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The short magazine article which appears below was published under the title: Passion Revealed in TGIM. It’s message is about having the love and enthusiasm for one’s work that makes it as much of a pleasure to go to the office on a Monday morning as it is to greet the end of the work week on Friday. In the article Brown reveals his feelings for the chiropractic profession and his role as an educator.
(Reprinted)
I don’t have a job and it’s been about 35 years since I’ve had one. In my last “job,” I worked in a restaurant in Rock Island, Illinois to help support my education at Palmer. Actually I enjoyed the work, but it was just a job and when the restaurant went out of business I shed no tears, because it was just a job and I was about to graduate anyway. I’ve been continuously employed since then, but I never got another job. It’s been such a blessing to be able to say that I can’t even relate to the acronym, TGIF (for the benefit of others similarly blessed, the acronym stands for “Thank God It’s Friday”). The attitude and emotion embodied in TGIF is so pervasive that one group of entrepreneurs even found it profitable to name a chain of restaurants after the concept. So what’s wrong with TGIF? Well, nothing really, it’s the unspoken meaning that concerns me. Persons who look forward to Fridays with zeal and enthusiasm do so because it means the weekend has arrived. The weekend is a time to be free to stay home from work and do what we really want to do. There’s the rub. It suggests that people of the TGIF model so dislike what they do for five-sevenths of their lives that they look forward to the weekends with a special kind of fervor. Isn’t it a bit sad that TGIF-ers haven’t chosen a life’s work that could produce in them a special excitement about Monday? I want to introduce you to another model, TGIM and ask you to consider how the model relates to chiropractic and our lives in general.
Having experienced many years of chiropractic practice, I can say with certainty that I found the weekends enjoyable. Like other husbands and fathers, I too treasured those weekend times filled with family events and the like. Yet, Mondays never loomed like the dreaded return to the salt mine. In fact, I always found being able to punctuate family, recreation and relaxation with a return to the practice of chiropractic is gratifying and a cause to feel grateful. In the TGIM model, rather than a drudgery or dread, there is great interest and enthusiasm for one’s weekday activities. Such dedication is born of a greater purpose exceeding survival, keeping a roof over one’s head and food on the table. Chiropractors experience a rare privilege every day as they provide life-enhancing adjustments to their practice members. The practice of chiropractic is truly its own reward. This compounded with a comfortable professional level of income is an exceptional opportunity that we should not take for granted. In other sections of Straight From Sherman, you have noticed that the magazine is concentrating on the theme, “FOCUS, PASSION and SUCCESS.” The editor asked me to write a few words on the second of these elements, passion and I was delighted to accept that assignment. The theme, “Focus, Passion and Success” are certainly nothing new at Sherman College, but we are placing a bright spotlight on them for all to see. Every morning in my Philosophy I class we start promptly at 8:00 a.m. The greeting to the class goes something like this, “It’s eight O’clock and time to begin on this beautiful morning at Sherman College.” In view of today’s usual jargon, this sounds corny, right? After doing this for a few years, one might expect that I would be getting tired of it and looking for a new daily opener. Yes, it seems passé to greet a classroom full of bright young graduate students that way, but they understand that it serves a particular purpose. The point is, it doesn’t matter whether it’s foggy, rainy or clear, it’s always a beautiful morning at Sherman College. How could it be otherwise for a group of people fortunate enough to be brought together to focus on such a mission as ours? Passion for this mission does not require rekindling it is self-generating. We touch lives in a very special way. Correcting vertebral subluxations unleashes potentials that are limited only by our vision to grasp and understand. One Japanese scholar and chiropractic pioneer better stated it. In addressing D.D. & B.J. Palmer’s 1906 graduating class Shegataro Morikubo, PhD, DC said, “Like the horizon, chiropractic shows limitation when the vision is incapable of seeing farther. As you approach the first point where you thought heaven touched the earth, it vanishes; so likewise, what may seem a limitation to chiropractic is but an imaginary visible horizon because of our inability to perceive greater.”  Dr. Brown focuses this class on the importance of checking babies soon after birth. This article originally appeared in the quarterly magazine, “Straight From Sherman,” published by Sherman College of Straight Chiropractic, Spartanburg, SC
(Material reprinted with permission of Sherman College of Straight Chiropractic: http://www.sherman.edu) |
