There are people who need you to not give up


Hello..

I was talking to one of my friends this week about my career aspirations. For a long time now, I have known that I wanted to become a doctor, but particularly a doctor that worked with cancer patients and in discovering and testing cancer treatments and therapies. Now, as this passion has been solidified in my mind and heart, I have wrestled with various uncertainties, the main one being whether I was really prepared for the emotional stress of this field. I know medicine can be extremely stressful emotionally no matter what you specialise in, but I think there is something especially gut-wrenching about working in fields that deal with terminally ill patients. Anyway, I've been working through that fear for a while and on not letting the potential diffciulties make me leave behind something that I feel called to. During this particular conversation, I was talking about a new worry that had been introduced to me. Prior to this, I was talking to someone else about how I felt that cancer was a horrible disease that needed to be eradicated. And she was talking about natural selection and to a degree, I sort of understand. We work so hard on making sure that we can live longer, but these older ages mean that we have to combat diseases and conditions and disorders that may not have been as frequent in our youth. I do understand that. But that conversation left me wondering if there was a point to studying meidicne - if illness is inevitable, then is there a point in spending my whole life trying to minimise it? People have never understood my fascination with cancer considering the fact that I have not experienced a personal loss to the disease, but this second friend that I was speaking to was more intimately informed with the disease and she was speaking to me about how there are lots of people who experience the disease in their youth with so much life ahead of them. And that they were worth fighting cancer for. And it's true. I may not know how many lives I can actually impact or how many diseases I might be able to treat, but if there's even one conversation that uplifts someone that I'm meant to have as a doctor in the future, if the whole point of my life is to hold someone while they cry over a difficult diagnosis or a promising prognosis, then my life will be well lived. I might not be able to fix everything (and that's hard for perfectionists like me to swallow), but maybe that's not what the point of my calling is. Those people that will need me as a doctor need me not to give up now because it's hard. I may not know the full story, but that is not a reason to quit. If anything, it makes the jounrey infinitely more adventurous, which doesn't have to be a reason to walk away.

Also, during this conversation, this same friend made a statement that will stick with me forever - 'the chance to exist is precious'. It really really is. It is so easy to get stuck and centered on all the things that aren't going our way or aren't working out the way we wanted to and that aren't going according to our timeline, that we forget about the simple things that we have to be grateful for, mostly because we get so used to them. In that way, familiarity really does breed contempt. We get so used to the things and people that we have that we begin to legitimately count them out and act like they do not matter even when all the satisfaction and joy we're looking for in places that will never meet those neeeds can be found in what and who we already have. Let's be more intentional guys. It's good to expect things from yourself and to have goals, but not at the expense of your contentment or meaningful relationships that challenge you and push you. There is more to life than popularity and fame and status. I'm learning that slowly. And I'm realsing that I do not want my dreams and passions and beliefs to be built on desires for things that cannot give me what I truly desire - peace.

God bless.

Dera

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