If you have a dream to be a good doctor then give your 5 / 10 minutes to it .
In the spring of 1871, a young man picked up a book and read twenty-one words that
had a profound effect on his future. A medical student at the Montreal General Hospital,
he was worried about passing the final examination, worried about what to do, where to
go, how to build up a practice, how to make a living.
The twenty-one words that this young medical student read in 1871 helped him to
become the most famous physician of his generation. He organised the world-famous
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford-
the highest honour that can be bestowed upon any medical man in the British Empire.
He was knighted by the King of England. When he died, two huge volumes containing
1,466 pages were required to tell the story of his life.
His name was Sir William Osier. Here are the twenty-one words that he read in the
spring of 1871-twenty-one words from Thomas Carlyle that helped him lead a life free
from worry: “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do
what lies clearly at hand.”
Forty-two years later, on a soft spring night when the tulips were blooming on the
campus, this man, Sir William Osier, addressed the students of Yale University. He told
those Yale students that a man like himself who had been a professor in four
universities and had written a popular book was supposed to have “brains of a special
quality”. He declared that that was untrue. He said that his intimate friends knew that his
brains were “of the most mediocre character”.
What, then, was the secret of his success? He stated that it was owing to what he called
living in “day-tight compartments.” What did he mean by that? A few months before he
spoke at Yale, Sir William Osier had crossed the Atlantic on a great ocean liner where
the captain standing on the bridge, could press a button and-presto!-there was a
clanging of machinery and various parts of the ship were immediately shut off from one
another-shut off into watertight compartments. “Now each one of you,” Dr. Osier said to
those Yale students, “is a much more marvelous organisation than the great liner, and
bound on a longer voyage. What I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery as
to live with ‘day-tight compartments’ as the most certain way to ensure safety on the
voyage. Get on the bridge, and see that at least the great bulkheads are in working
order. Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the
Past-the dead yesterdays. Touch another and shut off, with a metal curtain, the Future -the unborn tomorrows. Then you are safe-safe for today! … Shut off the past! Let the
dead past bury its dead. … Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the way to
dusty death. … The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes
the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as the past. … The future is today. …
There is no tomorrow. The day of man’s salvation is now. Waste of energy, mental
distress, nervous worries dog the steps of a man who is anxious about the future. …
Shut close, then the great fore and aft bulkheads, and prepare to cultivate the habit of
life of ‘day-tight compartments’.”
Did Dr. Osier mean to say that we should not make any effort to prepare for tomorrow?
No. Not at all. But he did go on in that address to say that the best possible way to
prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on
doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the
future.
Sir William Osier urged the students at Yale to begin the day with Christ’s prayer: “Give
us this day our daily bread.”
Remember that that prayer asks only for today’s bread. It doesn’t complain about the
stale bread we had to eat yesterday; and it doesn’t say: “Oh, God, it has been pretty dry
out in the wheat belt lately and we may have another drought-and then how will I get
bread to eat next autumn-or suppose I lose my job-oh, God, how could I get bread
then?”
No, this prayer teaches us to ask for today’s bread only. Today’s bread is the only kind
of bread you can possibly eat.