Ward No. 6

In Chekhov's short story, Ward No. 6, a conversation between the doctor Andrei Yefimych and the mad psychiatric patient Ivan Dmitrich takes place. Andrei is insisting that a person's environment has little to do with his security and peace of mind. Therefore, there's no need to be surprised at anything or get overwhelmed by the troubles of life. He says, "There's no difference between a warm, cozy study and this ward...A man's peace and content are not outside but within him."

Having already denounced the Stoics in their previous conversation, Ivan Dmitrich responds:

"To scorn suffering, to be always content and surprised at nothing you must reach that condition"--and Ivan Dmitrich pointed to the obese, fat swollen peasant--"or else harden yourself with suffering to such a degree that you lose all sensitivity to it, that is, in other words, stop living."

"A convenient philosophy: no need to do anything, and your conscience is clear, and you feel yourself a wise man...No, sir, that's not philosophy, not thinking, not breadth of vision, it's laziness, fakirism, a dreamy stupor..."

and most poignantly

"Christ responded to reality by weeping, smiling, grieving, being wrathful, even anguished; he didn't go to meet suffering with a smile, nor did he scorn death, but he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane for this cup to pass from him."

So I actually read Chekhov's story last summer as I was applying for medical school, ironically enough. As I re-read the story for my Russian Lit. paper, I am struck by how much often blunt insight that Chekhov and yet there's a constant tension between allowing his words to wholly resonate within me and guarding against a perceived excessiveness of cynicism that often comes out in his works (or at least in the ones about physicians). One thing remains. Sensitivity to other people's pain is paramount in our ability to love another. The ability to experience the peaks and valleys of life is what makes us human. And as I find these undergraduate years quickly coming to a close, I pray to God that I do not allow maturity to become infected with stoicism or wisdom to be equivocated with insensitivity to the stark realities around me.

Or, as Bum put it, "emotional retardation"