Wendell Berry offers an interesting insight about the ‘atmosphere’ of hospitals:
In the hospital what I will call the world of love meets the world of efficiency – the world, that is, of specialization, machinery, and abstract procedure. Or, rather, I would say that these two worlds come together in the hospital but do not meet. During those weeks when John was in the hospital, it seemed to me that he had come from the world of love and that the family members, neighbors, and friends who at various time were there with him came there to represent that world and to preserve his connection with it. It seemed to me that the hospital was another kind of world altogether.
– Wendell Berry, Another Turn of the Crank, p. 101
Why should you visit people in the hospital? Because it is an act of love, which reminds them that their existence is not one of cold steel and machinery alone. It is counter-cultural. It is a different kind of medicine. It is humane because it reminds the sick that they are human despite the chords and wires.
