Ever experienced inverse déjà vu? I did this week. For me, it’s been about as rare as seeing a bald eagle. Inverse déjà vu, I believe, is a marker on the map of our life, letting us know we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing out here in the uncertainty. Proof that we’re answering the call.
I’ve written about what I sought when I left medicine: aliveness. Hence, I wasn’t feeling alive while I was in medicine. Hence, I had once felt alive though.
When I think about those moments, where I felt the most aliveness, I remember my first job out of college at a non-profit, chasing surf in Hawaii, and running a marathon in Montana. And in the dearth of my medicine existence, I misunderstood what caused my previous alivenesses. I convinced myself that vitality had lived in the location or the activity, so I went and got a residency position in California where I could surf after work. And yes, this was an awesome life for stretches; glimpses of life and meaning and fulfillment came, but I never owned that deeper sense of knowing I was in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. I tried a shortcut.
For reasons completely unknown to me, in those periods of aliveness, I was called to go do something. Something in me wanted to go realize itself in the uncertainty of the future. When I received this call, I was usually terrified but deeply excited. I didn’t know exactly why I wanted to do this thing. Often, I didn’t own the skills or experience to accomplish whatever I was being called to do. My success was far from guaranteed. To even try, I knew I’d have to fail constantly.
But once I committed, I felt alive. It was that simple. That’s what I owned when I went to Hawaii to surf, having never surfed, and when I worked for a non-profit as a teacher, having never taught. And this is what was always missing in medicine.
Back to this week’s inverse déjà vu.
I was at Asheville’s Planet Fitness, in between sets of squat, when the parade of doubts rolled through my head. This isn’t going to work out. You’re a hack. You’re not good enough. Blah, blah, blah. On this Monday, fear had the upper hand; and I was scared. Not of my next set of squats. No, scared I may not have what it takes, scared I don’t know what I’m doing, scared I might actually fail.
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Then, I remembered being in Irvine’s Planet Fitness two years ago. I don’t know why I started back at the gym. Initially, I lifted without weights for two weeks, only doing body-weight exercises because my body’s strength had been wilted by the computer monitor. But for some reason, I was called into the gym. Over months, the regimen took on an energy all its own as I sensed I was connecting into something bigger than my present situation. There was something out there in the uncertain future I was preparing for. I knew I wanted to leave medicine. I knew I wanted to be myself again. And I knew I’d need every extra rep.
After a few months, before I’d even graduated residency, I found some peace. Even, dare I say, aliveness. I was trying. I was back in the uncertainty. I was working toward something I couldn’t see.
What I couldn’t see then was this Monday.
A portal appeared, connecting two Planet Fitness locations, on opposite coasts, two years apart, and that Irvine guy stepped through, patted me on the back, and said, “This is what we wanted. This is what we prepared for.”
Inverse déjà vu.
So, I grabbed the squat bar, swung myself under the metallic grips and watched fear abate as the weight settled on my shoulders, trusting in the uncertainty of aliveness and prepared for this by then.
(I recently published my new book 32 Lessons from 8 Years Lost in Medicine. If you’d like to a copy, here’s a link to purchase the e-book.)
