There was a time when luxury meant having more. More things. More choices. More places to go. More things to do. More posts on social media, more likes, more comments.
Today, I think real luxury is becoming something rather different.
Perhaps, strangely enough, it looks a little like the old days, when people seemed to have more time for small pleasures. Talking to someone you love for hours. Cooking a meal for your family. Spending an afternoon reading your favourite book without feeling you should be doing something else.
Most of the things we truly miss are somehow connected to people we love… or loved.
And to time. Time that wasn't something to trade or squeeze into a calendar, but simply something to enjoy.
Healthcare used to have a little more of that too.
Do you remember going to your Family Doctor?
Your Family Doctor would listen to you for what felt like an extraordinary amount of time. Without interrupting. Without typing. Without being distracted by another device.
Just looking at you and listening to what you were saying. And, sometimes more importantly, to what you had deliberately decided not to say.
He knew the names of your children. He knew something about your mother and father. He remembered the medication you were taking and probably something you'd mentioned months earlier.
No computer. No AI. Just knowledge, experience, and an extraordinary interest in the person sitting in front of him.
I know this sounds nostalgic. But I remember very clearly the moment I understood what that kind of medicine could mean.
The Old Doctor
I was 31 and living abroad. I was going through one of the hardest periods of my life. I was about to leave home with my three-year-old child, and the stress had begun to show physically.
I would cry at night until eventually I fell asleep, simply exhausted from crying. Then I started losing my hair. It got to a point where I understood I needed professional help.
I asked my mother to make an appointment with a GP in my hometown in Portugal. She found a small private practice and booked me an appointment with a doctor.
I still remember my first thought when I saw him:
Why on earth has she booked me an appointment with someone this old?
Still, I kept my thoughts to myself and walked into his office, with my mother beside me.
And that was where I understood something about medicine that has stayed with me ever since.
It was our first meeting, so naturally he asked questions.
My mother was sitting next to me, and there were parts of what I was going through that I simply couldn't say in front of her. I didn't want her to worry. I didn't want her to feel my pain.
So I edited the story. But he knew. I could see it in his gentle and attentive eyes.
There was something about the way he listened that made me realise he wasn't only listening to my answers. He was noticing the gaps between them.
He wasn't interrogating me. He wasn't forcing me to say anything I wasn't ready to say.
He was simply there. Quiet. Experienced. Gentle.
And somehow, without knowing me at all, extraordinarily supportive.
That “old doctor” prescribed a few things and gave me some recommendations. They helped.
But, more than forty years of medical knowledge aside, the most important thing he gave me that day didn't come in a prescription.
He gave me his time and his complete undivided attention.
For those minutes, I wasn't one more appointment of his day.
I was someone he was trying to understand.
And I left feeling looked after.
And that's why, all these years later, I still remember him.
Perhaps We Haven't Changed That Much
Medicine has evolved enormously since then. And mostly for the better.
We have extraordinary technology. Better diagnostic tools. More information than we could ever have imagined. We can access test results from our phones, speak to doctors from another country and ask AI a health question at three o'clock in the morning.
But somewhere along the way, I wonder if we started confusing access to more healthcare with feeling more cared for.
Sometimes what we need is not another app, another portal, or another opinion produced by AI.
Sometimes we need someone who knows the whole story.
Someone who remembers what happened six months ago. Someone who notices when something doesn't quite fit. Someone who asks one more question, and has the time to listen to the answer.
Someone who understands that what we don't say can occasionally matter just as much as what we do.
That doctor couldn't solve everything that was happening in my life that day. But for the time I sat in front of him, I had the distinct feeling that someone had taken responsibility for looking after me.
