Ryan Velandria McCarthy

“As a witness to so much sadness and pain, how do you keep from getting depressed?” As an internal medicine doctor, I have heard versions of this question for decades. And, despite a myriad of changes in my career, my answer has never wavered. And while there are many comedians and funny things, one particular evening more than any other reveals how humor is my personal wellspring, the one that keeps me evergreen.

If you trust the titans of industry, and I do not, we are led to believe that, just around the proverbial corner, the equivalent of C-3PO will arrive to improve health care. How wonderful! You might remember the fussy, shiny droid, the golden companion of R2-D2 in the Star Wars films. Fluent in over six million forms of communication, C-3PO bubbled with personality, but it was his “desire” to do the right thing that made him special.

In 1983, The Outsiders featured Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and, augmented by Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic genius, it planted a seed, one I was unaware of at the time. Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.