Life is Good
LIFE IS GOOD
It had been eight months since I had started working as an emergency medicine doctor and ten months since I had come back from my gap year.
Coming back, my biggest fear was that the things I had learnt throughout my journey would start to dissipate and slowly fade away – that all the immeasurable growth and progress I had made over that year would crumble into nothingness, and that I’d go back to being little old, boring me: a workaholic with no life outside of medicine.
Â
I mean, don’t get me wrong. Back then, I couldn’t have been happier if I’d tried. I had this one monomaniacal goal and it used to take command of everything else in my life. How blissful it is to have found one’s purpose – especially when so many people around me seemed to just go on with life without ever questioning its complexity. They do say that ignorance is bliss, after all.
As great as I had previously thought my life was, I would soon enough learn that it had been a miserable existence fraught with deluded goals. I over-idealised medicine and, worst of all, I over-romanticised its impact on my life. How glorious it would be to dedicate my life to such a noble goal… Easy to say when you haven’t started to consider other ways of living.
And that is what happened during my time away. With time, I started to broaden my horizons. Slowly, I started to realise that there was more to life than medicine. Life is about connecting with people, making new discoveries, exploring uncharted territories, learning about esoteric things and laying your eyes on things you never thought could even exist. How could a life stuck within the four walls of a hospital ever compare?
Finding the Balance
You know, on the whole, my life may look the same from the outside. But it certainly isn’t. It’s not just the fact that I now dive. Or climb. Or ride a bike. Or own a kayak. Or practise yoga. It’s not that at all.
It’s the fact that I’m doing all of this whilst practising medicine. It took me a lifetime’s worth of trying, but finally, somehow, some way, I seem to have found some balance. Life’s not just about work, like it used to be before. And, likewise, life’s not just about fun, as it used to be during my gap year. Now, life is fun and fulfilling.
Looking back at all the anxiety that would wrack my mind as I lay on those pristine beaches in Central America or climbed the mountains of Patagonia, I can’t help but smile. Back then, I had no idea whether I’d be able to maintain a certain element of the freedom I had learnt to live with during my journey. I was hopeful, sure, but I wasn’t convinced I’d manage. Now? Now I think I have managed to surpass expectations I didn’t even dare to fathom.
I’m not gonna go as far as saying I’m freer than ever. At the end of the day, I’m still working in one of the busiest departments in the entire hospital and I am in one of the most demanding training programmes there are. But hey, this is the next best thing. I don’t think one can ever have it all, but I’ll settle for second best. And this kind of second best is too damn good, if you ask me.
A Very Good Second Best
Long gone were the days that I’d think of my life in Malta as static. What I would have previously described as contentment was now ecstasy, with every single day that came along bringing forth new adventures and goals.Â
Not only did I get to go on all kinds of adventures around my country, I had managed to keep up with my wanderlust too. I had been working for just eight months, yet I had already been to Egypt, France, Austria, Italy and Scotland – with plenty of vacation leave to spare for my upcoming trips. If this isn’t privilege, I don’t know what is. Of course, there was a caveat. Having to swap so many shifts in order to travel did come at a cost – it kinda disrupted my daily life. A daily life I had come to enjoy and cherish. But honestly, isn’t that a first-world problem? Boohoo to me.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that life’s good. Life. Is. Good. And, eight months down the line, I was just as grateful as I used to be a year before, gazing at a sunset on a tropical beach or breathing in the fresh, crisp morning air atop the summit of a mountain. Thank you, oh universe. Thank you, thank you, thank you.