Arif Ahmad, MD

"Dedicated to Joydeb Mukherjee for his love of music and making lives better" As a physician cardiologist I witness and participate in the drama of life and death every single day and on my way back from work I often wonder.  I wonder about the disparity of effort between the acts of saving life and taking life. One is so hard, difficult and temporary. The other seems so easy, effortless and permanent.  I wonder about the long tough hours spent in trying to save a life, to help sustain and better a life, to preserve and heal a life.  I contrast this to life wasted, cut short and taken away in conflicts and wars, crime, combat, hostilities and aggression, terror and counter terror.  Life ended purposefully and without purpose, with vengeance and malice and in the blink of an eye.  Living one moment and dead the next.  The sudden cessation of a beating heart, the gleam in the eyes changing to dull, irreversible and forever.  ...

For the love of what I do For the cardiologist in me  To practice what I preach To inspire myself and for trying to inspire you  I workout When I feel low, down and knocked out To fight my inner demons and negative vibes To handle stress better To moan, groan, express myself and vent my frustrations For the high I get after I workout To pursue my passions, my goals, my aspirations To feed my ego and boost my confidence To look and feel my best To be a responsible citizen  To appreciate and be thankful that I can I workout For the love of eating For my daily fix, my daily high To protect against the ravages of time and disease To be able to make this pitch to you I workout To caress my aching body and soothe my tired mind To cleanse my soul and rejuvenate my spirits and spirituality Some days intense, some days just easy, some day...

There is a part of our being which acts as a gatekeeper, to our joys and exuberance, our highs and lows, our life and death.  It thrills and it kills. It enjoys and it destroys. It pleases and it polarizes.  It enthralls and entertains. It demoralizes with loss of gains.  It causes pain and misery. It creates awesome artistry.  The good it does is of the highest order. The disease it allows is an overbearing pandemic.  It can do wonders, or can have wonderfully nerve-racking consequences.  It forms and deforms our shape, our personality, our character. It weakens us with depression and empowers us with expression. It can despair and discourage or inspire and encourage. It defines us for now, for later, and for ever.  For the choice of words we bring out and the bulk of food we take in, it is our mouth, the gatekeeper, to our health and happiness, our sickness and sorrows, our legacy and destiny.   ...

"Dedicated to my mother, Ismat Bano and father, Abdul Majeed for teaching me optimism." Tough economic times, wars, famine, tsunamis, global melt down, moral and ethical dehiscence. So is the glass half full or half empty? Enough going on to sap the energies, to drain the enthusiasm. Enough going on to cloud common sense. But wait. It refuses to be a pessimist. It believes in the human will, the human resilience, the human rebound. It believes in the human race to stand up and deliver.  Every human being to be counted and ask, how can it better another life, how can it make proud mother earth, how can it first do no harm? It is the good Samaritan, it is the human spirit, it is a dreaming child. The question is, can it become I, we, us, yet again. by Dr. Arif Ahmad Copyright 2012  The Optimist