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We may not like it but it really is important to stop every once in a while, get out of your own head and see the bigger picture. Actually find out that you were looking things all wrong can be sort of liberating. And suddenly you see new potential, new posibilities we’ve never seen it before and that’s all fine when a hopeless situation suddenly looks good. Unfortunately sometimes it goes the other way.
To do our jobs we have to believe defeat is not an option. That no matter how sick our patients get, there’s hope for them. But even when our hopes give way to reality, and we finally have to surrender to the truth, it just means we’ve lost to today’s battle, not tomorrow’s war. Here’s the thing about surrender, once you do it, actually give in, you forget why you were fighting in the first place.
Forgive and forget. That’s what they say. It’s good advice, but it’s not very practical. When someone hurts us, we want to hurt them back. When someone wrongs us, we want to be right. Without forgiveness old scores never settle. Old wounds never heal, and the most we can hope for is that someday we’ll be lucky enough to forget.
Seriously? I love new interns. They’re the future, the next generation, filled with hope and promise, innovation.
Ask most people what they want out of life and the answer is simple – to be happy. Maybe it’s this expectation though of wanting to be happy that just keeps us from ever getting there. Maybe the more we try to will ourselves to states of bliss, the more confused we get – to the point where we don’t recognize ourselves. Instead we just keep smiling – trying to be the happy people we wish we were. Until it eventually hits us, it’s been there all along. Not in our dreams or our hopes but in the known, the comfortable, the familiar.
We all get at least one good wish in a year over the candles on our birthday. Some of us throw in more, on eyelashes, fountains, lucky stars. And every now and then, one of those wishes come true. So what then? Is it as good as we hoped? Do we bask in the warm glow of our happiness or do we just notice we’ve got a long list of other wishes waiting to be wished.
We’re so hopeful at the beginning of things. It seems like there’s only a world to be gained not lost. They say the inability to accept loss is a form of insanity, it’s probably true. But sometimes, it’s the only way to stay alive.
What do you do when the infection hits you, when it takes over? Do you do what you’re supposed to and take your medicine? Or do you learn to live with the thing and hope someday it goes away? Or do you just give up entirely and let it kill you?
Where your eyes are supposed to be right now, I see white sandy beaches. And there’s an ocean behind your head, and there are ghosts wandering in and out. I can’t live like this, and I cant live if something goes wrong in that surgery I don’t want any extraordinary measures taken to keep me alive. It’s not what I want. I went crazy when Denny Duquette signed the DNR because I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand but now I do, and I need you to understand. I don’t want you to go crazy, I want you to have a brilliant career, and I hope that I get to be here for that. But, if I can’t I just wanna go to the other side. I don’t know what’s there but it’s gotta be better than hospital beds and tubes down my throat. So please, please don’t cut LVAD’s. Just if it comes down to it, just let me go. And right now, kiss me. Please, please just kiss me and close your eyes because the beach is so distracting.
I’m not broken. My lack of wanting to have a baby is not some pathology that you can pat yourself on the back for having diagnosed. I like my life, the way that it is. I thought I liked it with you in it. I hope I’m not wrong.
When do you throw in the towel? Admit that a lost cause it’s sometimes just that? There comes a point when it all becomes to much. When we get to tired to fight anymore. So we give up. That’s when the real work begins. To find hope where there seems to be absolutly none at all.
Biology says that we are who we are from birth. That our DNA is set in stone. Unchangeable. Our DNA doesn’t account for all of us though. Life changes us. We develop new trades. Become less territorial. We stop competing. We learn from our mistakes. We face our greatest fears. For better or worse. We find ways to change our biology. The risk, of course is that we can change to much, to the point we don’t recognize ourselves. Finding a way back can be difficult. There is no compass, no map. We just have to close our eyes, take a step and hope to God we’ll get there.
It is sad to grow old but nice to ripen
Brigitte Bardot
It takes a long time to become young
Pablo Picasso
Middle age is the awkward period when Father Time starts catching up with Mother Nature
Harold Coffin
Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries
Bill Cosby
Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle
Bob Hope
Middle age is youth without levity and age without decay
Doris Day
No one can avoid aging, but aging productively is something else
Katharine Graham
Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair
Sam Ewing
Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever
Don Marquis
No man is ever old enough to know better
Holbrook Jackson
