People working in healthcare often are getting in close contact with several different situations from (foreign) people (=patients). Because our healthcare system in germany is intrinsically only really being used on bad occasions (accidents, illness) and not vice versa (possible preventive use cases) we automatically get only in touch with the negatives episodes of someone in need.

For now I’ve been volunteering in the rescue services for vastly over two years, had the opportunity to see death, life-threatening events in other peoples life’s and ever somehow did spend the time and tried my best in reflecting the things I saw. Hereby I must admit, that’s wasn’t easy at all for me. For me, getting in touch with events from other families, that could’ve also been yours, is moving me from the inside. What makes it somehow better is the clear rational fact that you aren’t the reason because someone suffering, but thats only the one side. On the other hand, as a human, you feel. And those things I personally find the more difficult to deal with

But what do I mean by that?

I don’t want to go in much detail at what was exactly happening the more difficult calls because I think that’s not important to understand what happens within. “The fact that …” is enough to understand the point which I want to make clear.

Think of you dying. For most people, that’s not a nice thought. The questions of “what happens afterwards” can be answered in many different ways, depending on which values you pursue or on which mental models you are in (religion included). Even the more atheistic side of it is just fine to believe into, because after all, you can’t tell for certain. In this case, 1+1 isn’t always two.

Now imaging seeing death in your own eyes. Seeing a human body which soul’s left. Your objective manifesto. At first it might seem daunting to even think about it, because most of us (western) Europe or American citizens (more modern) are not used to at all to see this. Most of us didn’t ever see a corpse and – to be honest – also don’t really want to. Can you be negative about that? I don’t think so, because it’s not a nice topic to talk or even think about. But then there are some people which are used to this, believe it or not. For me, the face of the first dead body impregnated into my mind. But I think it’s normal. Human behaviour and mental models mainly are getting set in early childhood, and whose childhood didn’t involve death will deal differently with these kind of situations than the ones who did (not depending on amount of “negativeness” involved in a possible solution).

For me at that point, questions were popping up. That was so against my personal view onto the world, but just because of the face that I simply wasn’t used to actually see death. I mean, on the rational side its completely fine to say, that it’s nothing big, since “everybody somehow dies at the end”, beside the fact that your body is not just simply despawning (video game analogy, sorry).

And that’s the first point I did want to point out. In the case of death, there was somehow a thought process involved. I wasn’t used to seeing death, only life. I am lucky to accept these kind of things and take them as they are, because I had the time and head to reflect onto i saw and touched (I intuitively knew touching “it” was important for me, to simply accept death in its whole). Clearly, not everybody is gifted as I/we am/are regarding onto those situations. In the core, we all have a very different past, sown with different events and experiences from which you adopted some mental model. But there comes that the fact that not all mental models can handle, see, talk about, write about or reflect on the same, since what we see is different by design.

Thinking about those occasions can result in very different outcomes.