In the past four years, I’ve experienced two once-in-a-lifetime events: 2020 and Hurricane Helene. I also got married, so make that three once-in-a-lifetimers. Maybe your number is higher than mine.
In 2020, life got smaller. Less things mattered. Priorities appeared. I started planning my exit from medicine.
In 2022 when my wife and I married, life got smaller again. Less things mattered. I glimpsed how wonderful it is to care about someone else more than myself, and I saw how much I stood to risk if I remained miserable at my job. So, I quit.
On September 27th, Hurricane Helene rendered life microscopic. Even less things mattered as I glimpsed what truly did: relationships and community. I don’t know what dots will connect after all this, but I suspect something will.
Life—as far as I’ve lived—has been one great distillation to what really matters, a process accelerated by each of these once-in-a-lifetimers. I’m no sadist, so I will not be searching out natural disaster or pandemic, but when the next one invariably arrives, I hope I’m lucky enough to see a little more of what matters.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(P.S. Every day at 10am in the first few days after Helene, a local radio show host would sign off of his program with, “Remember our choice today: we can get better or we can get bitter.” That helped me then, and I think about it daily. Seems applicable to our lives, natural disaster or not.)