(no subject)
Sometimes I find myself wondering what I believe that wouldn't change because of a guy. Now that I've been single for a reasonable period of time, I've begun to realize that many of my beliefs and interests have been simply absorbed from all the people I've dated.
Wow, isn't that sad?
There's definitely something to be said about being flexible, but flexibility needs to end somewhere. For example, there's the issue of children. The biological children thing has always been an issue for me. In some sort of arrogant way, I want to believe that my life is meant for something larger than two children and a lifetime in suburbia. It’s what my parents built, and I want to reject it, but the temptation of comfort and familiarity is still there. I want to live in a challenge; I never want to be tied down; I want to make a difference; I am hopelessly idealistic. I will raise my children in a city; I will refuse to have biological children-maybe I’ll adopt; I will have no children at all.
And then most of the guys I’ve met and dated want their own children. These are the times when I start thinking that I do too. Now that I’m single, the guys I meet that don’t want children scare me; what if I end up thirty-five years old and feel a need for biological children that my chosen life-partner does not wish to have?
I feel like every day I need to make a decision. Who am I? Am I self-serving? Can I be selfless?
My medical school requires every student to complete an ISP, or Independent Study Project, in order to graduate. I’ve always thought that I wanted to do an intensive focus upon underserved medicine or do some sort of project through Free Clinic: something that helps people who need it. And then about a week ago, while talking to a friend about my passion for snowboarding and how I would love to just be an adaptive instructor and be a snow-bum at some mountain, I realized another possibility: I could use my two ISP months in my fourth year to live up in Mammoth during the winter and do research at their adaptive sports program. What a brilliant idea! I could do my research and ride in all of my free time. I could be the crazy out on the weekdays after snowstorms and the avalanche crews. I could provide adaptive programs with hard scientific research on the impact of work upon disabled children’s outcomes.
I told P about this idea; I was sitting on a folded out futon, wearing my gray fleece sweatpants-the ones I usually wear under my snowboarding pants, and he was leaning against a wall across from me, looking uncharacteristic in well-fitting jeans and college sweater, one leg bent underneath him socked foot against the wall.
P thought it was brilliant. I thought it was brilliant. But then I told him the dilemma: I have no professional interest in working with autism or in pediatrics. If I have to do a research project, shouldn’t I do something that furthers my professional interests-something that would help me get the residency I want?
P laughed at me: “I have never done anything with the purpose of furthering my ‘professional interests’”
Thinking about it, neither had I. That’s why during college I hadn’t done any pre-med stuff. Our conversation is fairly loud; I wonder what the interviewee P has staying at his place is thinking about that. Yes, I’m in medical school and I didn’t do pre-med crap; had he?
The collateral issue I hadn’t mentioned was this: who would my research help? Adaptive programs are expensive. Equipment is expensive, lessons are expensive; it’s like any other regular snowsport. Who is coming up to the mountain for adaptive lessons? It’s the parents with their disabled children from privileged backgrounds, exactly the people I want to believe don’t need yet another person to serve them. Damn, most of the world serves them, why should I?
What sort of motivation does a project like this have? My motivation is primarily to have fun; that is why this idea is so brilliant-to experience life working near a great mountain before I ostensibly go off to help the world one patient at a time. Doctor-Alice to the rescue! God, sometimes my idealism makes me sick, mostly because I feel it all in my head. Maybe I’d hate living in a mountain town. Or maybe I’d decide not to match for residency but instead become an adaptive instructor. What a waste of an education. What a waste of the incredible architecture that has been built up at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars inside my cranium.
Is happiness worth the loss of idealism? Is giving up (what I believe are) my principles worth having my own children?
These are the principles: having biological children is a beautiful but unnecessary and essentially self-serving project. I could be of greater use to the world without children. Many children already exist that need good homes, so those should be raised before more children are brought into existence.
Those are essential truths for me. And I have no idea where it puts me. There are little decisions everyday. What will I do with my time? I fail to serve anybody but myself in my everyday life, so I will think about how I can help people in the future instead. If I don’t feel that drive to help people now, how will that change with a medical degree?
God, sometimes I hate thinking. I hate believing something this difficult and I hate that with a push of fate I could choose to go against everything I do believe.