Lesson from Patch Adams: Be funny, be healthy

The author, 19, is a Bachelor in Early Childhood Education student of the Philippine Normal University. A private person who loves writing, she aspires to be a good poet, novelist and scriptwriter, or a good columnist and trusted broadcaster.

Sometimes it is better to be different. It takes a lot but it also gains a lot. Taking risk is like putting your foot at the edge of a high mountain with two chances of staying alive or falling dead. Yet its result may change not just your life but lives of people who need that foot to be a better and meaningful individual.

The dedication, passion and courage of Hunter Patch Adams are traits that cannot be discounted, not mentioning the humor that he shared to his patients. It sounds silly but that is a truth that serves as an inspiration and motivation to physicians around the globe.

Based on a true story, Patch Adams (Robin Williams) is a simple man before entering a mental asylum, where he started all the jokes that led to touching lives of sick people. At the peak of his life, wherein he was still unable to find the missing piece of his own puzzle, he decided to disguise a mentally-retarded man to explore the peculiar world of the institution. With the purpose of getting to know the needs and characteristics of patients; he wants to be a medical doctor, moreover he wants to help other people.

Upon entering the asylum, truth slapped him on his face that such people called "doctors" were mistreating their patients. Conventionally, they just cure these people for the sake of doing their jobs, ignoring the most important needs of these ill people, which are guidance, understanding and acceptance.

This moved him to deviate from the line. He started to know the patients and made him close to them through his humor. Alarming the hospital officials, thus making consecutive steps to stop Hunter spreading craziness in the institution. He sings, dances, acts and touches patients every single day. Making fun of it but seriously concerned about each patient who smiles but deep inside cries. He talked to every patient treating them as normal beings and praising them through funny ideas and thoughts. Narrating to them all the beautiful things in the world including love.

But as a saying goes, beginning has its end. This wonderful beginning was ended and leaving memories to these patients was a man with an awesome passion and dedication not to a job but to a work and vocation. He was thrown out of the asylum upon knowing that he was not really sick. To continue his mission, he enrolled at Virginia Medical College and studied. After finishing his course, he founded the Genduit Clinic, wherein patients were cured through the use of humor. He also finds love with a girl named Carin (Monica Potter). This peculiar man, however, was made accountable by experts in the field of psychiatry for illegally treating patients.

In my life, I find myself a person who always dares to be different and unique. It is my own way of expressing and knowing myself deeper. I hope that someday I can also use it to help and touch others’ lives.

Very seldom does a man stand on his own faith amidst of many boundaries before him. And it is very worthy of praises and compliments. Let us be another Patch Adams and at the same time find our own hero who would make our lives more exciting and more meaningful.

Our destiny lies in our hands. Some can turn it up while some can turn it down. But remember that we are the only one who can turn it around.