What Defines Who You Are?

There is a condition, called prosopagnosia, where people can’t recognize faces.  They see eyes, noses, and hair, but can’t process them into features that make a person familiar.  When you think about someone that you know, what makes him or her familiar to you?  Is it the color of their hair?  Is it the fact that they were tall?  Is it perhaps the way that they tell a joke or their exceptional skill at cooking chicken?

This defining characteristic isn’t who they are, though; it’s just something about them.

Person:  (per-suhn) noun:  a human being, whether a man, woman, or child as distinguished from an animal or a thing.

Did you notice that the definition doesn’t mention a cancer, or a bad heart, or an accident?

A distinguishing characteristic for our guests is that they’re in medical crisis.  That ties them all together.  The people that we meet have diseases, are dealing with surgeries, are recovering from treatments, and are sometimes quite remarkable.

But we don’t remember them by their condition, though.

We remember our guests because of the remarkable people that they are.  We remember them because of their stories, and because of their sharing, and because they are people.

What do we remember about the twins?  We remember the laughter and giggling as they played.  We can still hear it ringing in the rooms where they did what little girls do.  We can hear it every time we look back at a picture of their smiling faces.

What do we remember about Margaret and her portable heart?  We remember the story about the one that got away.   Margaret went fly-fishing while she was waiting for her new heart, because that’s what people like Margaret do.

Our guests laugh just like other people, and they eat just like other people, and they sleep just like other people.  The things that brought them here are just a characteristic, like having red hair, or having an accent, or being left handed.  It doesn’t define who they are.  It’s just something else to know about them.

This might be good advice for many of us.  Life can be challenging.  We’re dealing with a poor economy, we’re fearful for the health of our planet, and there are still wars and unrest around the world.  There are things in our daily lives that put up obstacles for us.

But these daily challenges don’t define us; they’re just something for us to deal with.  Just a characteristic.  Like having red hair or being left handed.

What do we see when we walk around the Hospital Hospitality House of Richmond?  We see people.