TM #184 - Changing the world, and ourselves
Curt: We set out to change the world and ending up... just changing ourselves.
Arthur: What's wrong with that?
Curt: Nothing!... If you don't look at the world.
(Todd Haynes, Velvet Goldmine)
This attitude is pretty common among surgeons - we want to change lives, we want to come up with a surgery that revolutionizes the way a procedure is performed. These are lofty goals that motivate us through college, through med school, through the gritty early years of our residencies.
But as we climb the ladder, as our skills develop, as we're allowed more responsibility, we're changing. Maybe we don't realize it, maybe we wake up one day with an award and a bunch of lucrative job offers. We still want to change the world, but despite the size of our egos, we've accepted that maybe we can't change the life of every person, that the third world will remain poor, that patients will die even though it's not fair, that hospitals can be underfunded, understaffed, and all the while we're earning stupid amounts of money for doing something that we love.
It's a bit like waking up from a vivid dream I suppose. We slog away for years, half-awake, too exhausted to realize how much we're changing, growing. Then one day we wake up with a start, and the world is our oyster, even if the pearl is tainted. I think that as self-obsessed as surgeons can be (and we are - myself included), we have a blindspot when it comes to seeing how we've changed.
I think that even if we can't change the whole world, it's a mirror for us; we can't see ourselves clearly, so we have to look to those around us to see who we've become and how we've grown.
Muse: Addison Montgomery
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice
Word Count: 265 (excluding quote)
Arthur: What's wrong with that?
Curt: Nothing!... If you don't look at the world.
(Todd Haynes, Velvet Goldmine)
This attitude is pretty common among surgeons - we want to change lives, we want to come up with a surgery that revolutionizes the way a procedure is performed. These are lofty goals that motivate us through college, through med school, through the gritty early years of our residencies.
But as we climb the ladder, as our skills develop, as we're allowed more responsibility, we're changing. Maybe we don't realize it, maybe we wake up one day with an award and a bunch of lucrative job offers. We still want to change the world, but despite the size of our egos, we've accepted that maybe we can't change the life of every person, that the third world will remain poor, that patients will die even though it's not fair, that hospitals can be underfunded, understaffed, and all the while we're earning stupid amounts of money for doing something that we love.
It's a bit like waking up from a vivid dream I suppose. We slog away for years, half-awake, too exhausted to realize how much we're changing, growing. Then one day we wake up with a start, and the world is our oyster, even if the pearl is tainted. I think that as self-obsessed as surgeons can be (and we are - myself included), we have a blindspot when it comes to seeing how we've changed.
I think that even if we can't change the whole world, it's a mirror for us; we can't see ourselves clearly, so we have to look to those around us to see who we've become and how we've grown.
Muse: Addison Montgomery
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice
Word Count: 265 (excluding quote)