Contentment

I'm always thinking that what I really want out of life is to acheive something or make the world a better place or inspiration or or or, something.

My new friend Turtle told me that he neither believes in nor understands ambition last week. I met him a couple of months ago and am gluing our lives together as best as possible because our bubbling friendship is feeling like the kind that pop up few times in life. This little comment of his, which was attached to why he dislikes DC, really gave me pause. I think that in many ways the last five years or so of life have been a big process of detaching myself from the confused ambition that I mistakenly picked out of family encouragement toward academic pursuits, which was amplified by the three years at snotty prep school.

That time in college when I went abroad and wrote hundreds of pages in my journal, I thought I learned the important lesson related to this. At the time, it was "it doesn't matter how long things take in life" and "make sure you enjoy life now, dude." But I never framed it in terms of questioning long term ambitions.

Enter med school applications. I am afraid that I might not have stopped to make myself really confront how much of this doctorly driven desire is based in 1. fear of financial difficulties, 2. ambition toward respectability, 3. it makes my mother happy.

Anyway, what I said to Turtle today is that I keep realizing that what I'm really after is contentment. All those other things are just what I do because I think it will get me there. As much as 1, 2, and 3 play some part in me wanting to be a doctor, so do a whole heap of other things. I do have to work hard to become a doctor. I don't have to be miserable I don't have to get the best grades or be the most cutting edge. I want to take care of people. I want to help them be healthier. I want to be good at it and I want to work hard at it. But I also want to do other things and this doctoring path doesn't have to consume me.

These thoughts are jumbled, I apologize. Well, back to Casper. Connections are the thing. Casper=Health.