It’s been a month since I finished White Lotus, Season 3. It’s been a month since I started White Lotus, Season 1. Do the math. Not many days. Many episodes. No regrets.
Since, I’ve watched other shows. I’ve also watched enough NBA playoffs to predict when the next commercial will be a Wingstop commercial. But once my mind is wrung out and empty—hours into a furniture project or miles into a run—and it’s just me with my thoughts, I think not of these shows or the playoffs, I think only of White Lotus. Still. No regrets.
It’s crazy how influential one line from one scene can be on how we act. One such line, the line that hunts me down in the shop and on runs, is a line from Daphne (played by Meghann Fahy) in the finale of Season 2:
Do whatever you have to do to not feel like a victim of life.
Daphne had just been told that her husband was cheating on her. By the husband of the wife that was sleeping with her husband. Then, after that line, Daphne and this husband have revenge sex behind a rocky outcropping down the Sicilian coast. The season ends with the couples happily planning their next vacation together.
Right before I quit medicine, I had a realization: I will be resentful for the rest of my life if I stay in medicine. The solution was clear: quit and figure out my shit or feel like a victim forever.
I’m glad I quit because, as Daphne tells us, we must go to any length to free ourselves from resentment. But if our liberation requires infidelity, well, might I suggest an action aimed at the root cause.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
