During the summer of 1979, as a young medical student, author Alphonsus Obayuwana was awarded a prestigious national grant to do a two-year research on Human Hope; little did he know it would take over thirty years of his adult life to sufficiently complete the project to his personal satisfaction. His three major findings and irrefutable conclusions, following three decades of scientific research, are summarized in The Five Sources of Human Hope: Mirror of Our Humanity. Obayuwana thoroughly explains where, how, why, when, and from what five sources humans routinely find Hope in life. He demystifies Hope and takes it forever out of abstraction. "This book is as educational as it is inspiring. A very thought provoking thesis on the essence of human life. Congratulations and well done" -Dr. Kingsley E. Iyamu Board certified psychiatrist "An enlightening book with a very fresh approach and novel look at Human Hope" -Dr. Ann Carter Psychologist, author, and professor "Without a doubt . . . the best book I have ever read on the subject of Hope. Truly mandatory reading for every teacher, parent, and mentor" -Fumi V. Olu-Osifo School principal, educator, parent
The Five Sources of Human Hope
Mirror of Our HumanityBy Alphonsus ObayuwanaiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Alphonsus Obayuwana, M.D.
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-2189-5Contents
Preface.......................................................................................................viiIntroduction..................................................................................................1Chapter One The Audacity of a Neophyte.......................................................................9Chapter Two My First Major Finding...........................................................................17Chapter Three My Second Major Finding........................................................................23Chapter Four My Third Major Finding..........................................................................33Chapter Five Additional Findings and My Final Conclusion.....................................................39Chapter Six Human Life, What a Mystery—Man, What a Puzzle..............................................45Chapter Seven Life Is a Journey during Which Humans Learn to Hope............................................53Chapter Eight The Nuances of Hope and Peace..................................................................67Chapter Nine UTOHPAL: A Theory about Human Hope, Personal Peace, and the Mystery of Life.....................79Chapter Ten Esperanza in Chile: A Tale of Human Hope and Thirty-Three Miners.................................91Chapter Eleven Human Hope: The True Essence of Our Humanity..................................................101Chapter Twelve Hope: A Necessity, an Obligation, and a Mission...............................................111The Last Word About Science, Religion, Atheism, and Human Hope................................................115Endnotes and Recommended Reading..............................................................................119Definitions of Terms..........................................................................................121What Is a Scientific Discovery?...............................................................................127About the Author..............................................................................................131Index.........................................................................................................133
Chapter One
The Audacity of a Neophyte
I am frequently asked how or why an obstetrician-gynecologist like me, a non-psychologist, became so passionately interested in the study of Human Hope. My sincere answer (as always) is that I do not really know. As far back as I can remember, I have been fascinated by anecdotal accounts concerning "mind over matter," including the so-called placebo effects of drugs—but only with passing interest.
My first sustained curiosity and serious consideration about an actual study of Human Hope began in the third year of my medical education. At the time, I was doing a required rotation in psychiatry as part of my training. I became struck by the degree of paralyzing pessimism and the profound sense of helplessness on the part of several depressed patients, especially those who were admitted because of attempted suicide. As I interacted with these patients during my assigned duties of obtaining personal history and performing physical examinations, I began to wonder how helpful and diagnostically informative it could be to have an instrument for objective measurement of Human Hope so that doctors may be able to predict, and perhaps prevent, depression or suicide.
At first, I discounted my observations as probably irrelevant in the scheme of things. Consequently, I had dismissed my idea of a tool for the objective measurement of Hope as an impractical imagination of a neophyte. Rather reluctantly, I subsequently included my observations and proposition in a student paper that I submitted to my mentors, expecting that at the most I could earn recognition for my enthusiasm or imagination, in spite of the probable impracticality of my ambitious proposal. Quite to the contrary, my professors received my paper very well. The chair of the department of psychiatry commended me particularly for my "intellectual audacity."
Coincidentally, at the time, an invitation went out to all medical students in the United States to submit ideas for creative one- to two-year projects of humanistic interest for possible funding by the SmithKline Medical Foundation. With the encouragement of several of my mentors, I applied for and was awarded a two-year grant to do research on Human Hope. Little did I know that it would take over thirty years of my adult life (beyond my medical school project) to complete the task of deciphering the nature and source of Human Hope to my own personal satisfaction.
After my four years of medical school, in spite of the successful completion of my Smith-Kline funded "Hope Project," my continuing passionate interest in the study of Human Hope notwithstanding, I resisted the urge to specialize in psychiatry. Instead, I chose the specialty of obstetrics and gynecology, much to the surprise of some of my professors. Over the years, the practice of obstetrics has uniquely provided me with both the pleasure and opportunity to literally help bring new life into the world on a daily basis. Sleep deprivations notwithstanding, and in spite of my other obligations, my interest in the study of Human Hope did not wane or abate. In fact, the practice of obstetrics has been particularly inspiring as well as contributory because after every delivery, the mere sight of the newborn infant in my arms actually intensifies my reverence for life and therefore further heightens my awe and appreciation of the mystery that surrounds human reproduction.
This frequent reminder and renewal of my reverence for the mystery and sanctity of human life has helped me to maintain my interest in the study of Human Hope throughout these many years. The findings that I made and the conclusions I have reached during the three decades of my research on Human Hope, I have summarized in this book and have incorporated into my Unified Theory about Human Hope, Personal Peace, and the Mystery of Life.
My research efforts, which span over three decades, have entailed countless hours of literature search and various types of surveys in different (large and small) populations. During this period, I evaluated hundreds (if not thousands) of medical records of both depressed and suicidal patients. I carried out in-depth interviews and had many engaging discussions with self-identified introverts and extroverts, apparent optimists, and pessimists of varying cultural backgrounds—including atheists and agnostics. I have also had ample and unique opportunities as a physician and frequent traveler to observe human behavior during both joyful and sad occasions—made possible by several years of voluntary attendance to the sick and the dying under different settings, including nursing homes and hospices. My years of supervising and participating in thousands of childbirths and, as a result, hundreds of hours of talking and listening to the friends and families of women who are in labor have provided me with invaluable and unique access to varying opinions about life. For example, I have actually had an opportunity to meet, talk with, and listen to three generations of four different families during the course of prenatal care, admission, labor, delivery, and postpartum care, in connection to the arrival of one single new baby—not counting neighbors, friends, and co-workers.
Such invaluable opportunities provided by the specialty of obstetrics, as well as my interaction with recently diagnosed cancer and HIV positive patients (in my role as a gynecologist), have offered me unusual chances to witness human reactions ranging from profound joy to utter sorrow. My many years of teaching, mentoring, and advising medical students, resident physicians, and nurses of various cultural backgrounds, as well as hundreds of hours of both scheduled and spontaneous interviews or counseling of patients and graduate students (single and married) who find themselves in various challenging life situations, have also provided me unique settings to gather data, confirm my findings, revise my conclusions, refine or refute my hypothesis, test my theory, and then draw my inferences about Human Hope. I also used the opportunities provided during routine lunch-hour discussions with fellow faculty members, the hospital chaplains and ordained ministers of varying denominations, physician colleagues, family members, friends, and even total strangers (met during long international flights) to find out what people thought of Human Hope.
The thousands of patients I have seen over the years (either as an obstetrician or as a gynecologist) have been especially helpful and instructive in every respect. During each encounter with my patients, I have always routinely explored and directly or indirectly inquired about Hope in their lives and what the word "hope" means to them—both in general and also specifically as it relates to the office visit of that particular day. Often, at the end of an office visit, I would ask, "What else can I do to make your day?" Invariably, patients with serious difficulties in their personal relationships, unmet severe financial needs, and unfulfilled educational aspirations would begin to volunteer confidential information that often led to appropriate referrals for the needed services or solutions—often unrelated to the presenting chief complaint. The teary words of gratitude from such patients and others who regained wellness after prolonged suffering—largely because they finally found someone to confide in—have been very instructive. To these patients, I owe much of my understanding of Human Hope. During my medical career (as gynecologist rather than as obstetrician), I have also unfortunately had the opportunities to observe the reactions of patients and their families after receiving the news of poor prognosis or a fatal diagnosis. In my various humanitarian medical missions, I have had occasions to listen to the aspirations of the very poor, the literally homeless, and truly destitute individuals. I have, during international visits, heard and witnessed the simple desires of institutionalized orphans who yearn to have just a hug or a smile, and upon the receipt of either from a stranger, cling on tightly—unwilling to let go. I have also listened to and have heard the simple desires of evicted mothers with young children; the reflections of convicted criminals, during sincere contrition; and the unrepentant opinions of defiant murderers who show no remorse. From every one of these, I learned about Hope.
Lastly and most importantly, I had the unforgettable and personally most unfortunate experience of observing and documenting the daily plight of my beloved sister, Theresa—during the last nine months of her life as she struggled with invasive breast cancer, before, during, and after radiation therapy, mastectomy, and chemotherapy—while we lived together (just the two of us) sharing a one-bedroom apartment.
During my thirty years of studying Human Hope, particularly those precious nine months spent with my beloved sister, I became very familiar with the faces of Hope as well as of despair. I also became aware that there are countless but always very similar stories of Hope and despair about men and women, irrespective of ethnicity, geography, age, or religion. Each one is unique, important, and very special but never more relevant or better than the next. Some, nevetheless, are more poignant than others. On some occasions, the task of thinking and talking about Hope was emotionally draining. Such times came, for example, during or after a very sad interview, a posthumous chart review of suicide victims, or while saying a heartbreaking good-bye to those in need but to whom I could offer no assistance. Often, I struggled to maintain my emotional composure so I could carry on. I sometimes wept copiously, and on occasions, I also laughed very heartily—about myself, others, or our common humanity. More than once, I came under the stress and strain of my own cognitive dissonance when cherished assumptions and old beliefs refused to accommodate new and compelling findings. In all, I managed to carry on (but not always with dry eyes) as I made many a poignant entry concerning the plight of others into my research notebook. By far the most difficult of all entries I ever made were the records I kept on my own lovely sister as I attempted to document her feelings of fear and courage or of faith and helplessness, as seen under the weight of her illness.
No brother could ever possibly love his sister more than I loved my sister Theresa. Consequently, her terminal illness of breast cancer was particularly difficult for me to accept. Ever since I was six years old and she was about eight, we both understood, though it was never verbalized, that our exclusive club of two was forever closed to new membership. As two inseparable little children of divorced Catholic parents, Theresa and I had developed a nontransferable trust and indestructible confidence in each other without reservations. It came about from sharing our most intimate fears with one another when we were small, confused by incomprehensible adult dispute, vulnerable, and lonely—unwilling to share our thoughts about Mom and/or Dad with no one else but each other. She was once so important in my life that I often privately prayed that I be the first to die (of the two of us) because I dreaded to even imagine a life without her. This very prayer about my desired order of our death, I found much later, she also had entertained but in an exact reversed order, with me as the surviving one. She and I therefore did not only love each other and think alike, but we also even prayed alike about things as ultimate as death. For these and other reasons, when I began to gather data about her plight as part of my Human Hope research, even after I became convinced that she would die of cancer, I had a very serious clash between the dispassionate objectivity that is required of me by science and the raw empathy as well as deep love that I had for my sister Tessy. Whenever I made an entry into my data book about things I had observed as her coping behavior, or recorded her very patient answers to my probing questions, I actually felt like a traitor who had chosen the "thrill" of science over an undivided attention to a sister purportedly so dearly loved.
When she eventually succumbed to her illness in spite of her many, many, many hours of audible and inaudible prayers to God, I became guilt ridden and also very bitter as an eyewitness to her unanswered prayers. Her death (though not unexpected) confused me very profoundly after it actually occurred. My own faith in God was seriously shaken, and life for me almost lost its meaning. It seemed to me that life had cheated her and very irrevocably so—in spite of her five lovely children. I therefore began to question the logic of a God who abandons a woman of so much faith and who had such a palpable belief in divine intervention. Quite reasonably, I consequently became agnostic but in spite of my disappointment in God, as a baptized Catholic, I had great difficulty becoming a frank atheist—as so many core facts about God still remained very persuasive to me. As a brother and a witness to my sister's uncommon piety, I thought she deserved much better from a deity whom she so devotedly invoked. Yet as a physician and scientist, I could not reasonably expect a divine abrupt reversal of the natural history of metastatic breast cancer.
At the end, these conflictions not withstanding, I ultimately made redemptive sense out of my sister's death as I had done throughout the years of my research on Human Hope. I did it by logically reconciling divergent facts while carefully straddling the dividing lines that separated scientific objectivity from spiritual sensibility—without disregarding the former or offending the latter. For the sake of science, my objective treatment of facts remained uncompromised, but in deference to religion, my inferences were kept clear of any tinge of heresy.
When all is said and done, mine was truly a thirty-year narrative of a lone crusader who as a physician neophyte had the audacity to ask questions about Human Hope. During the three decades of research, I made three major findings and came to one compelling conclusion.
Chapter Two
My First Major Finding
I had received my master's degree in biochemistry in 1977 and became a PhD candidate while I was also a third-year medical student. As a candidate for a combined MD-PhD degree, I was quite adept in the art of avoiding distractions since I did not have a lot of leisure time to invest in frivolous activities. Inexplicably, I developed an irresistible, deep interest in the study of Human Hope—even beyond my initial desire to measure and quantify it. This new and broadened interest became so time-consuming that I had to abandon my pursuit of a doctoral degree in biochemistry, but I continued as a medical student.
It all began during my clerkship on the psychiatric ward, as explained in chapter one. In addition to my interest in the measurement of Hope, I had observed that a significant number of depressed patients often presented with very impressive histories of difficult relationships at the workplace, school, and/or home. As I read more and probed deeper, initially merely out of personal curiosity, I determined that unmet financial desires—but not necessarily poverty—was also a frequent finding in the history of several patients. As I continued to progress in my medical education, I had the opportunities to interact not only with depressed and suicidal patients, but also other patients with various forms of physical and psychological ill health. These included runaway teenagers that I interviewed during my pediatric rotations, drug addicts that I interacted with during my training in the emergency department, cancer patients in the oncology unit, the chronically ill patients in the medical wing, and others with either multiple disease burdens or a recurrent single medical complaint.
Out of ever expanding interest, I soon found myself requesting and seeking greater access to advanced psychiatric literature and other specialreports,includingarchivesofanthropologicstudies,psychological autopsies, and journals of social studies. Based on careful reviews of such compendia, in addition to many hours of one-on-one in-depth interviews of patients and their family members, I began to put together a body of information concerning "troubled lives" in general. By troubled lives, I mean the runaway teenagers that I met during my pediatric rotations, the drug addicts that I interviewed in the emergency room, the cancer patients in the oncology units whom I befriended, and the chronically ill patients that were assigned to me during my internal medicine rotation.
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