Monday 21 May 2012

Past the point

There's a point, they say.
Halfway between the island and the coast.
Midpoint between half-empty and half-full.
The second when dawn become morning, and dusk becomes night.

And it's that point that I find myself wondering if i had past. If while smelling the roses, i had unwittingly wandered by. If while burying myself in books to pasts tests, I'd missed it knocking by my door. Some call it, the point of no return. That magical moment where the banker says 'no more bets'. That moment when you click 'Buy' on a website you swore moments ago never to shop on again. The second, the balls passes the line pass the goalkeeper's outstretched hand. That instant, when the scalpel hits the skins and makes the first incision, or may be the second, or the fifth. I wondered if mine had past the moment i decided to do medicine, or perhaps its was the day i decided to apply, or the day i paid my school fees, or the day i finished year one. Or perhaps the day have not arrived, perhaps it will never arrive. And perhaps we will be always able to choose our paths, be it now, or later in life.

Once again, i find myself thinking in poker terms. Its always a hard decision, when you have half your chips in and the opponent calls you. You have a chance, to perhaps go for the win. But with the chance to win, comes the chance to lose everything. Yet it is a chance you have to take, for you have so much in it already.

They say medicine is a calling. And I once heard it calling my name. I hear it still, time to time, when i find myself looking at a sad child, stricken with illness, or a man, spirit beyond broken repair, sometimes, when my compassion rises within me. But its not those time i am concerned about, its the hours i find myself wandering the hallways of the living dead, or finding myself having great difficulty bringing up that compassion when all i can think of is what am i going to ask next, or sometimes worse, when i feel sometimes perhaps that i shouldn't be there at all.

And its worse sometimes. When i feel myself not up to the tasks at hand, not prepared to give my life for others. When selfishness and laziness triumphs over selflessness and energy. When fatigue wins the war of mind and body.

And i wonder, if its something every student go through, to become a Doctor, to become a teacher, to become an engineer, to become a linguist, to become an actor, a singer, an artist, a unemployed. Do we all struggle with ourselves to win that fight? And what do we win, can passion be won? or cultivated? or is there somewhere, a calling involved.

The idealist in me is fighting for survival. fighting to no go past the point. 

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