The White Coat

Our West Virginia University School of Medicine just celebrated with the White Coat Ceremony, a symbolic transition of our second-year medical students from work in the classroom to the clinics. From student to physician.

The White Coat Ceremony was established in 1993 at Columbia University. We initiated our White Coat Ceremony in 1996, and, in 1999, we named our White Coat Ceremony for the former dean of medical school students, Dr. John Traubert. 


I talked about the symbolism of the white coat as connecting the finite and infinite parts of our training and of our existence as clinicians and healers.

In a finite manner, the white coat is a symbol of being a physician. From many surveys, patients trust professionals in white coats more than in suits or in a shirt and pants with no coat. The white coat is a protective covering from the bodily fluids our students and graduates face daily on the hospital wards. These student-doctors will learn the science and techniques of medicine during their clinical training.

But as has been taught for centuries, the real healing in medicine is beyond the finite. In his famous address to Harvard Medical School, Dr. Francis Peabody said, “The good physician knows his patients through and through, and his knowledge is bought dearly. Time, sympathy, and understanding must be lavishly dispensed, but the reward is to be found in that personal bond which forms the greatest satisfaction of the practice of medicine. One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient.”

Thus, the healing properties of the white coat are those brought by the human wearing the coat.

Empathy. Compassion. Love. Connection. Wholeness.

Infinite things.

Like the white light made up of every color of light, the white coat is a compendium of every emotion, feeling and thought that promotes healing given from clinician to patient.

In this way, the coat represents the infinite.

It is important to note the root word of heal, holy, holistic and health means whole.

As one. In unity.

Our daily lives push us apart. Separates us into individuals, teams, tribes, political parties, religions, businesses, and creates competition, anger, envy, judgement, and criticism of others.

What is the root cause of this separation?

FEAR.

Fear creates dis-ease.

The primary experience of fear in our lives is separation, which gives us the perspective of being an individual. This life experience is fortified by the stories that define our individual existence.

Our name. Our birthdate. Our birthplace. Our strengths. Our weaknesses. Our families. Our likes. Our dislikes. Our jobs. Our incomes. Our friends. Our life.

As we age, we continue to identify with these stories until they lock us into our identity. An identity that reinforces our perspective as being finite individuals living in an infinite universe. One where each of us is small and relatively insignificant. To earn our safety and futures, we are driven to compete with others to feel seen, valued, and safe.

We focus on continuously winning our place of value within our families, teams, communities, and jobs. We are deathly afraid of not being valued or failing on the competition stage that is our lives.

We may never feel we are enough, despite often having great success.

Not feeling as though we are enough translates to our constant need to achieve and prove ourselves worthy of whatever prizes we seek.

We compete in finite games to help us transcend the limited stories that make up our lives.

We seek the infinite through finite actions: feeling loved, safe, abundant, hopeful, joy, fulfillment.

This infinite state promotes healing.

However, the dichotomy of perceiving ourselves as limited, individual, fragile humans often is a barrier to the infinite perspectives and feelings we seek.

It is interesting that many great works of art, literature, and philosophy give us insight:

“Know thyself.” ~Socrates.

“There is nothing that is good nor bad, it is only thinking that makes it so.” ~Shakespeare in Hamlet

“The lamps are different, but the Light is the same. One matter, one energy, on Light, one Light-mind endlessly emanating all things. One turning and burning diamond. One, one, one. Ground yourself, strip yourself down, to blind loving silence. Stay there until you see you are gazing at the Light with its own ageless eyes” ~Rumi

“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” ~Anais Nin

“You are not a drop from the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” ~Rumi

These poets and philosophers tell us what quantum physics reinforces - life is not limited to what we can sense. In fact, we are both the infinite and the finite.

Neils Bohr, father of quantum physics said, “Everything we call real is built from things that cannot be seen as truly real.”

All that we perceive as mass is really just energy. Energy is infinite. Neither created nor destroyed. Never ending, but only transitioning forms.

If energy is infinite, so are we.

The sages and philosophers tell us that our universe, lives, and experiences are also deeply interconnected and intertwined. Thus, we are part of a single unified world and universe.

This is likely the reason why the strength of ongoing relationships and community are the strongest predictors of longevity. Reducing our fragmentation and separation back to our intrinsic wholeness is healing for us.

It is also the reason why service to others is such a great driver of success for oneself. If we are all really an interconnected, single entity at a deeper level than we can directly experience, then service to others, love to others, acceptance of others is really just that for yourself.

Community means together in service.

Let’s serve each other and ourselves with gratitude, love, safety, and authenticity.

As the sage Nisargadatta Maharaj said, “Wisdom is knowing I am nothing. Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.”

This is the balance between the infinite and finite.

We are both, as the healer’s white coat symbolizes.

Our nothingness represents the energy broadcast at frequencies too rapid for us to detect by our senses. Being everything means that not only does a mirror reflect what we sense as our selves, but that every experience we have in our life is also a reflection of our selves.

As energy vibrating slow enough for our senses to register the electromagnetic waves we experience as nature, our world, and our universe.

All connected.

All as one.

The finite and the infinite.

What we are.