"Searching for a signal
It's all within your touch
And I know you've given up
But all we have is now
All we have is now."
"All We Have" by SG Lewis ft Lastlings
Most days, I feel as if I have aged decades in the span of four years. My hair is thin and brittle, with a halo of flyaway baby hairs around my crown. My brain is in a fog, slipping its grasp on conversations I had just hours ago or the plot of a book I just read last month. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if I hadn't sacrificed my twenties to the altar of medicine. Maybe my hair would be thicker, my memory sharper.
Most days, I don't think too deeply about what I do. But occasionally, during the morning commute toward downtown, my thoughts drift afar like a detached observer. I think about the stress I carry on a daily basis, and how some of the people who knew me in earlier stages of my life have no comprehension of the heft of that perpetual weight. Or, how there are decisions I make each day that could tip a person's life closer or farther away from death.
When I was younger, I was baffled by people who said they only watched "happy" movies or TV shows. Indignantly, I would point out that there were quality works of "art" that were not "happy" and that it was a damn shame to avoid those works. Now in my thirties, I am reluctant to watch anything that I suspect will stress me out.
Has it all been worth it? I suppose that's a double-edged question. I don't consciously regret the path I took. My profession comes with its privileges. I understand more clearly why immigrant parents push their children towards medicine. How daunting is it to navigate the healthcare system and interpret medical jargon, never mind if the information is flying at you in your second language? My knowledge is an asset and a tool I did not come by lightly. It has helped me give advice to family members. It has given me the financial security to live without constantly worrying about money. And though it's easy to forget on the days when you have especially difficult patients, for the most part, there is purpose and meaning to the work that feels larger than yourself.
But on the other hand, I can feel a weariness that wasn't there before.
The other morning, I stumbled across a video clip of 2NE1 reminiscing about their career, and it inspired me to play my nearly decade-old BIGBANG playlist. I haven't paid close attention to BIGBANG in a long time. There was that MeToo scandal involving the youngest member Seungri, and at some point I learned that Taeyang had gotten married, but otherwise I have no idea what any of them are up to nowadays.
As the rumbling bass line of my once-favorite rapper floated into the car, nostalgia kicked me in the face. I remembered how I once kept his picture on the wall of my college dorm. To remind me that he hadn't given up. That when they told him he was too fat to be in a Kpop group, he came back after he lost forty pounds. That during his trainee years, they told him he sucked at dancing. When his photo first appeared on my wall, I was eighteen years old and had tanked my GPA after getting a C in Multivariable Calculus. I didn't know if I'd be able to salvage my GPA enough to get into medical school. I listened to his voice, a lulling chant of baritone rapidfire foreign syllables, to calm myself down before exams.
I remember also who I was back then, in my late teens and early twenties. When all the paths before me seemed infinite. That uncertainty of the future can be suffocating, but by the same token, there was a freeing sense of self-importance and arrogance that led me to dream big. I dreamed with absolute certainty that EP would be the magnum opus of my life.
I think of who I am now, thirty-years-old, having ambled far down one path as the others closed, either too tired to think about dreams now, or wondering if some of those doors have already closed for good.
