How a Tuning Fork Moment Changed My Path
In my last post, I explored tuning fork moments—those subtle but powerful experiences that resonate inside us and awaken a sense of authenticity and direction. They don’t shout; they point.
Today, I want to share my own winding trail of these moments—a path that led me away from technical success and back toward a long-forgotten passion. What I discovered, in reflecting on that journey, was an unexpected and almost uncanny validation: a world-renowned cardiologist had followed nearly the same path decades earlier.
This is a story about how purpose often brings us full circle.
My Tuning Fork Trail
As a college student, I was fascinated by the human psyche—nurtured by the extensive library of my father, a psychiatrist. Though I dutifully entered the pre-med track, the required chemistry, physics, and biology courses left me uninspired.
By contrast, my favorite class was a small seminar led by psychology professor George Mahl. We interviewed classmates and explored personality through conversation. I thrived. I even created my own major, studying psychological themes through literature—immersing myself in Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and other great chroniclers of the soul.
Yet when I entered medical school, the gravitational pull of cardiology took over. The field was dynamic, innovative, and offered immediate, tangible ways to save lives. My earlier preoccupations faded, replaced by the thrill of mastering a complex, life-saving specialty.
I then specialized in nuclear cardiology—imaging heart function under stress testing—and soon secured an academic post at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. On paper, I was thriving: publishing in leading journals, moving steadily up the ladder.
But inside, something was dimming. There was no crisis, just a quiet, persistent restlessness—the dissonance that arises when your outer life succeeds but your inner life is starving.
An Accidental Chime
One day, driving home, I stumbled upon a radio talk show hosted by psychiatrist David Viscott. His warmth and intuition stirred something long dormant. I was so absorbed I booked an appointment with him, hoping he would provide direction.
Half-joking, I mused that maybe I should have gone into psychiatry. He laughed and offered what seemed like an absurd suggestion:
“You’re not going to become a psychiatrist now. But why not call the chief of psychiatry at UCLA and tell him you’d like to be the cardiologist who works with psychiatrists?”
Foolish as it seemed, I made the call—and it changed everything. It led me to Dr. Herbert Weiner, a pioneer in psychosomatic medicine, and eventually to a two-year fellowship sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, where I was able to study the mind-body connection to health in depth.
From that point on, I followed the resonances that kept surfacing. They redirected my career entirely and led me to become a behavioral cardiologist—integrating the science of the heart with the insight of the mind.
The Unexpected Echo: Dr. Bernard Lown
For years I thought my journey was a unique meander back to my college interests. Then, while reading the work of Dr. Bernard Lown—a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and inventor of the modern defibrillator—I experienced what I can only call a tuning-fork echo.
Lown was a giant in cardiac electrophysiology—the field that studies the heart’s electrical system and how to restore normal rhythm when it falters. Yet he, too, emphasized the deep connection between emotional stress and cardiac health long before it was mainstream.
In The Lost Art of Healing, he wrote words that uncannily mirrored my own path:
“My preoccupation with psychology antedates my interest in medicine. As a high school student, I devoured Freud and became absorbed in psychoanalysis… I intended to become a psychiatrist, but soon after I entered medical school, psychiatry lost its luster… I spent a miserable year dissecting dead bodies… However, though overtly discarding the formal discipline of psychiatry, I did not lose my fascination with the mind-brain relationship, the core of which makes us human.
After becoming established in academic cardiology, I returned to my early scientific infatuation. It is strange how life cycles and epicycles lead one back to youthful fixations… My research work over three decades is increasingly focused on exploring connections between mind and heart.
No doubt what one does is largely the result of who one is. I have returned to my early beginnings as though mandated by unswerving fate.”
The Universal Pattern
The synchronicity of our stories was striking: an early pull toward psychology, a detour into the technical rigor of cardiology, and eventually a return—years later—to the inseparable connection between mind and heart.
Different lives, different eras, yet the same rhythm. His words felt like an echo of my own, a reminder that tuning-fork moments are not quirks of personality but part of a universal pattern—one that calls us back to the center of who we are.
Closing Reflection
Purpose doesn’t always arrive as a lightning bolt. More often, it hums quietly in the background, waiting to be heard. The danger is that tuning-fork moments are easy to miss—we get busy, practical, or cautious, telling ourselves there will be time later. But glossing over these signals means losing the very compass that can guide us toward a more authentic life.
And yet, as both Dr. Lown’s path and my own reveal, what we overlook in one season can reemerge in another, pressing us again to listen. You don’t need a crisis to change direction—only the courage to recognize the resonance whenever it shows up.
So I leave you with a question:
What early hum might still be waiting to guide you home?
