The concept of “self-complexity” is linked strongly to resilience and well-being. [T]he ability to self-identify in a variety of ways — for example gardener, father, mother, cyclist, traveler, music lover — is strongly correlated with emotional resilience.

Najjia Mahmoud and David Rothenberger in
From Burnout to Well-Being: A Focus on Resilience

Physicians need to cultivate more than one identity. Doctor. Artist. Runner. Musician. Gardener. Mother. Sister. Yogi. Teacher. Cook. Cyclist. The list can go on, if we continue to cultivate interests outside our medical careers. Given the prolonged training and work hours required to become a physician, it doesn’t require much imagination to understand why physicians grow so attached to their professional identities, pushing away once cherished outside interests, like sports, music, or the arts. During medical school and residency, making time for art, music, and dance felt like an act of rebellion. Each time I went to a social dance or spent a few hours drawing, painting, or taking photos I felt I was defying the colonization of my mind by medical facts. A common metaphor for medical school is drinking from a fire hose of knowledge. I would liken it more to a monsoon rain or tsunami sucking everything out of your life in a giant undertow. There is the time before the tsunami and the time after. The time after is a desert, lacking playthings of childhood, all sadly swept out to sea while you stood on the shore holding the toolkit for the after life.

When I stood there in the after life, I consoled myself that absent time to play at those games, I would one day be a patron of the arts. “C’mon,” I told myself. “Don’t be so sad. One day you can support the arts, including your former art school chums.” Turns out, despite having the means to support the arts, it still feels better to make art and music with my own two hands. No matter how humble the product, making art is my play. And there is no comparison between playing and watching others play. Singing is not the same as watching other people sing. Hearing music inside your own head, unleashing paint onto a canvas are distinctive pleasures that activate parts of the brain. You can watch others all day and it will never light your fire like playing with your own hands, voice, whole body.

Lynda Berry, an art professor at the University of Wisconsin, recently won a McArther Award for her innovative teaching. Among her many genius ideas, the one I love most is that she helped rekindle curiosity and joy of graduate students by setting them up for playdates with four-year-olds. Why did this work? The four-year-olds had not learned to judge the results of their creative explorations. It didn’t matter what the graduate students were studying — physics or creative writing. They all benefited from being with young children who hadn’t yet learned to criticize the results of their physical and intellectual play. If I could get radiologists — and other doctors — to play like four-year-olds a few hours a week, the hospital might float on a lily pad of joy and ingenuity. And one day soon, pigs will fly. Really.