You know the proverb: ignore anything someone says before the word ‘but’. The but tells.
I’ve done a lot in the past few years. I lived on Hawaii, but. I traveled to Costa Rica, but. I graduated from medical school, but. I moved to Southern California, but. I made some amazing friends, but. I became a board-certified psychiatrist, but. But what? I was doing something, actively, that I did not want, which added a qualification to everything.
For the first time, I caught the ‘but’ while vacationing in Colorado, my favorite place, the summer between second and third year of med school.
I love the mountains. As a kid, I used to pull all-nighters before our packed car’s road trip to the Rockies. It was my yearly trip to adventure Mecca, home of trout fishing in the national park and long starry nights by the river. Before we got in the car I’d already circled hikes and summits on my map. Colorado was my spiritual home.
When the ‘but’ arrived that summer between med school years, I was on my parents’ porch, staring at a range of peaks I could name in my sleep, typically comforting. There though, all I sensed was sinking demoralization; hike, bike, or fish, my situation wouldn’t change. The magic was gone. Medicine (my ‘but’) was a strikethrough of anything in my life not named medicine.
I would live through many more ‘but’s, in various places, doing various things, before I realized the ‘but’ was there to stay, unless I did something.
Thursday’s Life Begins When You Get Off the Treadmill was my attempt at nailing the same message through another analogy. My thesis being, why run indoors and watch Family Feud reruns on a four-inch television ten inches from your face, when you could run outside? When I thought about a career in medicine, that’s how it appeared, treadmill livin’. Now off, I accept the gauntlet ahead as I aim to stay off. As mentioned above, the juice is worth the inconvenience, for the ‘but’ removal alone.
Has the daily battle been worth it so far? To get those starry nights back? To get the feel of a trout in my hands back? To get those circled maps back? To get whatever those experiences of aliveness in my future are, that I can’t conceive yet, back? Absolutely. Seems like the whole point.
To living a life we love (without the ‘but’),
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
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