TY - JOUR T1 - Opening the Word Hoard JF - Medical Humanities JO - J Med Humanit SP - 110 LP - 117 DO - 10.1136/jme.200X.10.1136/jmh.2007.000260 VL - 33 IS - 2 AU - Gillie Bolton AU - Yvonne Yi Wood Mak AU - Tim Metcalf AU - Ann Williams AU - Sinead Donnelly AU - David Greaves Y1 - 2007/12/01 UR - http://mh.bmj.com/content/33/2/110.abstract N2 - Opening the word hoard is edited by Gillie Bolton. Items should be sent to her address at the end of her introduction.The function of the writer is to act in such a way that nobody can be ignorant of the world, and that nobody may say that he is innocent of what it’s all about.JP Sartre (p14)1Cut doors and windows for a roomIt is the holes which make them useful.Therefore profit comes from what is there;Usefulness from what is not there.Lao Tsu (p11)2Life offers few certainties; three are birth, death and uncertainty. No one knows when or how exactly birth or death will take place (unless it is controlled); what another person feels, thinks or remembers; why we are born; where our essential self goes when we die; or what death and being dead are like. Yet we have responsibility for our own lives3 and our own practice, despite current trends towards blame and litigation, performance indicators, targets, protocols. Given this social, psychological and spiritual tug-of-war between responsibility and accountablity it’s not surprising that suicide rates and work-stress have increased.Like dandelions pushing through lifeless concrete, however, age-old understandings and strategies are being practised and put forward. Mindfulness, a conscious exclusion of elements of life apart from that which is being attended to,4 is achieved when senses and awarenesses are tuned in to present action:5 the opposite of multitasking. Being mindfully aware develops communication, ability to use implicit knowledge in association with explicit knowledge, and insight into others’ perceptions.Arthur Frank speaks of practical wisdom, from Aristotle: “Phronesis is the opposite of acting on the basis of scripts and protocols; those are for beginners, and continuing reliance on them can doom actors to remain beginners” (p221).6 … ER -