I’m at a conference – a very exciting conference – on palliative care, which is the field of medicine that focuses on the quality of life for patients with life-limiting or -threatening illnesses, as well as that of their caregivers. Sitting in a huge hall of huge people with huge ideas, I can barely keep still, can barely keep my eyes, ears, brain focused on the presentations before me because each one is so exciting, so inspirational, so thought-provoking, that a thousand other thoughts spin out from it: things I want to learn, to do, to teach. There is session upon session, lectures, discussions, questions, and an entire cavernous hall filled with posters, each jam-packed with its own inventory of results, conclusions, directions for future research. It’s so much that my brain begins to fog and stall, but there is so much still to see and explore and absorb that I try to push on, try to will the tendrils of curiosity to get back out there, pick up just a little bit more. Because I’ve only been to xx sessions, only been at this for xx hours, only experienced xx percent of what is here. When you look at the quantity of my experience, it’s just not enough.

Although the quality has been superb.

Oh.  

Right.

Still so much to learn.