What Did the Medicine Man Say?
“Humility is not thinking less of oneself; it is thinking of oneself less.”
— Ancient teaching often repeated among Indigenous elders
It took me four days to return to Miami from Cochin, Kerala—via Bombay, Baku, Istanbul, and Paris. The journey felt like a passage across worlds. I had left behind regions overshadowed by war and uncertainty in the Middle East and arrived once again among the quiet mangrove landscapes of the Everglades.
For a wandering physician—someone whose life is measured in airports, border crossings, and distant communities—returning to work among the Indigenous peoples of South Florida always brings a sense of grounding.
The ninety-seven-year-old Medicine Man lives with his wife in a spacious wooden house deep inside the Everglades National Park. My visits to him have gradually become a small ritual within my medical work.
Normally he does not speak English. Our conversations are usually translated by his wife, who speaks both the native language and Spanish—the language brought centuries ago by the conquistadores.
But on this visit something unexpected happened.
As I entered the house, he looked at me carefully, almost as if he were reading a message written across my face. Then he spoke directly to me in English.
“What happened to your hat?”
The question startled me.
The hat itself has a story. It was made in Mexico, and the band was woven by a Native woman who lives in the Everglades. Over the past year it has travelled with me through many countries, and for reasons I never fully understood, it attracted attention wherever I went.
The cachiquel indian lady from Antigua
People would compliment it. Some asked where it came from. In Istanbul, while waiting for tram number one at the Eminönü station, a stranger even asked if he could photograph me because of it.
Gradually, without my noticing it, the hat had become something more than clothing. It had become a small social symbol.
Later that afternoon, as I drove deeper into the Everglades, I suddenly realized that I had left the hat behind in the Medicine Man’s house.
When I returned the following day to collect it, he handed it to me and burst into a deep, joyful laugh—a laugh that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than thought itself.
I remember thinking how radiant he looked.
In the philosophy of Yoga, ego is described as one of the fundamental distortions of human consciousness. The sages call it asmita—the illusion that the self is separate and important.
Over time, I had begun to enjoy the attention the hat attracted during my travels. What began as innocent curiosity from strangers had slowly nourished a quiet pride.
Perhaps the Medicine Man had seen this before I did.
Among Indigenous cultures, teachings are rarely delivered through lectures. They appear instead through gestures, silences, humour, and small moments whose meaning unfolds later.
Perhaps that simple question—“What happened to your hat?”—was such a teaching.
As we drove out of the park that day, I told my colleague quietly,
“I think I should get rid of this hat.”
I did not bother explaining the metaphor.
Among the Indigenous peoples of this continent—what they call Turtle Island—one hears a teaching repeated again and again:
Be humble.
On my next journey abroad, I may wear the simple jipijapa hat of the Yucatán, well known also to the people of Cuba.
But this time I will try to remember something the Medicine Man may have already known:
The most important thing a traveller carries is not the hat on his head, but the humility in his heart.
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