All my whys were lies. Time has told.
When I jettisoned for Maui—during the whole summer between first and second year of medical school—I thought, then, it was because I wanted to learn how to surf. If you’d probed me further, I would have said, “I’m heeding the call to adventure.” Partially accurate, yes, but in time, both explanations have wilted, yielding to a more desperate motivation: I was staving off an incoming depression as I lost my sense of self. That took seven years to consciously, and humbly, realize.
When I chose psychiatry as my specialty, I thought, then, that a career in mental health would align nicely with my interests in mindfulness, addiction, and integrative medicine. If you’d probed me further, I would have said, “I was depressed a year ago, and now I can help depressed patients through my empathy.” Again, yes, these explanations are partially accurate, but at its core, I became a psychiatrist to figure out what the hell had happened to my life. I wanted the truth. That’s taken six years to grasp.
When I left medicine a year and a half ago, I thought it was because I didn’t want to be a doctor. I wrote an essay all about my why. I was rather confident. I’ve been laughing as I reread that essay. It’s abundantly clear that I had no idea why I was leaving! And I had no conception of my ignorance!
Now, as I look back eighteen months through a slowly dissolving haze, I make out something that appears a more defined why: necessity.
This week, I found myself at The University of North Carolina Asheville’s library, stumbling into one Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788), the Swiss philosopher and writer. He, apparently, was one of the first to write a memoir that dealt not just in historical events, but in the transformation of his feelings as he lived through those events. In his reflections, he noted that his past was “… not so clear to me as I have for a long time imagined.”
I don’t why I was at the library this week. I could supply you (and myself) with explanations, and they’ll be as inaccurate as they’ve always been. All I know is that I was compelled just like I was when I went to Maui to surf, became a psychiatrist to teach mindfulness, and left medicine because I didn’t want to be doctor.
I don’t need the why. It’ll find me when I’m ready to see it. Then, it will compel.
This month, I launched 7 Days of Aliveness, an email course designed to jumpstart your journey to fulfillment. Access is free. Sign up here.)
