Mom’s Day

There’s so many jokes, stories, etc. out there about Mother’s Day. You’ve seen them. “Supermom” comics, and “mom is wow upside down,” and stories about how “mom is always there,” and “my mom is the best!!,” and “my mom is (something awesome)” and all that. They are all over the internet – especially today, a day specifically designated to celebrate their awesomeness.

It’s cool to see, because they’re all true. So true.

My mom has been at home, looking after me (& my brothers, of course) pretty much since our births. She’s always been there for us – even if we don’t always recognize it. Which, trust me, it took me a LONG time to figure this out. Like, 20 years. I mean, physically she was there – that much was pretty obvious. Yet it was only as I neared the end of my undergraduate career that I realized that I had been blessed with someone that I could talk to about just about anything (and at almost any time, since her sleep schedule is pretty much like mine). I think that is when our relationship really took off – it went from her talking and me being a stupid, bratty child who just wanted to play Nintendo to us having an actual conversation. Many conversations, in fact. About the most random things. I’m not the most serious person when it comes to conversations, but I’ve definitely had some of the most serious/important conversations I’ve had with her. Which, I’ve come to see, can be a rare thing. So I’m really grateful for that – especially as I sit here right now.

I haven’t been a perfect son or anything like that, but I’ve tried my hardest. Even through the disagreements, things always end up working out. And generally, she was the one that was right (of course). And, lest I forget, my life has (obviously) been hugely impacted by her in so many ways. I’ve never been good with emotions, which made it really hard to talk when Dada, and Masa, and Ba passed away, but I’ve tried. Sometimes, I wonder if that’s enough. But I couldn’t empathize with your emotions, at least not to that level, so I figured it was best I remain relatively quiet. … I’ve always asked for a lot of things and as of late, she’s even let me indulge a bit – a camera, most recently … things I will be forever grateful for. And for the biggest impacts she’s had on my life…

(1) Bollywood. This is the most obvious one. She used to sit at home and watch movies when we were all at school growing up – eventually, we started watching them with her. I don’t know when this started, but it was when I was very young. It’s been going strong ever since. Even as the quality of Bollywood movies drops off a huge cliff, we’re able to find movies we enjoy – if not something new, then something old school. The best part has been that my taste in movies has also developed to be very similar to hers – I tend to enjoy movies that my mom also likes, so we’re able to watch them together (or if not that, she’s at least able to tell me which movies to watch and which to avoid like the plague). Whether they be suspense/thriller or mindless comedy or rom-com or anything Aamir Khan, our movie tastes match up really well (even in old school movies, for the most part, and an enjoyment in just turning on a DVD of songs from the 70s and talking about them). Which makes it easy to find a movie to watch, even if we’ve seen it multiple times before. It matches up so well that not only did I watch Kya Kool Hain Hum (probably the most “adult-humor” Bollywood movie I’ve ever seen) with my mom, she watched it first and actually told me to watch it. That’s my mom for you. Most people wouldn’t watch it with their parents – meanwhile, my mom was telling me to watch it. Awesome! … I’ve probably taken this interest a bit beyond what she probably would have expected (especially given how many movies I’ve watched during school), but if nothing else, it gives us something to do when bored. So many movies to catch up on this break!

(2) Somewhat similar is my interest in books. I’m not saying we have the same interest in books (I actually don’t know what the last novel she read would be), but she definitely influenced my interest. She always took us to the library, always made us read – she didn’t really care what, as long as we read. Thankfully that has carried over and given me an escape from life that I can peruse at almost any time in almost any setting.

(3) Growing up, I remember how she used to cheer for the Jazz whenever they had a game, and John Elway pretty much every Sunday. Those 2 Super Bowls he won at the end of this career… yeah. We definitely watched those in their entirety. It was my mom that introduced me to sports and fandom. I’ve probably taken it a lot farther than she thought I would, but it has had a huge impact on my life – both in a positive and a negative (of sorts) sense. Now we sit and argue (in jest, of course) about it – she cheers for Peyton Manning & Eli Manning to win, and I cheer for them to lose. It’s fun. She’s found great joy in cheering for teams that we aren’t fans of, so the “trash talk” (if you will – I wouldn’t actually trash talk in front of my mom) is always around. Makes for fun Sundays. Of course, it was this  interest that led to me writing for a sports blog (or 2) and getting a job writing about basketball, and even going to Spokane to watch games live and write about them. So thank you, ma, for that.

Of course, a reward/thank you for that came another way too. I happened to be on an airplane flying back from Spokane (and therefore unreachable by phone), and as a result my mom was the first person to know I’d been accepted to med school. Even before I did. As someone who had believed in me from the start and had been pushing me to keep trying, I don’t know how that could’ve ended better. She was definitely more excited than I was about it – it wasn’t even close. I always dreamt of learning about this and telling her first, but I think the way it worked out turned out even better – my mom told me I’d been accepted to med school.

(4) My mom is an AMAZING cook. She loves cooking, and she can make just about anything. Which has spoiled me greatly when it comes to food. Indian food, pasta, Tex-Mex, anything. If she sees something she likes, she’ll experiment – and it somehow ends up amazing. … This is one skill I don’t think I’ll ever be able to learn from her. I don’t know why – lack of ability, lack of interest, lack of patience – maybe all 3. I would much rather just sit & eat the food. Even the foods I don’t really like, if she makes it I’ll eat it. I’ll complain too, but that’s just because that’s how our relationship is. She knows I’m kidding. Thank heavens our relationship is so good – if I couldn’t use a sarcastic tone around her, my life would be so much more miserable. Luckily she knows this and is able to go along with it. There was the high school graduation party where she MADE food for so many people (I can’t even count) – and she did that because she wanted to. … I can only hope that I can find that thing that gives me as much happiness/relief as she gets from cooking.

(5) I’ve mentioned this already, but she was one of the biggest forces in my eventually getting into med school. It wasn’t fun at the time (MCAT, interviews, essays, ugh), but whenever I wanted to give up, she was there to coerce me into doing just a little bit more (generally with the promise of a movie we’d both enjoy, or good food, as a “reward”). Now that I think about it, the same was true for undergrad too – though at that time I unfortunately ignored her and didn’t apply to nearly enough places. Even since med school has started, she’s been my biggest fan/supporter – no matter what happens, I know I can talk to her and feel better about myself afterwards. When I was unsure if I could handle moving to a new country and going to school again, she had faith in me. Before that, when I wanted to move to the dorms in undergrad, she had the faith in me to let me go. When I wanted to go to Portland with a group of strangers for an “Alternative Spring Break,” she was all for it. Spokane? She was completely supportive of that too. When I wanted to go to India after I graduated undergrad, not only did she say ‘okay,’ but she came along as well!

She’s more excited for me to grow up than I am. She’s been looking forward to me getting into med school, and since that happened, she’s been looking forward to me getting back and starting rotations/residency and beyond. While part of me still desires to just sit & sleep days away, she looks forward to the day where I’ll be done with school and out in the “real” world (the one that doesn’t involve class day-after-day). She’s able to look ahead into the future to the day that I’m unable/unwilling to see. At times I’m really naive & stupid – luckily, my mom is there to talk some sense into me. Even as I sit here, thousands of miles (and a couple of time zones) away, I can’t help but remember things she’s said and advice she’s given. And it’s pretty obvious (to me, at least), that even with this distance (and the fact we only talk like once every week or 2 weeks or something), the relationship continues to strengthen. There’s something about distance and strengthening relationships – it definitely rings true in my case.

My mom has been one of my best friends for a very long time, but especially since I started college. (It should’ve been longer, but I was too stupid to realize that I had a friend in the house when I was that young.) Our relationship might not be “perfect” to the true definition of the word, but that’s alright – because it’s pretty damn awesome just as it is. And it’s getting better daily. Through all the movies, sporting events, meals eating out, trips to the mall and random-as-everything/super-funny conversations, one thing is certain. And the more time I spend away, the more I realize this – I have been blessed (BLESSED!) to have you for a mother. Thank you for everything. (I wish I was home to wish you this in person, but alas, that hasn’t been possible the last 2 years.)

Happy Mother’s Day.

Fleeting Life

I don’t really plan posts, beyond a random “I should write about (so-and-so topic),” which randomly enters my head. (For example, see my last post.) I had planned to write something today. After all, it was the last day of (med school) class – more-or-less 21 months in the making. It’s been a struggle, it’s been stressful – and now we’re 2 finals away from being done. It’s exciting. It’s scary. It’s the topic of the day. … And then, something happened last night. Something completely unexpected. Something that I tried to write about last night, but couldn’t find the words for. I still don’t know if I found the words I wanted. (The first part of this is me writing out my shock, the second part is me thinking “out loud.”)

Now, I’m not going to make it seem like we were best friends because … well, we weren’t. Neither of us would say that we were. But we were friends/acquaintances. We’d met in high school, and had those awkward “hello” conversations. Awkward mostly because of my attitude … I went around for most of those 3 years with an “I don’t know anyone; why am I here?” attitude that made most (if not all) conversations pretty awkward. No amount of niceness from you could help me overcome that feeling – what can I say, my brain is good at believing whatever it wants to believe. So no, we weren’t best friends. But we were friends. And since high school, we’d had random conversations on FB (of course) too – life had taken us in our different ways, but FB gave us a chance to “catch up” (or whatever you want to call it). I didn’t know you really well, but from what I did know and from what I had experienced/seen, you were super nice (always) to everyone (people & animals). What stood out most to me in our conversations is that you seemed like you knew what you wanted and you were doing it – a sort of opposite to me, if you will. Even in high school, you were always super nice and helpful (even when I was so awkward) – I guess that’s what scared me even more. But whatever, that’s just random irrelevant thoughts.

Safe to say, seeing yesterday that you had “moved on” was a shock. Just a few days before, you’d posted pictures on the ‘book and I had thought about just even being like “what’s up?” – but decided to wait until after I was done with the stress of finals. Apparently, life cares not for the whims and fancies of such minor things. … Part of me wants to question the presence of an entity like God when someone who your family/friends need (like you) can be “taken” while others who are doing harm to a lot of people are allowed to “stay,” but I’m starting to realize that it doesn’t really matter. Life/God/whatever doesn’t work like that. If destiny matters, then what is destined to happen will happen. And if not, then whatever happens happens. This isn’t about that. It doesn’t confirm that there is or isn’t a God. It doesn’t say anything about that. All it says, quite simply, is that anything can happen. At any time. Something sad/shocking happened, and we’re left to move on.

I’ve lost people in my life before – people I honestly was closer to than I was with you (talking about family here). But there was a difference – you were (more-or-less) my age (well, an year younger). The only other time I can remember this happening was the 2nd year of undergrad – but at that point, it was someone that I hadn’t met/spoken to in 10 years. And more importantly, at that point I was still naive/stupid and was full of that “invincibility complex.” I was just 20 (I don’t know if that’s a “just,” but whatever) – it didn’t feel like anything could happen. I didn’t believe it when I heard it then. But, in the 7-ish years since then, I’ve seen/heard/read a lot. I’d like to think I’ve grown a little bit less naive. While I haven’t experienced much of anything (at least not enough for me to consider it “experiencing”), I’ve seen many others go through tough times. So I know a lot more – and I can’t just lie to myself and be like “it won’t happen to me (or people I know).” I don’t know that. No one knows that. (And being in med school has definitely helped scare that complex away really quick.) Still, I had this sort of hope that it wouldn’t happen to us (‘us’ referring to the entire group that I knew from back then). This is obviously now shattered – I was forced to realize that no such hope is worth having. No one is ever “too young,” or “too nice,” or “too good,” or anything like that. Life does what it wants – this isn’t like Stranger Than Fiction where you hear your life narrated out and know what is coming. Life doesn’t give you that. Life gives you what it gives you, no if/ands/buts about it. Whether it’s destiny, or God’s will, or random chance, or whatever, there’s nothing we can control. And most of the time, it comes without warning. I don’t know what happened exactly, but for me, this falls under the “without warning” category. More than anything, this has helped me realize the frailty of life – the only thing that is keeping us “alive” and on this planet, and how little control we have over it.

…

Life comes. Life goes. It’s really just that. What you do in between may or may not impact how much time you have, but in the end, it’s a finite amount of time. So I guess it comes down to living life to the “fullest” (whatever that means). I believe there’s some sort of limit to this too – depending how much importance you place on the people that care about you – but who knows. Finite amount of time means finding things you want to do and, and this is the important part!, actually doing them.

What’s important to me? Honestly, I have no idea. Probably spending time with the people I care about doing things that we all (hopefully) enjoy, but I’m starting to realize that that isn’t a very common theme amongst people. It’s more about doing what (said person) wants, and if you don’t want to do that then you’re SOL. Which, well, whatever. Everyone lives differently. Doesn’t make it wrong. Just different. … I haven’t really thought about/realized/learned what I find “important.” Mostly because I don’t know how to find this out, or how to rationalize why something is and something else isn’t.

It’s funny. The more you grow, the more … ill-defined, I guess, life seems to become. Before, it was so simple. School. Homework. Maybe some hanging out with friends. Set in stone, sure, but more just that there was no need to worry really about extraneous stressors; you could do whatever you wanted to. Obviously growing up changes that as life starts taking its various twists & turns and introduces an amazing (overwhelming?) amount of confusion & uncertainty. Some people deal well with it. Others, not so much.

Amidst trying to figure out what I want to do (not even in terms of “career”-speak, but just in general for day-to-day relaxation), I find myself staring down a different, even more confusing line. On one hand, I’m still in “school.” Classes ended today, but we have finals next week. Then 7 weeks of a Kaplan course followed by the USMLE. And then 2 more years before graduation – the random period of rotations which seems to be a combination of school & adulthood at the same time. Totally not cool. On the other hand, that thing known as adulthood. Leaving here, moving, all the things of “growing up” that everyone both awaits/dreads pretty much from the time they’re old enough to know what adulthood is.

Do I want to grow up? Yes, definitely. I’m so done with school. … Do I want to grow up? No. I’m scared shitless about the entity known as the “future,” which I have just realized is much scarier than I previously thought. Not so much because I fear the unknown, but because I can’t handle the fact that it can’t really be rationalized. (Call me Guildenstern, so you desire.) It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to make sense. It just happens. Not everything that happens has rhyme & reason behind it. Which baffles my mind immensely. It’s almost as if ‘deus ex machina’ is an actual plot device in real life. I’m not always the most rational person (maybe not ever?), but when it comes to something as massive as life, it’s hard to just go on without something to explain the happenings at hand. (Which, recent events have proven, doesn’t always exist.)

I’m sitting here more than a day later – I’m still confused. I will (obviously) never understand what happened, or why it happened. And when something like this happens again (which it obviously will), I will have no idea why that happened either. And nothing I do today (or ever) will change that *harsh* reality. Which, I guess, is the special mystique behind life? The onus falls on me now – I can only live my life. And I can only control random parts of it. I need to figure out who I am, figure out what I want to do (and if it is writing posts like this, how to be more time-efficient with it) and just start doing it. Controlling what I can control, and leaving the rest of it to whoever/whatever is in “charge.” The best laid plans stand no chance against the winds that blow in life – time for me to stop trying to “plan” things out. My life and where it is right now (and where I am right now) is the greatest sign to me that even if plans don’t turn out exactly as hoped (or anything like it), things can still turn out alright. I mean, let’s be honest. I had a lot of plans for life & the future, dating back to high school. I don’t think any of them have even come close to happening (unless it’s one of those “I came across a fork in the road / and took the wrong path” things). And yet, somehow, I’m still “here” (referring not to that physical location – that was never part of the plan, but instead the general institution that we call medical school). The plan might not work out … but life has a tendency to if you give it time (and put in the required effort, of course).

Life is too fleeting to try and plan it all out so far in advance. It’s all about making the most of the moments we have (everyone would consider different things as “living life,” and most of them are correct – there’s no set-in-stone definition for living). And as life shows all too often, there’s no knowing how many moments are left. So why waste the moments we do have (for sure!) planning/worrying about unknown moments that may or may not exist? Life will run its course – the best you can do is run with it.

…

R.I.P.

Groundhog’d

You don’t live the same day over and over again. That only happens in movies – Groundhog Day, anyone? (Or Chhodon Kal Ki Baatein, if obscure Bollywood movies from 2012 happen to be your personal pick.) To be honest, that would get really old really quick. That said, there are many quotes about how “history repeats itself,” and also quotes about how “life constantly tests us” (both are paraphrased, obviously), and what not. Point being, there’s some really random stuff going on with life all the time – and sometimes, it means things repeat in your life.

The intensity of this didn’t really hit home until recently. When I left home 2 years ago (after graduating from school) to come to a DIFFERENT COUNTRY for school (again), I didn’t really think much of it. Lots of people move for school, and continue with grad school, and all that. Hell, even I’d moved multiple times (though never out of the country – or even out of the state). I told myself constantly that it was going to be a new experience with new opportunities and whatever else a new place is supposed to bring you. Maybe I was just trying to drown out my fear. Who knows? (If I could go back and talk to myself, I’d let me know that mostly it just brings more stress – though that may be a med school thing.) I was leaving family behind, and a limited number friends as well (thank heavens for technology). But then, this figured to be a place where many people would be going through similar things (at least with regards to moving to a new country where they didn’t really know a lot of people), so I wasn’t too worried about leaving friends behind. I was sure I’d make some eventually and I did – in first term, no less! But still, I felt like I was running from something – as if life had given me a test and I’d done so bad that I’d had to leave. That’s never a fun feeling to have.

Starting here was exactly what I expected when I first landed. It was a whole new experience. Everything was slower (customer service speed at Subway, the internet, the wait at restaurants) and very much different (vans for buses, flip-flops & shorts year round, cats/dogs/goats/bulls randomly strolling past the window as you studied). But I made friends and learned that I’d be busy (well, “busy”) at times; life went on as it tends to do. For the majority of 2 years, it was like that. There were some awesome events and other events that weren’t as awesome (aka life). Things didn’t really change – all that did was that as you got further along (term 1 to term 5), things seemed to just get that much more difficult (for a variety of reasons – some nameable, some not so much) and more stressful (probably because the USMLE kept getting closer and closer – and is now hanging over us like a swinging chandelier ready to crash down at any moment). I’ve gotten lost, at times, in the studying and sleeping and stressing and failing at scuba diving and just waiting in lines for 30 minutes to get a subway and everything else. I won’t go as far as to say I’ve “embraced” my time here (or med school in general), but I’ve made it work. Somehow. Even as I’ve had no time (more like ‘no interest,’ sadly) to do things that I’d previously have dropped everything to do. I guess that’s what they call growing up.

Yet, I came to realize recently that … well, I don’t know if anything is really all that different. Even here, thousands of miles from there, everything is the same. I mean, sure it’s a new place with awesome new people and the overlaying reality that its time to grow up and enter reality. But still, in a more psychological sense, it isn’t different. Almost as if I’d been running in place (I’ve never understood why you’d put so much effort into getting nowhere at all). Maybe it’s just a sign that I did poorly on the test last time and have to take it again. (If so, I guess I can accept that – I didn’t do as well as I would’ve hoped last time around.) Maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. (I don’t want to have any of the psych disorders we’ve covered – none of them sound all that great.) Or maybe I’m just seeing things I want to see in hopes of having something to write about. (Mission accomplished!) Who knows?

The fact remains that even now, two years removed from Utah and sports and writing and the stresses of undergrad (ha!) and all the people-things going on then, things are very similar. Eerily similar. Ha ha, Erie. Now that was an experience. But I digress. There are differences of course – huge differences. But the general feeling seems to be the same. As if life was like “did you learn anything from last time?” … I’d like to think I did. I’ve tried to use the knowledge (if it can be called that) I gained last time around to mold myself into someone slightly different – hopefully to make me a better person, but who can know for sure, right? I can say for sure I’m not the person I’d like to be – in fact, in some instances, I’m pretty sure that I’m worse off than I used to be before – but then, life doesn’t always give you the opportunity to be exactly who you want. It’s our job to take what is “given” (maybe afforded is a better word?) to us and make the most out of it. You know … lemonade out of lemons. As the title of this blog refers to…

This realization of mine surprised me. I figured it would, in the least, be a while before I had such a similar experience as the last chapter of my life. I mean, no one likes books where every chapter is pretty much the same or a series where every book is pretty much the same (no insult intended, Dan Brown). It seems like everyone’s life is different – I figured I’d get one of those stories this time around. Not this one again. Maybe that’s what caught me off-guard, maybe that’s what resulted in me being too shocked to change as much as I should have. I just didn’t have the time to learn from the past (well, not as much time as I would’ve liked, at least). They say (well, I know I’ve read this somewhere) that all movies have one of like six basic plots – there are variations of course to change things up, but it starts with one of the basic six plots. Maybe life is like that too? Every “chapter” of every person’s life can be brought down to one of howmanyever basic skeletons? That’s a weird thought … and as time winds down here, I’m really hoping the “next chapter” over there is not the same as this one or the last one. Passing isn’t always everything (in fact, as I’ve learned here, passing might not even be enough sometimes), but I feel like I’ve passed this test at least this time (if not last time too).

I’m not expecting life to lay down a red carpet and welcome me to the “good times”. In fact, that would be kinda odd and highly unexpected. Though it would also be nice, I must add. In fact, I’m sure some of the plot-lines in this next chapter will be very similar to plot-lines in this chapter. Which is also to be expected – life isn’t being haphazardly group-written by a bunch of bored journalism students (we did that once, in junior high – it started with a rabbit and I don’t remember how it ended but it was definitely all over the place) that you can expect random insertions of odd storylines or “deus ex machina” moments. There will be carryovers. Fine. But when talking to friends flashes you back to conversations and people back home (all the time), and a friend playing basketball reminds you of someone playing basketball back home, and school reminds you of school (okay, that’s probably an obvious one), and situation after situation is like one that was experienced within the last 3 or so years … well, it starts to get annoying. I think that’s what it is, really. I’m just annoyed. I went through it once. I did bad, didn’t act correctly, made mistakes, whatever. It’s done with. I don’t want to have to deal with it again. Mostly, I don’t want to deal with those situations again – they bring back memories that I don’t want to remember. Running from the past – not always fun or easy or exciting or even possible, yet so many people are always trying to do it.

Part of it, if not most of it, probably could be attributed to me being pretty much the same person. I’d like to hope not, but maybe that’s just what this is about. Maybe it’s all just about my mindset – how I approach things, how I feel about them, the meanings I take from scenarios or what is said. Who knows? (If it is this, I will have to admit that it is pretty cool how much the mind can influence events and relate them to things experienced in the past, even if there is no similarity to be envisioned at all. Both cool and odd at the same time.) So I guess I don’t really know if it is circumstance, or my mindset, or the scenarios, or if life is really just stuck on “repeat,” but I’m ready to move on to newer and (hopefully) better things. I’ve enjoyed the experiences here (some of them more than others). I’ve had some pretty good times, both with and without my camera by my side. I’m so grateful for the friends I’ve made here – I can’t even put that into words. Hopefully the friendships will last long into the future. But now, I’m ready for experiences that don’t keep making me flashback to times from before – events I’d like to forget and things I’d like to run from (and not just run in place at that – it’s time to start moving!).

I’ve kidnapped the groundhog. I’ve driven the truck off the overlook. I’ve thrown a plugged in toaster into the bathtub. I’ve sculpted the ice. I think it’s time for this February 2nd to end and February 3rd to start. (Not necessarily at 6 AM, I’d be fine with sleeping in a bit more before I woke up.) Hopefully life agrees with me on this one.

Protected: The End Of Year One

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42, Or 25, Or 73, Or Any Other ‘Number’

Douglas Adams took a number, a random number, and turned it into something so much more (at least for people that enjoyed his book). Before – it was just a number. After, it became the answer to “life, the universe and everything.” It was, as he stated in numerous interviews afterwards, just a number. A random number. There was nothing special that made him pick it. Nothing that distinguished it from anything else.

Just a number.
A number.
That he made mean so much more.
(At least for some of us.)

Numbers, for better or worse, have become really important in our lives. And no, I’m not just talking about calculating the chances that an unborn child will have an autosomal dominant disease or what the transairway pressure is. I’m not just talking about cranial nerve III or the number of days that a red blood cell will last in your body before meeting its end. (Sorry, med school might be taking over my brain.) There are so many things where numbers have become “very important.”

How much you earn. The miles per gallon of a car. How many points you score in a game. Your GPA and MCAT/LSAT (or whatever) score. The time and date. The year. Your age. The number of hats I have. My shoe size. My age. How many movies I’ve seen this year. How much (whatever) costs. Math class. Finance, accounting, statistics. The names of random movies. … Big things. Small things. Things somewhere in between.

Obviously this idea of “importance” has been around since before Adams, and it will still be around even after we’ve become a species that has no idea what a “book” or what “reading” is and have completely forgotten about Adams’ masterpiece. (I feel sad for this day, where reading is as real as dinosaurs.) I’m not trying to claim that he’s behind this phenomenon – he isn’t. Obviously. My point is just how he took something we all do – overemphasize seemingly irrelevant ‘numbers’ (or anything else) – and put it on a grand scale by making it “the” answer to everything. And despite the absurdity of it all, we didn’t learn a thing.

…

It makes me wonder – how much stuff is there in our lives that we put too much significance into? Something small, irrelevant, “just a (whatever)” that we turn into the answer to some question or another. Or, on the grand scale, taking something small and making it “the” answer to our life (or at least our life at that time). And I don’t just mean numbers. But anything and everything that we, at a given time, overvalue. Sometimes, to an incredibly high (and stupid?) level.

Looking back, it is occasionally really easy to laugh at the absurdities that became “important” to life. Sometimes, it is a bit harder – or almost impossible – because of much it hurt. Doesn’t matter. Point is, it is crazy how we do this. And keep doing this.

Life moves in its own way. Whether you believe in destiny or fate, or whether you believe that it is all crap, life is going to throw you curves – at least relative to the way it seemed to be moving just minutes (or days, or whatever) before. Life doesn’t move according to your plan – sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things just won’t work out. It happens.

Have I done this before? Obviously. That’s why I’m talking about it. (As for why I’m talking about it now … well, I felt like it. And I didn’t feel like studying or anything. And everything happens for a reason.)

The fact that we’re willing to attach so much to one answer, one word/phrase, one number, or anything really is ridiculous. There are very few answers that will completely define your life. Sure, it may seem like it at the time, but chances are other situations will show up as well – and you’ll find yourself thinking the same thing again. Or, looking back you’ll think one situation defined your life, but that involves ignoring/disregarding all the previous events (as small as they may seem) that led you to that spot. Life will show you opportunity after opportunity – just because one attempt failed, doesn’t mean the next one will. In fact – just because the last 10 failed, doesn’t mean the eleventh one will.

Shit happens. Sometimes with regards to something you really hoped for or worked towards or wanted. It is really hard to get over, or accept that maybe that wasn’t meant to be. But it wasn’t – if it was, it would have happened. Realizing that, and moving on, is not easy. Nor is it fun. But it is necessary. For life. Your life. Your happiness. Your “everything”. (Or replace ‘your’ with ‘my’ – this applies to me as much as to everyone else.)

…

The secret, it seems, is to not fall into the trap. As much as I love Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and as much as I joke about 42 being the answer to everything (or, you know, anything I don’t know), there is no simple answer to life. There is no one event, or answer, or idea, or thing that will make your life. Every decision you make will lead you, at some point, to another decision. It is this cascade of events that will end up determining how life plays out. And every answer decided on will play some role in changing that cascade – modeling it, if you will – to form the series of events that define life. So overemphasizing a single answer in this cascade, while it seems great (or not great) in the short-run, ends up being a waste of time that just delays the cascade … or worse, ends up shifting the cascade to a completely undesired path.

Just because Douglas Adams said that 42 is the answer to life, the universe & everything, it doesn’t mean that 42 is the answer to every individual life right now.

It’s just a ‘number’. Nothing more. Don’t put too much emphasis on it – after all, if it doesn’t work out, there are millions of other numbers that might be the right one for this instance. And millions of other questions that you will be asking as life goes on. In the long run, each of these questions will be just as important as deciding the journey your life takes you on as the one you’re currently asking – even if it doesn’t seem that way right now.

It’s just a number.

Selfish Thoughts

Let’s just assume that god (whichever one you believe in, or whatever) came down to you and gave you two options.

Option #1:  You get straight A’s for the rest of med school (or whatever is equivalent). Everything works out, including the USMLE & rotations. But two or three (or more) of your friends will fail out or drop out.

Option #2: All your friends will survive med school (or whatever) with you. But you get B’s & C’s throughout – which may or may not reflect on your USMLE score (depending on how well you prepare for it). (Maybe the people know you sacrificed your grades for them, maybe not – does that make a difference?)

Also to take into consideration: 1- You’re already an “underdog” of sorts when it comes to residencies because of the school you’re at, which is a foreign medical school. 2- You have no idea what exactly these friends are going to do after – or if you’ll even talk to them again. They could just ditch you as soon as they get an awesome opportunity elsewhere. 3- You don’t know which friends are failing out (first option, obviously) – they could be your closest friends, or they could be “talk to every once-in-a-while” acquaintances. You don’t even really know what they think of you. You won’t know who it is until you’ve made up your mind. And there’s no going back on it.

…

What would you do?

Probably the nicest, most self-less person that I know here – when I posed her with this question earlier today – picked option #1. And with good reason. This is med school. Its her (and our) dream – we’re already underdogs, and a B/C average isn’t going to help. And these friends, if they stick and get A’s, will go on to where life calls – with or without you. She pretty much hit it on the spot – I can’t repeat her argument, mostly because I don’t remember the entirety of it. (I was too busy thinking – though I promise I did listen to her.)

…

(Of course, this is all hypothetical and will never happen, but that’s irrelevant.)

…

I can’t say this for a fact, but I’m assuming almost everyone I know here would pick option #1. Everyone is here with a dream – the dream to become the best doctor they can – and option #1 is definitely moving you closer to it than option #2. No questions asked. None. You here all this talk about grades not mattering, but if it comes down to you and someone equivalent everywhere else, grades matter. So you pick the better grades. And that makes perfect sense – completely understandable. I mean, who’d risk their future – their life – for people who may or may not be in contact with them 3 years from now. This isn’t even a decision that is worth being judgmental over, in my opinion. It’s almost a common sense choice.

…

If there’s one thing I’ve come to realize in life, its that people generally aren’t worth trusting. There are exceptions, but for the most part, the attitude seems to be “I’ll use you before you use me.” Which also makes sense – no one likes being used by others. So to sacrifice your dream for such people – people who will ditch you the first instance they get if it is improving their livelihood, their money-making capacity, whatever – is just being dumb, right?

That’s how life is. People come and go. It happens all the time. Some of it you can control, some of it you can’t. There’s no real option but to roll with it – as much as you try to fight change, change will happen if change is meant to happen. Friendships can end in days – in minutes or seconds even. There may be bilateral pain, there may be unilateral pain. It depends on how & why it is ending.

“Rishtey hai kachche dhaage” – lyric from Khudaya Ve, a song in Luck. (Literal translation: “Relationships are weak threads”)

And those are the best of friendships. Anything else can end even quicker, with even less pain. On the other hand, if a dream ends – no matter how hard you tried – it hurts. There is always the “I tried my hardest, after that it is out of my control” thought – but even then, when the dream first crashes down, it hurts. The recovery period depends on the person, but the pain will be felt at some point.

I’ve had friendships that have just ended as time goes, and others that have had forceful breaks that have left me questioning so many things. I don’t trust people very much – and more than that, it is very easy for me to lose trust in someone. And almost impossible for me to give it back (obviously, this depends on the situation, but in general).

And I’ve felt the pain of dreams crashing down around me – some that I’ve worked really hard to try and get. And I don’t get over them quick. There is no “I tried my best” in my mind – it is always “I should’ve tried harder.” I hate when I can’t reach my dreams. Hate it.

…

In other words, option #1 is the no-brainer choice.

So why would I pick option #2 – without even a millisecond of thought?

Small-Time Blogging

So, obviously, I haven’t posted here in a while. If you scroll down to my last post, you’ll see it was almost 2 weeks ago. … Admittedly, its not a long time, but its longer than I’d like. And with life as it is, it could be a while before I have time to post posts here.

Generally the ones here are long and random and longer, so it takes time to write it up.

Which is why, for the time being, I can be found fake blogging at Tumblr or getting destroyed on Words With Friends (like Scrabble, but potentially played out over days/weeks) or occasionally even studying for med school (I know, right?) or various other activities that are, in one sitting, less time-consuming than blogging.

Don’t worry, I’m not moving anywhere. I’m just taking a vacation – one that was forced on me by my company because I had built up too many sick days. (End of metaphor.)

/end of update – back to studying

/more later