  This world, this very one that seems so drearily long and difficult and exhausting, is truly a place of enchantment.

It is all the richer for each and every patient I see, in whatever state they arrive.  It is richer, even, as a result of all the angry, lost souls.  And it is all the richer, especially (my dearest), for containing you.

You, my friend, are beautiful.  I owe my life to you.  And to all the oh so very lost souls in the world who make my longest days that much more tolerable.