The Expensive Watch

Last year I was standing in the back of a presentation hall at an international conference on medical excellence. Late in the day a dream-like image suddenly occurred to me. I perceived a group of six to ten patients sitting together in chairs patiently looking at the face of a large watch. (probably a version of my father's gold pocket watch). The watch hands were stationary.

In this apparition I moved to the back side of the watch. The back was off of the watch and all of the inner workings were exposed (when I was a child my father used to unscrew the back of his watch for me to look inside). Here the apparition became more dream-like--the gears were made of precious metals, gold, silver, platinum; and each had two people working on it. The day's speakers were each on a separate gear and they were polishing the metal with cloths. Each gear really shown brightly. And each gear also had the CEO of the presenter's organization on it. The CEOs were embedding precious stones--diamonds, emeralds, rubys onto the surface of their gears. Most gears had lots of jewels already set into their surfaces. It was something to behold, beautiful and the people were very animated.

Then I stepped back a little distance and noticed--the gears did not mesh, they were not connected, they were not moving together.

Everyone kept applying jewels, polishing, and waiting.

I had an immediate longing for the brass gears of my fathers pocket watch with their precision fit and perfect time keeping. (There were jewels in his watch, seventeen I think, strategically placed to keep the gears turning.)

Since it's first occurrence, this vision has frequently reoccurred to me in my work.

© Copyright 2004 Marcus Pierson, MD . Last update: 7/26/2004; 9:32:36 PM . This theme was created for WWPP by Jack F. Mancilla