Three for the Week Ahead
INSPIRATIONAL, 13 Nov 2017
Prof. Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service
Respect Can Heal
A young woman suffered from cancer. Her doctor asked her what she enjoyed most in life. She said that she liked to write poetry, but that her family did not take it seriously. He spoke with her family members, and persuaded them to show interest in her poetry, to read it and give her some encouraging comments. This had the effect that her tumor began to shrink.
Sunshine
Love is like sunshine. If you turn towards it and accept it, you can feel its warmth. If you turn away from it, you feel cold and abandoned.
Accept Help
My father was a doctor in a rural area and made many home visits. He sometimes observed patients smoking in the bed. Since most of them were farmers, he was able to persuade many of them to stop smoking by telling them the following story. “Imagine your neighbor’s cart got stuck in the mud, and he calls you for help to pull him out. You span your cart with your horses to pull him out, but he fastens the break on his cart to make it impossible for you to pull him out of the mud. That is what you are doing to me. You are deep in mud with your health, and I am trying to pull you out, but if you smoke, I cannot succeed.”
______________________________________________
Dietrich Fischer (1941-2015) from Münsingen, Switzerland, got a Licentiate in Mathematics from the University of Bern 1968 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University 1976. 1986-88 he was a MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security at Princeton University. He has taught mathematics, computer science, economics and peace studies at various universities and been a consultant to the United Nations. He was co-founder, with Johan Galtung, of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment in 1993.
Excerpted from Dietrich Fischer’s Stories to Inspire You – TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 13 Nov 2017.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Three for the Week Ahead, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.