It’s 6:51 on a Sunday Morning

Its 6:51 on a Saturday morning. The Houston air always has a shocking way of feeling suffocating every time it seals itself to the face, into the lungs, clinging like plastic wrap. So, I stepped out of my car in the fluorescent parking garage, packed on my heaps of night belongings I carry back and forth to the hospital, and trudged through the thick, sticking air. Immediately as I entered the door to the apartment hall the familiar cannabis smell rushed over, sneaking with the AC cooled air that flooded in behind me escaping through the closing door. This hall always smelled like weed, pungent, earthy, skunky smells. The only remnant left from another Saturday night. And this time the familiar smell, in my sleepless stupor brought on wave of thoughts.

I wish I had familiar Friday nights and late Saturday mornings. I wish I had Sundays off to do things I want to do. I wish I had a normal life with brunches, and vacations, time for appointments and errands, with more than 4 days off a month. Then I could really live. And when I heard this last thought cross my mind, it sounded wrong, Then all of a sudden I heard everything I hadn’t been able to hear for the last few months… I am really living.

Sure, the people in Apartment 140c are having fun Friday nights, high with their friends at the end of a week of work. But is “fun” all there is to living? Is life just mindlessly making your way through a 9-5 only to do the same things every weekend? To get so drunk you can’t remember the hours you lived the night before. To get so high you just escape what it feels like to live in the existence you have right now. To sleep with strangers looking for meaning and never really experience connection. People live for experiences that lack substance and wake up in the same place every weekend hoping that repeating the same 9-5 work week and the same weekend adventures will eventually give them the feeling that they are really living next week. And the cycle repeats till the need for purpose is drowned out by the menial grind, and the constant barrage of media suffocates the last hope of finding fulfillment. Maybe mediocrity isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s a lot to get from the smell of weed at 6:51 am on a Saturday.

So, I took another step; and I felt grateful for this life. Grateful that I walk back into my apartment in the quiet hours of the morning, and I breathed in the still morning before most. And I felt grateful that I held the hand of a mother the night before as her son passed away. Grateful that I spent the night learning things I still don’t know to help my patients, realizing that after decades of education I stand to learn much more. Grateful that my colleagues read new journal articles at 3:00am so together we can learn and teach and become better doctors for our patients. I’m grateful that I vividly remember the sleepless nights I’ve spent trying to calm a baby who is too sick to console, updating family members on the status of their child, putting in admission orders and analyzing lab results, every little step has made me a better physician. I know the practice of medicine has deteriorated in the eyes of public over the last couple of decades, and sharply so recently; but doctors are still here, still present doing our best to become a physician worthy of taking care of patients, regardless of what the public thinks.

I cannot think of a better way to live life. I get to live with no regrets knowing that at the end of my twenties I’ll still be thirty; but unlike many thirty-year old’s, I’d much rather be thirty knowing I’ve dedicated my time to a practice that take years to cultivate and develop and benefits so many people. I’ll still be thirty, but I will have lived in a thousand different lives, experiencing everything they are and letting these experiences change my life. I get to live my life knowing I spent any time I had off to its fullest, with family and friends regarding every hour and minute with importance because time is limited, life is limited. The constraints of the job, however unfair they may seem, force an urgency into the rest of my life. An urgency to spend time wisely on what matters because time is the most expensive currency to deal in. Somedays the bleakness of what happens in a hospital paints bright strokes of contrast against the banality of my existence making me realize how amazing it is; compelling me to appreciate my health, my intelligence, my autonomy, my family, my relationships, and my ability to live in a place where I can choose to spend my time to help others and live comfortably.

I am absolutely living in the best way imaginable. In the present, constantly bettering myself for the future. Living with purpose in not only what I do but who I am and understanding that I have an impact on the people around me because of the choice and sacrifices made. This path is earned in the expensive currency of time, but it pays back in experiences one hundred-fold. I get to have hobbies for my own benefit, I get to spend time with the people I care for most, and most importantly I get to leave this life knowing I did absolutely everything I could for the people around me in the time I was given.