Bronson Sansoni
Age: 17
School: The Woodlands College Park High School
Serendipity
Throughout the ages, humanity has striven to uphold this basic principle: “Treat others as you would want to be treated.” No matter what religion we hold or what age we were born in, this maxim is held dear to our hearts in the contrivance for an all elusive world peace.
Throughout my time in hospital volunteering at UCSF, I have gained rapturous joy in finding such an environment where volunteers, such as myself, can experience this phenomena in its purest form. When I walk into a room, I find a calming sense, a sense of serendipity as I walk into the welcoming arms of my beneficiaries. This place emanates and radiates with the speech and principles of the great philosophers- Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Locke, to name a few. There is no lust, no hatred, no rancour in this halcyon of humanity. There is just pure kindness, given and received.
But, arguably, my utmost favorite part of hospital volunteering is experiencing and hearing the multitude of stories that everyone has to tell. UCSF is not only a place of sorrow, but also a place of redemption, happiness, and endearment. It brings smiles to my eyes when I walk into a room and see a patient rejoicing that he or she is finally free from the illness or ailment which has hitherto plagued him for at minimum a fortnight. Conversely, it haunts me to see an empty bed. The mystery of an empty bed intimates no story or a story at its end. Consequently, the sight of those occurrences have always sent shivers down my spine.
But, when I do find a patient or a patient’s kind visitors, I am met with relief or sympathy not found anywhere else. On one occasion, I met a patient of a surname I could not pronounce. Commenting on the patterns imbued upon my shirt, she told me the story of “Feeding the Multitude,” one of Jesus’s miracles in which he converted mass into more mass and thus fed thousands of people from a few fish and a few loave work and told me of her life as a person who delivered holy communion to the sick. No matter what religion we come from or if we hold any religion at all, the parable she told me was a sign of communion, a precious insight into her life. I truly thank her for it, for it is a shining respite in this tumultuous world.
Other days are even more interesting. We sometimes experience times when the patient and/or the patient’s family has not yet learned English. It may be galvanizing to fathom how we deal with it, but it is just as rewarding or perhaps slightly more rewarding to be given the honor to serve them. Kindness is a language that transcends all languages. A saying I have always kept to heart, “A simple act of kindness creates an endless ripple,” kindly characterizes my attitude towards this subject. As a student in the process of learning Chinese, it is a blessing when I hear a request such as: “yībēi kāfēi” (One cup of coffee please). Or, just as exciting, when I get the opportunity to converse with a speaker of Russian or Spanish. The true delight there-in lies when we have the patience to figure out a puzzle put forth by this so-called language barrier. And when the going gets tough and we are too far off base, there is always the trusty translator phone which patiently rests at each patient’s bedside.
Some days are days in which we get the opportunity to share in the sorrows of our fellow man, days in which we are there to console the patient for a brief period of time. Such a duty does not come in our job description, but most volunteers are kind enough to hear your story out of their kind proclivity. A few weeks ago, I consoled a patient who wished so dearly to be united with her son, a person of whom she was proud of for becoming a doctor. Shortly thereafter, I experienced several occasions where I would walk into a room and the patient would be delighting themselves in classical music. Most often times, I would not be able to converse with the patient, but to experience those moments produces a feeling of awe. To bask in the consolement of Dvorak or Beethoven, truly touches the heart. Moreover, to see a patient and experience the same entrancing notes they experience even for a microsecond, is truly awe inspiring.
In every corner, in ever corridor of this hospital, there is a story waiting to be told. Every day in which I volunteer, is a new day of witnessing or observing those stories of those people from a diverse set of backgrounds, aspirations, and stages in life. This, indeed, shall be the most cherished aspect of my volunteer experience. And, therefore, I am thankful for all those people who shared a small chapter in their lives with me and for those people who I had the honor of serving to create a new and unforgettable chapter in my life.