Resident Submissions: Moments of Crisp Honesty

By Dr. Austin Lam, PGY-1 Psychiatry Research Track

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Of kindness

Of hypocrisy

Of contradiction and multitudes

The blind spot of noumenon

Of that which is

Over-talked

Over-discussed

Ever-present

In fluctuating waves of hide and seek

Hidden and

Calcified

Conquered, they say

It comes upon you

Still

Always

Floating decorated ornament

There is not

There isn’t

There was

There still is

There may be conquest

False and deceptive

Trompe l’oeil

And forced perspectives

Holbein the Younger

Could not have trumped

Your eye

Of Vanitas, of memento mori

They say

“Remember friend as you walk by

As you are now so once was I

As I am now you will surely be. Prepare thyself to follow me.”

What remains

What has undergone

Way of experience

Train of experience

Steely kindness

Injected with doubt

Thoroughgoing insecurity

Grounded in security

Only by looking

Behind

Steely-eyed

Sceptic

If way to humanity

Lies in humanity

Then look

Look, look – circumspection.