For those who wait
A medical school story
I write this for not only self-serving catharsis but in hope it becomes a seed of resilience and relief for those also in the limbo of anticipation. When confronted with the powerlessness of waiting, of anxiety, dread, heartbreak, I thought why not make these normally maladaptive states of being into founts of gratitude? True, suffering is rife but so is happiness. And so what a privilege to be able to embrace the entire gamut of human possibility, to have the opportunity to experience this unique milieu of emotional turmoil, to consecrate these months into the greater narrative of our lives, to have something to hope for at all. Of course, acceptance is the most desirable outcome because of the prospect of being pioneers and vanguards of the advancement of the human condition through medicine, not just a goal for most of us but a moral urgency, a calling. But even in the throes of waiting, and, God forbid, rejection, tear-stricken and resigned to the monstrosity of re-application, of summoning the wherewithal to continue the pursuit of these dreams so that the contract we have forged with our future selves will not have been in vain… Even if we lay martyrs of the modern medical application system, let us not be stoic nor aggrieved and definitely not vanquished. Let us thank the musings of fate to have endowed us this chance to suffer, to have burned in this universe itself growing too cold, to have felt. Let us recognize that just as the bad days make the good worth having, so too the good days make the bad. Rebel. Like the victim of bullying, sapping joy from her oppressors by laughing along with them. Like the man who kisses the ones who wronged him before he kisses the ones he loves. Like the woman who becomes the lightning in the rain. Our redemption will always be our anguish through the alleviation thereof in others, be they the people we love or the patients we will one day care for. Here is a note of prayer that we may all reach acceptance and achieve our dreams. Here is an extension of thankfulness for finding home in ambiguity, for befriending our sorrows just as we befriend our joys. Here is to worry, to dread, to mourn, to hope. Here is to feel.
