One year ago today, October 20th, I hung ’em up, left medicine, and retired into my fairy tale life. Or so I figured, then. Now, I see it for what it was: the beginning.
Last week, I was talking with my grandpa about life and such on the phone, when he said it how it was, as only he can: “Ryan, you just gotta live it. You can read about it all day, but until you live it, you don’t know a damn thing.” That, looking back over the past twelve months, is more and more what I believe adulthood is. Living it. And if I’ve accomplished anything over the past year, I hope I’ve lived it.
When I was in medicine, it had many uses. Accomplishment. Social validation. Acceptance. But as long as I did something that wasn’t who I am, I missed the most important life ingredient: responsibility. For every single day of the eight years before, all I wanted was to “own my life” again. Well, this year, that wish came true. And it wasn’t the blissful autonomy of my dreams. It was a grind.
And that’s why it’s been the best year of my life. I have the chance to own my life again. How well I do that is up for interpretation, but at a minimum, I have a chance to live it.
To living a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
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