Self-Construction and the Sagrada Família

Anoushka Sinha, MD, MS

         The din of voices crashed against the walls like a sea. Currents of language, some familiar, others unrecognizable, emerged, then submerged again into the crowd. Bold colors pooled in from kaleidoscopic windows. A nearby tour guide said the myriad stone columns about us were constructed to resemble trees, branching overhead into an unfinished canopy. There I stood, marveling at this teeming actual and potential space, a house of divinity wrought by human hands.

         I visited the Sagrada Família in Barcelona the week before my graduation from medical school. It seemed almost customary for graduating medical students to take a trip around this time, a last hurrah to mark the end of a grueling era—before the onset of a much more grueling one. Though my diploma was almost within reach, I did not feel like a doctor. There was something wholly unfinished in me, and though I understood this sentiment to be natural—residency is when we truly build our skills and endurance—I did wish for more of a sense of polish.        

The Sagrada Família is one of the longest-running construction projects in history. Its dreaming spires are dwarfed by eyesore cranes hoisting cables and blocks. The church’s architect, Antoni Gaudí, intended for his passion project, now 137 years in the making, to remain a work in progress through his lifetime. Whenever he was asked how much longer it would take, he would famously point skyward and claim that his client was not in a hurry.

“Though my diploma was almost within reach, I did not feel like a doctor. There was something wholly unfinished in me.”

         Now in the weeds of internship, I often find myself in a hurry to feel more competent, but at heart I know this journey will take time. There will be stumbles and mistakes with no ready blueprint to guide me forward. I must forge my own path and see each step as a reflection of what matters to me and who I hope to become. The Sagrada Família too strays far afield of any conventional pattern, instead representing the architect’s singular devotion. In place of gargoyles are turtles, snails, and a chameleon. The spires are crowned with clusters of colorful fruit that seem the stuff of fairytales.

         In part because of its unprecedented idiosyncrasies, the church has long courted controversy; it holds such esteemed detractors as George Orwell, who called it “one of the most hideous buildings in the world.” Gaudí’s signature, well, gaudiness adorns various scenes of Barcelona, notably Parc Güell where he first used trencadís (Catalán for “brittle”) mosaic, repurposing discarded pieces of tile and arranging the shards into a new whole. Perhaps this technique reflects an ethos of reviving and finding beauty in the imperfect, the broken, the strange—a philosophy I am striving to ingrain in how I see myself and others.

“Now in the weeds of internship, I often find myself in a hurry to feel more competent, but at heart I know this journey will take time.”

         “There is no reason to regret that I cannot finish the church,” Gaudí said. “I will grow old, but others will come after me. What must always be conserved is the spirit of the work, but its life has to depend on the generations it is handed down to and with whom it lives and is incarnated.” This expression of natural order aligns with my understanding that even as I seek to actualize my ideals, I am neither the beginning nor the end, and it is humbling yet liberating to remember that, though I contain multitudes, I too am one of multitudes in space and time.

         Returning to New York, I wanted my graduation to feel like a conclusion, but amid all the fanfare was a deepening sense that training is a lifelong pursuit. As I welcome a new crop of medical students into the wards, I recognize that I too am still learning; I might have a bit more experience in some realms, but we all have things to teach each other, and in teaching we learn more deliberately. We all in our unique ways, at our own pace, are striving to realize our vision of doing good for the world. So I keep moving, endeavoring to accept myself, like the Sagrada Familia, as a work in progress, nevertheless reaching towards the sky.

Anoushka Sinha, MD, MS (@anoushkaasinha) is a resident physician in pediatrics at Columbia, where she also completed medical school and the masters program in narrative medicine. Her work has appeared in Genetics in Medicine, Academic Medicine, CLOSLER, Hektoen International, and the Hippocrates Prize Anthology. She also volunteers as a writing mentor at Visible Ink, a program for patients of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.