The Rough Rock Project: Standing in the Face of Love

I'm several days past cataract surgery and stunned by the world. For one thing, I had no idea I had so many wrinkles and for another that my Lazyboy chair had blue threads through the gray. I am patting everything in the simple wonder of color. I knew I couldn't see, but I didn't know I'd lost color. 

And of course I can see the subtitles and watch K-drama again. Following the tension of Dr. Romantic 1, 2 and 3, I needed something tender, and stumbled on Would you like a cup of coffee? It is the encounter of a young man (the Grasshopper) with the art of coffee, carefully guided by a Sensei who also instructs him in acceptance of other people. Profound. At the end of the show, as the post-Covid economic recession is forcing the closure of Edae Coffee, an older woman reminds them all, "This, too, shall pass." Wonderful thought for our times. 

But I really wanted to re-watch Business Proposal, both because it was silly and because it starred Ayn Hyo-seop, who was such a compelling force in Dr. Romantic's seasons 2 and 3. It was so slapstick and silly I got the idea that there wouldn't be a compelling lesson, which would run counter to all my theories about K-drama. But I was wrong -- it had a truly profound lesson about standing in the face of love. 

Ayn Hyo-seop's character, Kang Tae-moo, had a childhood trauma -- his parents were killed in a car crash during a rain storm. His PTSD was triggered by the rain. His girlfriend, Shin Ha-ri, played by Kim Sejong, sees the PTSD and learns about the trauma. They are on a date and a terrible rain starts. She immediately covers them with a brilliant yellow umbrella. Then she says, "I have something I always wanted to do on a rainy-day date with a boyfriend, if I ever had a boyfriend." That line is very disarming, I think, because it calls attention to her difficulties. Then she takes him into the subway and to a subway flower market and to eat jeon, which she says is great for that weather. By the time the rain has stopped and they are walking down the street, he has had an emotional breakthrough. He asks her, "How long have you known? I wanted to tell you but I didn't want to look pathetic in front of the woman I love." 

Father Richard Rohr compared such healings to the exorcisms performed by Jesus:

In that sense, I’ve personally known a lot of possessed people. It’s no surprise that Jesus exorcised so many demons from people who seemed to carry the negative projections of the surrounding crowd (Luke 9:37–43), synagogue worshippers (Mark 1:21–27; Luke 13:10–17), or the Gerasene residents (Mark 5:1–20; Luke 8:26–39). The ancients were not as naive as we might think. In these stories, we see exactly what the internalization of negative judgment means. Such people do need healing, even a major “exorcism”! While we tend to send them to therapists instead of holy people, in general, the only cure for negative possession is a positive repossession! Jesus is always “repossessing” people—for themselves and for God.  

When a good therapist, a wise and holy (meaning whole or healed) person, or a totally accepting friend becomes our chosen mirror, we are, in fact, being healed! I hope it doesn’t sound too presumptuous, but I think I have exorcised a good number of people in my life—primarily because they had the trust and the humility to let me mirror them positively and replace the old mirror of their abusive dad, their toxic church, or their racist neighborhood. That’s why Jesus says, “Your faith has saved you” (Luke 7:50). I am just saying the same.

Shin Ha-ri is the totally accepting friend who mirrors acceptance to Kang Tae-moo, exorcising the demon of negative judgement that was keeping him from having peace. His faith in her permits him to give himself to her care on the rainy-day date. His faith saves him.

In this time, T@ and the US government have unleashed "shock and awe" on the nation and the world, and fear is everywhere. When people call or visit with me, I know -- because of this learning -- that my job is to mirror acceptance of the times and commitment to reaffirm the dignity of all living beings. 

May it be so. 

The Rough Rock Project: Love and Truth

I had cataract surgery today (first of two) and watching K-drama was impossible. Netflix only offers Korean dramas, which makes sense because that's all I watch. But with a bandage over one eye that is too big to allow me to wear my glasses, I can't read the sbtitles. I needed a movie in English, something I didn't really need to see and certainly didn't need to read. I went to "search" and Netflix offered The Guernsey Literary and Potto Peel Pie Society, a great favorite of mine. It seemed perfect. 

the thought was not in my mind that GLPPS would offer insights into the Rough Rock Project -- RRP. I don't even know what the RRP is. This is the true definition of "beginner's mind," that state the Buddhist's suggest we should always hold on to, this state of not knowing. I was describing the effort to understand the reapir of society when we faced the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in 2001. The core of it was that we -- Jen,Lourdes and I -- didn't know what it was, so we asked everyone we knew, we batted ideas around, we read. And we worked from points that we could establish -- truths, if that is not too radical a term in the age of T2, aka 47. One of the truths was the organizations are the mesh of cities -- might we be able to ask organizations of al kinds to integrate social and emotional caretaking in to the work that they were going to do anyway? Not new work, but slightly reconceptualized work, like a Christmas Party, that included a healing element or a grocery sale that emphasized vegetables over comfort food. Things like that.

In the case of the Rough Rock Project -- RPP -- it occurred to me that GLPPS was showing me how people got through a very hard time, and how they regrouped in the aftermath of that. It was like waking up and realizing I was in the middle of technical lecture on recovery and restoration and I was supposed to be taking notes. 

The alarm bell was the line, "Elizabeth knew that we really needed was connection."

Oh. 

If divide and conquer is the core process of American governance, then connection is constantly, always the antidote. What we really need is connection. It starts, I think, at the level of daily life. I was floored. y this beautiful quote from Mirabai Starr that appeared in Father Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation:

One of the things it means to be an ordinary mystic is to bow at the feet of your everyday existence, with its disappointments and dramas, its peaceful mornings and luminous nights, and to honor yourself just as you are…. A mystic finds the magic in the midst of the nitty-gritty, the crusty spaghetti sauce pot in the sink and the crocus poking out of a spring snowfall, the unsigned divorce papers on the kitchen table and the results of your latest blood work on your computer screen. 

If I connect with my own everyday, then I can connect with other people's everyday. A friend asked me if I had decided on near or far lenses. I had forgotten that was a defining characteristic of what was to be in my eye from now on. So I called her after the surgery to say "near" and she said "of course," Because I have to read so many things, like subtitles, food labels, The New York Times. The miracle of my own everyday was pretty miraculous today and I needed to say to someone else that it was so. 

Connections grow, as we know, because things spiral, mushroom, blossom, expand. And that would be a ghood yellow line in the Connections game. 

And so, as T@ swirls around us, it is essential to find the wonderful in the day and tell it to somone else. It may seem silly and small, but it's potential for getting us through in the best possible shape is much greater that chagging off in desperate little groups to fight every little thing -- T@ can cause chaos much faster than we can fix and the real target of the chaos is our connection. So let us protect that, restore that, honor that, dedicate ourselves to that. 

That is my first conribution to the Rough Rock Project, as a result of my interesting day. 

ps. I can't see well enought to fix the typos. I might just leave them as part of the story of today, January 22, 2025. 

Tao of K-drama: The Rough Rock Project

In Season 3 of Dr. Romantic, teacher/philosopher Dr. Kim Sabu, speaking as images of disaster scroll past, says: 

Abnormal climate, natural disasters, the climate is rapidly changing for the worse, forest fires, earthquakes, and wars. Many unexpected incidents, accidents, and man-made disasters. We will be engulfed in these suddenly and without warning. At this point the world has become a place where, no matter what happens, we wouldn't find it surprising. Now, we have to prepare for that kind of world. Our Rough Rock Project will become the cornerstone for that. 

During the season, various people pause to look at notebooks labeled "Rough Rock Project," but it is a loose thread that is never tied up -- maybe something that will be taken up in Season 4, should we be so lucky. I found the proposition irresistible -- that our work is to prepare for a world in which nothing, however outlandish and horrifying, would surprise us. 

Whether we are surprised or not, we will have to name the things that are happening. Listening with friends and family to Donald Trump's inaugural address today, we heard a long series of policies he plans to implement that run counter to the kinds of acts that would prepare us to meet the unexpected. Perhaps chief among them was his pledge to "Drill, baby, drill." 

As one colleague remarked, that is running towards Death -- Sigmund Freud noted that EROS and THANATOS form a major dialectic in human life. This offers a useful frame for the emphasis on LOVE offered by the clergy gathered with Bishop William Barber to respond to the inaugural address. 

Teacher/philosopher Dr, Kim represents passionate and uncompromising love for his patients, colleagues, hospital and community. He is completely committed to the fight against death -- he is ready to operate on a woman with dementia, and cries when she says she just wants to sleep. He demands this level of commitment from his team, as well. Older surgeons from Seoul are terrified by what they see as his recklessness. Their practice is to avoid malpractice charges by walking away when patients have little chance of survival. 

Dr. Kim doesn't see it that way: he wants to take the risk, because the patient might live, and he is dedicated to that. This commitment is what brings him to the new Rough Rock Project, as the path to survival will be made complicated by the unexpected. Just as the trauma center, founded on sound study of surgical and emergency procedure, is the outcome of the Cornered Stone Project, some new way of organizing and thinking will be the outcome of the new project. I am with Alathe, the Dramabeans recapper, who wrote:

But highs and lows aside, I still get shivers down my spine when our doctors race to the OR in determined slowmo! And so, against all better judgement, I’m invoking the jinx. It sure is quiet here without a Season 4, huh? (Somewhere, perhaps, a distant studio executive’s phone rings…)

I do hope there's a Season 4, which lays out the Rough Rock Project.

But I don't think that lets me or any of us off the hook -- Dr. Kim is talking about the world in which we live -- all of us. And therefore, the Rough Rock Project has plenty of room for us to join. How is Rough Rock different from Cornered Stone? What tools are the tools for worldwide levels of destruction and upheaval beyond any we've ever seen? These are open questions, left for all of us to take to heart and to our offices so we can do the work -- the work of being on the side of LOVE and LIFE for all. 

Tao of K-drama: The Cornered Stone

In Season 2 of Dr. Romantic, one of the young doctors, Seo Woo-jin, pushes teacher Kim Sabu. He knows something is wrong with Dr. Kim. Dr. Kim loves this young man and accepts his rather desperate need to know. But, of course, he is Kim Sabu, so he shoves armsful of notebooks filled with journal articles at Seo Woo-jin. "You can ask one question," Dr. Kim barks. 

Seo Woo-jin wonders what he's going to do -- all the notebooks are named "The Cornered Stone Project." Does he have to read every article in every book? Fortunately, by this time in his work in Doldam Hospital, he has connected with three others, and together they start to work on the problem. One points out that the notebooks have different annotations, "GS" for General Surgery, "CS" for Cardiovascular Surgery, etc. "Dr. Kim said it didn't involve surgery, so we can eliminate those," the colleague suggests. This boils it down to one notebook -- Neurology -- and it is almost immediately obvious what Dr. Kim's diagnosis is -- I'm so indoctrinated in HIPPA that I feel like I can't say it here. But Seo Woo-jin goes back to Dr. Kim and shares what he's found, which is, indeed correct. 

We also learn what "The Cornered Stone Project" is -- it is the effort of the hospital to reflect on every case, learning from experience what succeeded and what might be done better. Throughout the series Dr. Kim has "known" things that others didn't -- he says it's not intuition, it's unceasing study. Young Dr. Seo is invited to join the project, helping the hospital perfect its ability to serve. 

I don't know anything about Go, called "Baduk" in Korea, but I have seen baduk played in a number of K-dramas. I know that a "cornered stone" is one that is surrounded by the opposition. In Captivating the King, the fate of a Cornered Stone is a point of contention between the King and his gidaeryeong, Kang Mong-woo. The position of gidaeryeong is that of personal baduk opponent for the king. While the King is willing to sacrifice the cornered stone, Kang Mong-woo says that the cornered stone can always be saved, if you pay attention, and that this is the surer road to victory. 

I feel deep kinship with Dr. Kim in this -- we are all cornered stones at this moment, and finding solutions requires unceasing study and practice, a constant iterative search for what can work. As a psychiatrist, I have been engaged in similar work, watching the constantly changing landscape of poor and working class communities, and searching for interventions that can stabilize us. While the threats I've been watching over the years yield pride of place to climate change, the scale of terror and inertia grow. Can we find a way to get people to give up carbon? I don't know, but I know that my colleagues and I will continue our own "cornered stone project" in a search for answers. 

Tao of K-drama: Under My Skin

On January 1, 2025, Professor Emeritus Rhonda J. Hughes, who has read a draft of my book, The Tao of K-drama, wrote to me: 

I find myself returning often to your book, to check whether you have watched a particular drama or to reread your ideas on one I'm watching. I don't see Dr. Romantic on your list [of all the shows on which the book is based]. I can't recommend this highly enough. Kim Sabu is one of the great characters. You know I always lack words, but this drama, which I watched right before Hospital Playlist, is phenomenal. I found myself needing something to write on nearby, there were so many pearls of wisdom from Kim Sabu and others around him who narrate.  I had a hard time with the graphic surgeries, but found a way to cover the screen so I could still read subtitles. This one was a real gift.  So much about class and the way health care works or does not, how people come to terms with the [system].

There was a certainty urgency to this email that pushed Dr. Romantic to the top of my watchlist. Although I've instituted a "one hour of K-drama a day" practice, Dr. Romantic slipped those constraints -- I barely remembered to eat or do chores. I am regularly entranced by K-drama, but this was a whole new level of engagement. I was enthralled. It is no surprise that a medical drama would hold great interest -- it was Live Up to Your Name, Dr. Heo that first pulled me in. But Dr. Romantic got under my skin -- perhaps because it is the ethical issues that are at the heart of the show. While ethics might seem dry and distant, the show played them as the agonizing and life-changing decisions they really are. 

K-dramas show us many perspectives -- in that way, they constitute "situation analysis." This strategy illuminates the dynamic forces and limited choices that protagonists face. If one is old enough, one has been in many roles: student, teacher, leader, patient. I have certainly reached that age. It was bewildering to watch a scene between an angry young doctor and the wise mentor and, having been in both roles, to feel so deeply what each of them was trying to communicate. 

Many of the sequences were jarring. I'll tackle two that show the "Big Picture." The first had to do with three people who potentially had MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) which is caused by a coronavirus. The emergency room in which the people were seeking care had to go on lockdown to contain potential spread, but there was minimal protective equipment available to those inside. This resonated so strongly with the our experiences with COVID-19, when hospital personnel were using garbage bags as protective gear and people all over were sewing cloth masks for them.

The second sequence had to do with a threat to close Doldam Hospital, where the story is taking place. It is not the modern, no-expense-spared hospital in Seoul, but rather a rundown country hospital which operates with just enough equipment, much of it ancient and barely functional. Emblematic of the state of affairs is the ultrasound, which people bang to get a clear image. As part of a power struggle, the director of the main hospital threatens to close Doldam and make it into a retirement community. He shrugs when people point out that it's a busy area with many highways and an acute need for trauma services. He doesn't hear or care about the people who will lose their jobs. All of this brought home to me the 2006 loss of Orange Memorial Hospital, the hospital that served my hometown, which was closed, like many community hospitals, to "save money." The costs to Orange were not relevant to the calculations, as many jobs were lost, ancillary businesses failed or relocated, and the buildings were left, to this day, a hulking eyesore in the city. 

Many of sequences that got under my skin were those that depicted the young physicians doing the wrong thing and getting their heads handed to them. This happened to me a lot. Watching the show, I had a new appreciation for the tender care of the many mentors who got me through those tangles. When I was wrong, they helped me see my error. When I was right (or right-ish), they helped me manage the difficulties I faced. A part of the struggle of the main Young Doctor, Kang Dong-joo, is that he holds a resentment against his mentor, Kim Sabu. Kang Dong-joo knows, as a physician, that the resentment is unfounded, but he doesn't know how to let go. It is not until he learns that Kim Sabu protected him from his youthful acting out that he can fully accept Kim Sabu's mentorship. I am deeply touched by the opportunity to see mentorship in action -- it actually lifted decades of old remorse and resentment that lingered from my own growing up in medicine. 

The bottom line of the show -- and the reason it got under my skin -- is that growing up in medicine is extremely difficult. On the one hand, young doctors live with the extreme beauty of caring for patients. Dr. Hughes, who is a mathematician, covered her television to block the surgery scenes. I adored them. The room for surgery is a called a "theater" and it is indeed the setting for great drama, the incredible beauty of the human interior, and the heroic actions that patch people back together to give them a new lease on life. It is different in psychiatry -- my specialty -- but no less dramatic, as the alcoholic person gets sober, the suicidal person finds new reasons to live or the person who is hearing voices gets back in touch with our shared reality. It is an extraordinary experience.

BUT the glory of caring-for-people is constantly in tension with the reality of medicine-as-business: hospitals that have to "make money," care that must be "paid for," choices about life and death because there isn't enough fill-in-the-blank to go around. Thus, the simple mistakes of not asking the right questions or seeing the right symptoms are only the beginning of the getting of wisdom. What is one supposed to do about the tortured care one is obligated to give? What about the exchange of fame and money for compliance with the rotten system? 

Medicine is a path paved with painful choices, all at great cost not only to the self, but also to others. 

After a lifetime of choices, one lives with the consequences. This is particularly what the show gets right about Kim Sabu's mentorship. He is not "kind" to his young mentees. He does not coddle them or express his affection. He sets the choices before them and lets them live with the consequences. This is the part that people like to overlook, me included. The easy choice that leads to cash and prizes seems great, but the high cost is often hidden behind the sparkle. 

For sure, there is a wide spectrum of ways in which physicians experience these challenges. Nonetheless, the current arrangements of medicine have created a very high rate of burnout: according to the American Medical Association, it skyrocketed to 62% in 2022 and dropped to "only" 48% in 2024.  One-third of physicians are considering retirement, including many young and mid-career physicians. 

Towards the end of Season 1, two storylines converge. One was that the wealthy chairman of the board, who trusted Kim Sabu above all others, finds a way to say why he feels that way. And a young artist, who can't afford the healthcare he needs to live, gets an offer from the chairman who wants to buy his talent in exchange for his surgery. We soon see what is meant by this puzzling offer. Kim Sabu finds a book on his desk. He opens it to see a short graphic story about a rich miser who was hated by everyone. When he fell ill in the street, no one came to his aid, except one good Samaritan. The book ends with the question, "Do you remember who that was, Kim Sabu?" 

The struggle to live an ethical life is not an easy one and there are many reasons for leaving the path. Happily, patients, friends, lovers, mentors, tragic reality -- there is so much to help us find our way again. We are the lucky ones, as Michael Lally always reminds me.