Let's Dance

Over the years of practicing medicine, patients taught me many lessons.


On one occasion, the lesson came from a couple whom I had never seen before. They were quite elderly and each looked frail, layered in ordinariness, dressed in non-descript clothes of a  distant era.


In contrast to their appearance was the husband's courtliness, helping his wife off with her coat and then getting her comfortably seated.  Their affection for each other was palpable and they unquestionably were still very much in love.


I sensed they had an interesting story to tell and was eager to discover it.


A fifteen minute appointment leaves you little time to really get to know your patients,  so  I utilized a favorite technique for connecting with patients when time is short.


Early in my practice I had discovered that even the most taciturn would open up and talk enthusiastically and appreciatively about their lives, revealing much in a very short time, when asked one of two questions: How did you and your spouse meet, or, where did you grow up and what was it like growing up there?


With this couple, there seemed most to be learned by asking how they had met.


They met in the early 1950s at the Eagle Ball Room where singles came to dance to big band music and perhaps even find romance.


He spotted her and asked her for the first dance of the evening.  After the music stopped, he asked her to marry him.  She accepted right on the spot.


Sixty-four years latter it was obviously a brilliant, if impulsive, decision.  "But how did you know that she was the one," I asked?


"Because we danced well together."  


Go figure.


So what did they teach me?  First, that the good life is not always governed by reason.  Second, that sometimes the heart is better than the head in navigating ones destiny.