If the definition of being human could be distilled to a pair of abilities, Pauline Chen ’82 says those two skills might be storytelling and listening.

And so it was apt that Pauline told a story to an Olcott Center full of listening students, faculty, and staff on Friday, September 19, at a convocation addressing the school-year theme, “What does it mean to be human?” 

Pauline is a physician, author, and Loomis Chaffee trustee. Her medical career has included work as a liver transplant surgeon, as a cancer researcher, and now as a surgeon at the Boston Veterans Affairs hospital and clinic. Her 2007 memoir Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality was a New York Times best-seller, and she has written for the “Doctors” column in The New York Times, among other publications. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pauline started a journaling workshop series for health care workers. Building on its initial success, the program, now called VA Writes, has expanded to workshops for Veterans Health Administration health care employees across the country. 

Storytelling, from journal entries to fairy tales and from historical accounts to artistic narratives, is one thing that makes us human, Pauline told the convocation audience. And she crafted her talk around the story of André David, a 16-year-old boy who discovered prehistoric drawings on the walls of a limestone cave in his hometown of Cabrerets, France, in 1922. The colorful murals depicted dramatic scenes with horses, bison, mammoths, goats, and other animals as well as people and symbols.

Using carbon-dating methods, scientists later determined the drawings had been made 29,000 years ago, when the earliest homo sapiens began to roam the world, Pauline said. 

“So moved is André David that the caves … became his life’s obsession,” she continued. “Up until his death in 1970, André David would continue to descend down to the grottoes, those riveting pre-historic works of art mesmerizing him, entrancing him, and drawing him in again and again.”

Pauline said she has visited the caves several times, first when she was 17 and most recently during a trip last summer. “I understand why André David kept going back,” she said. “I understand the desire to immerse oneself in the otherworldliness of these caves. I understand the profound pull of these drawings and sense of wonder and astonishment that they elicit. These cave drawings have such a hold on us because, I suspect, we know, without question, that they are undeniably human.”

Drawing on her medical expertise, Pauline explained a social neuroscience theory that the development of certain neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and oxytocin, in human brains coincided with humans’ ability and desire to tell stories — and humans’ ability to “offer their attention,” to listen to stories.

Pauline urged her audience in Olcott to use their human gift for both telling and listening to stories. “Use it wisely, but also generously,” she said. “Fire up those neurotransmitters by telling your stories to your peers, your teachers, the staff, the administrator, and your family. But really show them your humanity by listening, observing, immersing yourself in their stories, and offering them your attention.”