Twice As Far

If anyone wants you to help carry a load, go with him twice as far.

- Matthew 5:41 (Worldwide English)

I love this verse. While I still have objections to what most Christians believe God to be about, this translation helps me connect at least emotionally to the kind of being God is. Serving is a form of worship for me. I feel like I've accomplished something not only for those being served, but for myself. I'm sacrificing time to help someone in need. By doing twice as much as I'm expected to I'll reap twice the reward. That reward may simply be a sense of satisfaction in my work, but that's all I want. I want to feel like I'm making a difference. I guess I need that feeling. I feel motivated when I've helped others because I've helped myself learn what it is to be a better person. Maybe there's a gene for generosity. If I can find a way to turn it on in everyone I will have improved the course of evolution as well as the human condition. Ah, pipe dreams!

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality."
- Erich Fromm

My life is one large bundle of change right now. I'm moving, finally receiving help in school (and life), and I am looking for a mentor. I'm also about to start working in health care once I finish my certification course. I'm looking for leadership, volunteer, and research opportunities. So far, this school year promises not to disappoint.

Everything's Not Lost

Well, the results are in. I worry too much.

In an effort not to divulge too much information I won't be saying much about my diagnoses. I will say, however, that none of the results from my testing are surprising. My IQ fell in the "Very Superior" range. I'm up there with the movers and shakers as far as IQ is concerned.

Something that is important to note is that people in the range I showed up in generally have perfect or near-perfect GPAs. Now that I know what the problem is and how do address it I expect to be performing much like those in my range - if not exceeding them. The whole process of having the results shown to me gave me a lot of hope. Later, when I was sitting at home listening to music, I turned on one of my favorite playlists and the song "Everything's Not Lost" by Coldplay started playing. It has been my theme music for the day. It just goes to show that in five years of schooling and feeling like a miserable failure I can still feel confident in my abilities to become whatever I want to be. While that goal hasn't changed in four of those years, it seems much more attainable now. I know I can do it. Give me some time to adjust to this new approach and I'll fill you all in on my performance.

Peace and Love,
The Unencumbered

Define Your Legacy

And did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
- "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd

Are you comfortable with conformity? If not, are you willing to accept that you might not get anywhere by living outside the norm?

I'm not comfortable with conformity. I have to accept that everything I'm doing in hopes of realizing my dreams might all be for naught, but I will not sit by and do nothing. I have to accept that by not choosing the easy road I might be setting myself up for disappointment. All I know is that I owe it to myself to fight for what I want. If at some point I come to the conclusion that my dream may not come true I'll at least be able to say I gave it my best shot. It doesn't matter that playing the lead role has limitations. I believe that we each define our limitations. I might end up in a cage, but I intend to define the size of the cage.
I choose the lead role. I can be a team player in academia and my career, but I have to play the lead in living my life. I will not wait for someone to tell me what to do with it.
I choose to be extraordinary and remarkable in spite of the limitations the world may create for me. They are not insurmountable.

I may not have a perfect résumé or grade point average, but surrendering because of my imperfections would make me a coward. Those imperfections make me more qualified than most.

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
- Samuel Smiles

While others may see my breaking free from the crowd negatively, they may not hold such an assertion once they see what I am capable of. I cannot give up, nor will I.

Genuinely Myself

It's funny to think that there's only one shot at this life. For all those believing in reincarnation keep in mind that we only have one shot at this life. We can't relive it. Anyway, you have to have guts to live your life the way you want to. That's why I'm coming to the realization that while we've got our friends to lean on, we're each alone in deciding what kind of life we're going to lead. Almost everyone I know in this town will be gone within a matter of months. They'll go on to live their lives according to their plans and I love them for the courage they may not know they have.
The thing is, I've spent the last 5 years of my life looking for the role model I wanted to mold myself after. I realize now that that person doesn't exist. I've had the image of that person in my head for quite some time, but I've waited until now to do the research on how to become that person. I can't be anyone but who I am. How could I be my own person if I modeled my life after someone else? I think I'm better off trying to be my own ideal person than searching for some real person to plagiarize. It's better to live by my own view of what I want to be than by someone else's.
I don't have to live selfishly to be happy, but I have to keep in mind what makes me happy. Helping others makes me happy. The "prolonging lives" and "improving health" bits define my career, but that's how I want to help. I can still be my own person while doing that.
So, all I need to do now is have some guts and live my life the way I can see it being lived. It requires a lot of planning and reorganization, but I'm up for the task. I've grown up more in the last year or so than ever before. I've never felt so alive.

Old Men

A lot of people have known their grandfathers. I am one of those who has never known either of them. Both of my grandfathers died in the mid-70s so I missed out on learning in person what kind of men they were. One would think that I would have found a grandfather-type person to look up to, but I still have moments when I have to remind myself that my own father is around. I guess I got used to having to live without him when I was younger.
I suppose I should say why I'm even writing this. I've got this curiosity as to the man I could have been had I gotten to know the men my parents once knew and called Dad. I would like to have seen the traits and quirks my grandfathers shared with my parents. To have seen what men they were would be a dream come true, but I'll have to make my own assessment of who they were from their children and the stories their children have of them.
In the meantime, I'm searching for someone willing to clue me in on what having a grandfather is like. I didn't have many male role models growing up. My brother thought he could be the father type with me, but while he tried to play the part I sort of missed out on what it was like to have a brother. So much for the male role models of my childhood. By all accounts, I had none. I don't regret much of anything in hindsight, but I know it would have been nice not to have felt so isolated and alone as a child.
Old men have experienced a lot more than I can fathom right now. If I can find someone with a cache of wisdom to talk with, look up to, and be supported by I just might be better equipped to handle my future obstacles. I may never find such a person and even if I don't it simply means that I will have to work harder and make a few more mistakes than I would have had I been able to take the advice of someone more seasoned than myself. I'm not afraid to go it alone. I've done it before, but I wouldn't mind the company.

Discard It

Five years ago today I graduated from high school. To some that may not seem like a long time, but it may help put things into perspective by saying more than one fifth of my life is wound up in those five short years.
It's funny to think how time won't go fast enough when we are younger. We impatiently float through our childhoods and say that once we get away we'll make something of ourselves. Some of us make it and some of us don't. Then there are those who still work at becoming something remarkable, yet fall far from the mark. I can identify with this last group. And now, time feels like it's flying by too quickly to allow me to catch up and fix my mistakes and - after this past semester - my failures. I can't give up because I'd be making waste of this time I've spent; time that I've used learning more about who I am than about what I am here to learn. I'm a work in progress, but I rarely feel like I'm making any progress in my work.
I'm aware that if things don't turn around soon I will have to admit defeat and start the long process of paying off my debt. I'm aware that if things don't turn around that I'll think of my time here as unproductive rather than taking pride in holding two degrees. I am aware of the potential for failure. I'm painfully aware of it all, but spending my time wallowing in regret won't get me anywhere. I'm aware. Now all I can do is prove to myself that I can overcome these failures. Doing so will only teach me more about myself.
I left high school knowing I was smart although I wasn't able to prove it. I'm in much the same boat today although my grade point average serves more as weight against my claim of intelligence than for it. So many people have said I may not be cut out to be a doctor, but they are not only calling my ability to make my dreams come true into question, they are allowing the made-up idea of fate to cloud their vision and belief that I can do it. I believe that outside of saying what someone's ultimate fate was, the only fate that exists is in the plans we make for ourselves and the random experiences we take part in along the way. Any person who says I can't make my dream come true can go to Hell. But sadly, I am the person with the longest history of questioning whether I can do it.
If I am to succeed I can no longer question my future success. To paraphrase a line from one of my favorite movies, I should spend a small amount of time embracing the sadness and regret of my failures and then discard them, never to pick them up again. I hope every person who reads this reprimands me if I am seen wallowing in self-pity or regret. I'm done with it. All it does is keep me from the full, successful, happy life I have planned and fated myself for.

Keep me in your thoughts.

"You have five minutes to wallow in the delicious misery: enjoy it, embrace it, discard it... and proceed."
- Kirsten Dunst as Claire Colburn in the movie Elizabethtown.

Fear

I have to be at work in less than 6 hours but I can't fall asleep. As usual, my mind can't be still. My brain is running a perpetual race to nowhere. There are a lot of things I need to be open and transparent about. The thing I supposed I should confess is that I am afraid of everything. I'm afraid of success. I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid of being noticed. I'm afraid of having no legacy and never been remembered. In other words, I'm afraid of everything.
My biggest fear lately is that I'll be a nothing; an unremarkable, invisible, forgotten blip. I've allowed my negative inner monologue to be self-fulfilling. I sometimes think "If I don't work hard enough I'll never amount to anything." Then when I sit down to work my fear of failing sidetracks me and prevents me from getting any real work done. Even now I think my fear and anxiety about work tomorrow is preventing me from going to sleep. I'm seeing someone about these problems, but I'm not out of the woods.
I've always had fear problems. I've always allowed fear to rule me. I don't want to place the blame on anyone, but my parents are masters at being ruled by fear. The fear that rules them most is the fear of money. At my age, that fear is immobilizing. I wish I had never learned that fear from them.

One thing I'm still afraid of is telling people what I think. I have some influences in my life who tend to bring me down. They depress, annoy, and disturb me. I feel defeated when I'm around them and that feeling doesn't go away easily. Something we do is throw someone's negativity on other people in order to get rid of it. Talk about vicious circles. It's a wonder the world isn't in shambles. Come to think of it, it isn't far from it. So, I may have to tell these negative people exactly what they're doing and how they're bringing me down. I may have to tell them I'm not going to be around them anymore if they don't change. It will hurt, but I desperately need change. I have lacked real positive influences for quite some time.

I'm enrolled in school this summer, but if someone told me to leave on a trip somewhere and could promise I'd be permanently changed for the better, I'd drop everything and go. I have two years of college left, totaling seven in all. After that I have 4 years of medical school. Other than this prolonged, self-imposed education I've planned out, I have nothing going for me. I have no love life. I have few friends. I have almost no social life. I have no mentor. I don't have much money, but I've got debt to counter any loose dollar I find. I have a fear-based barrier preventing me from falling in love and that prevents me from feeling attached to anyone.

I may sound pitiful, but I'm not looking for pity. I'm looking for change. This is the only life I've got and I've only got so many chances at getting it right. There are still beliefs and personality quirks I've got to work out, but I like to think I'm making an effort to live a full life.

Actually, forget the previous paragraph. It's garbage. I try so much to justify where I am in relation to my goals. I can't justify it. I can't blame my learning "difference", my circumstances, or anyone else. I only have myself to blame for my problems. If there's anything I should be angry about that hasn't totally been my doing it's that I have lacked the intellect to recognize what is happening and am just now trying to pull myself up out of this hole I've unintentionally dug for myself.

I remember feeling invincible as a little boy. I wanted to take on the world. Somewhere along the line I forgot that fear has no control over me but what I give it. I can't subject myself to the what-ifs if all they're going to do is prevent me from achieving success.

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.”
- Fulton Oursler

I'm no Christ figure, but many of us victimize ourselves this way and we don't even see what we're doing until we start to run out of time to fix it (if then). I'm going to do my best not to continue to place myself between the two thieves anymore. I hope you all find ways of overcoming your fears. If you don't, they will rob you of everything.

Don't let that happen.