What the Future Holds…

Momentum: Serious Work

Two years ago, walking the halls of the World Health Organization, I found a wall of doctors like John Lister and Jonah Salk. Men who did unprecedented work, scrounging for funding, at the same time making ground-breaking progress, All these men were aware of the importance of their work and the fact that most people didn't understand or agree with their work. They were well aware of their own mortality and how fleetingly inconsequential life can be. Still, they pursued something just out of reach. They couldn’t see it, but in their dreams, it was just over the horizon. They begged for funding, slept little, stunk, experimented on themselves, were mostly penniless, and still they kept cadence.

Some didn’t see their dreams realized, but they laid the groundwork for future explorers to discover them. It may be a uniquely human quality that finite beings like ourselves dedicate our mortality toward infinite goals. We are attracted to something, we pursue it, reach for it with our spirit and our faculties, embrace it as much as we can, become a part of it, then eventually, we become the bedrock that the following generation trods upon, reaching further, grasping more and more, onward toward evolution’s horizon. Like the plant shoot that winds blindly toward the sun, finds a lattice, wraps itself around it, molding itself around the purchase, we grope in the darkness, faithful that, if we reach in a direction we believe in, toward that energy that turns us on, we will find a purchase, grasp tightly, bridge the divide, become stronger by the communion than we were before, and help others across by guiding them on our backs to something even more grand.

I hope in some small corner of the world, I’m carrying people on my back, helping them toward their own realization of happiness.

It’s enough right now to juggle all this and do it well. I am still getting my footing at the college and acclimating to a life outside of firefighting and patient care. For now, I’ve tests that need to be run and results to be analyzed. I like tinkering with the courses, seeing what works and what needs revamping. I like getting to know students, spending time in and outside of class with them.

I want to see what serious work I can accomplish with the rest of my life. Work that keeps me interested, having fun, feeling vibrant and excited while working on something worthwhile. So much of school could be fun if we let it. What’s stopping us? predetermined rules and situations we’ve been in. It didn’t stop those giants of medicine who went before me, and it won’t stop me.

I’m in it all the way.