We are, for the most part, very aware of the significance of the sun. But sometimes, I think we take the moon for granted.
For example: tidal motion. The moon's gravitational forces are strong enough to disrupt the delicate balance of Earth's inward gravity and outward centifugal force, making the water of our ocean's swell and bulge. As the moon orbits Earth and we rotate like we always do, it creates high and low tides, depending on our distance from the moon and this centrifugal force and moon's pull, justified by a bunch of math I won't bore you with and any surfer who will tell you why they get up at 4:45am.
It was banded by a few of us who swam Masters and Intramurals, but were tired of the confines of a pool and lane lines and passive-aggressive circle swimming. I harp on my alma mater a lot for its superficiality, affluence and protective bubble of safety (the safest city in America!), lack of crime and any sort of miscreant behavior, a sterile, slightly naive and carefully delineated city of Irvine bred out of commercialism and technological growth and median incomes over 120k, but it doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the 2.0 mile walk down the Orange County Newport Beach coast straight from campus.
If there was one thing I enjoyed when I felt trapped or stagnant, it was the ocean.
When you're under water, it's like you are safer than anywhere else. You are immersed in a medium nearly 1000 times more dense than air; the protective effect of a being in a place with subtle but undeniable entrance requirements. You cannot be in water if you don't know how to swim or you drown. You can't submerge yourself if you cannot withstand a little hypoxia. You cannot make forward progress if you have not learned how to effectively stroke, how to get from A to B in ways other than your bipedal default.
It's not a matter of a sense of elitism because you can swim, at least not for me. It's a sense of security knowing that, when I am stressed or lost or cannot talk or think or engage or humor others, I can run to the ocean with bare minimum: a suit, a cap, maybe goggles, and my bare feet, and I just can run in and the waves hit your shins and your body locks up because this isn't the Gulf of Mexico and its freezing even in summer, and you can keep running until you finally just hold your breath and dive forward and then you are free, and all those problems are on the shore behind you, and they cannot necessarily catch up to you in that moment.
It's a matter of knowing that you have to possess a basic knowledge of self-sustenance and survival and skill to go somewhere that others might be too afraid to go, and that reassures me that I will be happy, successful, even if I am not shattering world records or swimming to a finish line.
In the water, you make changes. You take up space: you matter, and you are also matter. But in the same way that you do not change the Volume of the Ocean, you don't just dissolve into it. You can be inconspicuous in the vastness but not dissolving, not becoming insignificant.
We are a little more than halfway through our Reproductive-Genitourinary-Ob/Gyn (lots of hyphens) course and I cannot lie: I do not enjoy this. I just don't. Am I a baby-hating lady? Eh. I am just disinterested. Not everyone feels this way, so don't freak out if your prerogative and life dream was to be a smiling obstetrician with forceps and lollipops. Like any course, some people are in heaven, but in RGU, I am not one of them.
I find this ironic, because my grades have never been better than they are now. And believe me, I am trying to care. You would hope that one's enthusiasm would mirror their numeric grade, but I suppose if that were true, I would have a 200% in OMM or 99% in GI. But I don't feel a personal connection to RGU, no fire is lit underneath me, no zeal for mechanics of delivery, and even the pathology seems redundant (an area I normally get excited about-a game of "what cell is that?" "What stain is that?").
As medical students, even as physicians, you're not supposed to become disenchanted so early. "Supposed to." But it happens; it would be unrealistic and negligible of me to mention otherwise and say that all subjects in school will be rainbows and Zebra cases with fascinating outcomes.
But I think it's something else too. Something that gives me that urgency to find the ocean, the way that the Ocean seeks the Moon to make a tide, the way the water seek the shore to make a wave, to dive in and escape for a moment, to chase something with purpose. I'm not necessarily overwhelmed either. I'm not behind, I'm not sick, I'm not (too) depressed and I'm not ungrateful. I'm training for the Philadelphia Marathon, so I should be running, but all I want to do is be under the water, to be away without having to go too far, to be untouchable for a second, to be alone but not lonely.
And to balance some of this feeling of inadequacy (not necessarily personal, but an lack of fulfillment, so to speak), I've tried to be a little more involved in the community. This isn't a shameless plug for a high-five or public commendation, but I put this here because I think it does, or has, helped me be a little less jaded. It makes me feel less like the Moon beckoning a tide, needing something to respond to me to produce a tangible, visual effect, and more like the ocean water seeking a higher purpose, a reason to have motion and a goal. In essence, to make it less about me, as 25 years of living have shown me that when we start thoughts or phrases with "I wish," "I want," "I need," or end them with "for me," "to me," it is deeply and perpetually unsatisfying.
And singing, running, in Pulmonics A Capella or PCOM Running Club with Philadelphia's Back on My Feet (a running club dedicated to ending homelessness through personal growth and setting goals), have filled some of the void that used to be gratified by diving headfirst into my ocean when I was confused or sad, when I wanted to think without being perturbed.
It's still a strange and sometimes disconcerting feeling to realize that, unlike much of my early adulthood, I cannot just pack up the car and change my plan and drive 400 miles from my problems, my disappointment with something that is then and there and somehow could be escaped if only I took my car to the highway and made it to San Francisco overnight and turned off my phone. I can't really do that anymore; I cannot fly back to California the way people drive to their home in Hershey, I cannot book a trip to Toronto just because it is perfect and immaculate in my eyes and this is not.
I cannot just ignore things, because I am 25 years old and I can be selfish sometimes, but I have to be malleable and willing to adapt, not make my scenery adapt for me hoping it wipes the slate clean.
Maybe you have felt the same way. Maybe you have felt like, you are doing the right things according to the Algorithm of Leading a Successful and Satisfying Life but they just don't fall into place, the margins are frayed and the puzzle doesn't complete itself so perfectly. Maybe you feel like you always are travelling but not necessarily arriving. And that is normal, that is ok. But it's when you feel that way that you, aspiring medical student or new little doctor or whomever you are; that's when you have to decide if you let yourself drown in your ocean, if you don't want to try to make yourself look harder, seek harder, work harder, looking for your moon. If you're going to feel sorry for yourself or if you're going to get up at 5:00am to hang out with that homeless woman who is more Gloria than she is homeless, if you're going to help your struggling friend in the Anatomy lab and see it as a burden or change, no-challenge- the way you think about helping people selflessly because it will make you BOTH better doctors.
This post was a little more allegorical than I would have liked, but the message is the same either way. You cannot change where you are and you cannot change the pull of the Moon or the rotation of the Earth or the flares of the sun or the grade you got on that last test. You cannot alter the tides merely by being in the ocean; you can't hide in the sea forever because eventually, you'll have to go back to the shore where everything you tried to neglect is obviously unmoved.
And I'll end on this note, an excerpt from David Foster Wallace's "This is Water," because frankly, I cannot say it any better. So if you have skimmed this incredibly lengthy blog, at the very least, read this part. It is the most important.
We are a little more than halfway through our Reproductive-Genitourinary-Ob/Gyn (lots of hyphens) course and I cannot lie: I do not enjoy this. I just don't. Am I a baby-hating lady? Eh. I am just disinterested. Not everyone feels this way, so don't freak out if your prerogative and life dream was to be a smiling obstetrician with forceps and lollipops. Like any course, some people are in heaven, but in RGU, I am not one of them.
I find this ironic, because my grades have never been better than they are now. And believe me, I am trying to care. You would hope that one's enthusiasm would mirror their numeric grade, but I suppose if that were true, I would have a 200% in OMM or 99% in GI. But I don't feel a personal connection to RGU, no fire is lit underneath me, no zeal for mechanics of delivery, and even the pathology seems redundant (an area I normally get excited about-a game of "what cell is that?" "What stain is that?").
As medical students, even as physicians, you're not supposed to become disenchanted so early. "Supposed to." But it happens; it would be unrealistic and negligible of me to mention otherwise and say that all subjects in school will be rainbows and Zebra cases with fascinating outcomes.
But I think it's something else too. Something that gives me that urgency to find the ocean, the way that the Ocean seeks the Moon to make a tide, the way the water seek the shore to make a wave, to dive in and escape for a moment, to chase something with purpose. I'm not necessarily overwhelmed either. I'm not behind, I'm not sick, I'm not (too) depressed and I'm not ungrateful. I'm training for the Philadelphia Marathon, so I should be running, but all I want to do is be under the water, to be away without having to go too far, to be untouchable for a second, to be alone but not lonely.
And to balance some of this feeling of inadequacy (not necessarily personal, but an lack of fulfillment, so to speak), I've tried to be a little more involved in the community. This isn't a shameless plug for a high-five or public commendation, but I put this here because I think it does, or has, helped me be a little less jaded. It makes me feel less like the Moon beckoning a tide, needing something to respond to me to produce a tangible, visual effect, and more like the ocean water seeking a higher purpose, a reason to have motion and a goal. In essence, to make it less about me, as 25 years of living have shown me that when we start thoughts or phrases with "I wish," "I want," "I need," or end them with "for me," "to me," it is deeply and perpetually unsatisfying.
And singing, running, in Pulmonics A Capella or PCOM Running Club with Philadelphia's Back on My Feet (a running club dedicated to ending homelessness through personal growth and setting goals), have filled some of the void that used to be gratified by diving headfirst into my ocean when I was confused or sad, when I wanted to think without being perturbed.
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| A lot of photobombing going on at PCOM Pulmonics A Capella volunteering (aka singing) at CASA's Superhero 5k. |
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| No picture without a Justin cameo. |
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| Pretending like 13.1 miles is nbd. |
I cannot just ignore things, because I am 25 years old and I can be selfish sometimes, but I have to be malleable and willing to adapt, not make my scenery adapt for me hoping it wipes the slate clean.
Maybe you have felt the same way. Maybe you have felt like, you are doing the right things according to the Algorithm of Leading a Successful and Satisfying Life but they just don't fall into place, the margins are frayed and the puzzle doesn't complete itself so perfectly. Maybe you feel like you always are travelling but not necessarily arriving. And that is normal, that is ok. But it's when you feel that way that you, aspiring medical student or new little doctor or whomever you are; that's when you have to decide if you let yourself drown in your ocean, if you don't want to try to make yourself look harder, seek harder, work harder, looking for your moon. If you're going to feel sorry for yourself or if you're going to get up at 5:00am to hang out with that homeless woman who is more Gloria than she is homeless, if you're going to help your struggling friend in the Anatomy lab and see it as a burden or change, no-challenge- the way you think about helping people selflessly because it will make you BOTH better doctors.
This post was a little more allegorical than I would have liked, but the message is the same either way. You cannot change where you are and you cannot change the pull of the Moon or the rotation of the Earth or the flares of the sun or the grade you got on that last test. You cannot alter the tides merely by being in the ocean; you can't hide in the sea forever because eventually, you'll have to go back to the shore where everything you tried to neglect is obviously unmoved.
And I'll end on this note, an excerpt from David Foster Wallace's "This is Water," because frankly, I cannot say it any better. So if you have skimmed this incredibly lengthy blog, at the very least, read this part. It is the most important.
'Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
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