When Will I Be Good?

I really need to just start writing again, it's starting to make me crazy. I know I've said this on the blog before (maybe I need to go back and start reading old posts again) but the best advice/word of warning I received on this journey was "make sure you like the person you become at the end of your training".

Well, I haven't become a maniacal, self-important, egotistical, jerk. Yet. But I have let so many parts of who I am, fall away. I've definitely stopped being a somewhat multidimensional human. I hardly read (for enjoyment) anymore, I don't play music, I don't train physically like I used to. I've basically stopped doing yoga, writing, traveling. I know this is just a residency-routine-rut but it's frightening sometimes to see hobbies and loves that I once had just gradually fade into the distance, and not even (really) notice. I still am excited about medicine, about learning, about getting better, safer, wiser. But I keep coming back to somehow wanting to make sure I do indeed like the person I am becoming. Right now, it's iffy.

There are good things happening too. Very exciting times, even.

Duncan and I got engaged just a couple of weeks ago!

I got the surgical/obsetrics training spot for next year!

I am temporarily back in Ireland for some surgical training with M.C. It's fantastic being back here.
The thing is, because I am now moving towards my surgery and obstetrics training, I feel like I am back at the drawing board. I feel clumsy and hopeless again as a learner. My knots, my draping, my grasping. The simplest things you see surgeons do, then suddenly you're doing it and dammitiwatchedthisa1000timeswhycantidothis basically runs on repeat in your head. It makes me wonder when I will be good? Will I ever be good? Then I try to remember that I am on a much different path and that I will have to forge some of it myself, instead of constantly worrying about my exact endpoint.

So I will close on this perfect Rumi poem. For now. Evidently "Shams" was Rumi's living mentor. Thus, this poem struck very close to home when I read it this week, as my legs are, indeed, feeling heavy. 

 

Unfold your own myth

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?

Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?

Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,

smells the shirt of his lost son

and can see again?

Who lets a bucket down and brings up

a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire

and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,

and opens the door to the other world.

Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.

Omar storms in to kill the prophet

and leaves with blessings.

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things

have gone with others. Unfold

your own myth, so everyone will understand

the passage, We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy

and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling

the wings you've grown, lifting.

 

View from a hill, on my Sunday walk.