Please, I just want to live at the tip of the spear again.
As the projectile of my life flew through the air, I clung to its trailing feathers. The ride wasn’t fun anymore; it was thrashing. A return to the spear’s tip seemed impossible. So I tried to survive.
Once, years before, I’d lived at the spear’s tip. I knew the exhilaration, excitement, and expansion of exploring who I was, undaunted by uncertainty as it jettisoned past. From this vantage, uncertainty was only opportunity; a chance to discover who I was. Then, I went to medical school because fear convinced me that I wasn’t capable of figuring uncertainty out. In a sense, this fear was right.
Though, for a time, the flight stayed smooth. I can sacrifice myself and still be myself, I thought. I began to believe I could control whether I sat at the tip or not, wants and desires be damned. Then, years later during residency in California, I lost all illusions of control. I prayed for deliverance from the back of the spear’s turbulence.
Eventually, I surrendered and let go, quitting medicine.
When we make fear-based choices, we assume an understanding of how our future will play out. This betrays uncertainty. When we make aliveness-based choices, we live from faith. This enlivens uncertainty. And miraculously, we find ourselves back at the tip of the spear.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
