Get out of your mind

     It's all in your mind. The good and the bad. Anxiety and serenity. Serendipity and absolute coincidence. Love and loneliness. I can spend hours writing posts about my city, my world, my views of everyday life but there will be a time where I will have to face the facts, I have no clue what’s just a fragment of my imagination and what is not.

Nothing’s as elusive as a breath of fresh hope and nothing brings to the surface the troubles of your inner soul more than a challenge to your reality. You can drink all of Hamra’s pubs worth of liquor and drink its coffee none will numb you enough nor make you vigil enough for what’s coming. That is the future. It seems that the major transition in my 20s is simple: realizing that new starts are no longer as appealing as they used to be, that the mind can no longer build an illusion on top of the other, there comes a time where reality strikes and where you realize it is time your dreams matched the earthy ground you are building them on.

Growing up with a religious existentialist as a best friend (though he did not express his views with that label at the time), we often argued about the existence of omens and signs where god expresses himself. I honestly still think that any outside fact can be twisted and turned in a million way to fit into a narrative where a higher power is communicating with us. And thus not getting your dream job becomes a sign that it was not right for you. There isn’t enough space here nor do I claim to have enough philosophical background knowledge to attempt to refute a whole belief system. I’m just arguing that most of the time, the mind plays tricks and shifts our whole vision of reality to fit a theory. The optimists see the world behind pink binoculars while the pessimists can only see how the whole world lacks harmony and bathes in dysfunction. Most of us fall somewhere in between with varying fixations depending on the matter at hand.

For someone who wants to spend the next few years studying the human mind, I find this topic simply fascinating yet I can’t help but wonder how writing my thoughts down is simply postponing the issue at hand and that is dealing with my mind’s penetrating thoughts by writing down loops of reasonable empty text. I do think we can access the origin of any disturbing thought or feeling and in a moment of clarity determine what needs to be done. This whole post in fact stemmed from an instance where I felt my brain lost control over its vision of reality and just for a moment, I was able to look objectively at the naked reality as it is as a voice said: “Wipe that sad face, and no do not replace it with a strategically placed smile. You have acted long enough, let’s have a heart to heart. What’s on your mind child? What’s keeping you from sleeping? Do you have any spiritual ties? None. Are you in love? Never have been. Are you trying to fall in love? No not really. Are you successful? Haven’t been in a while. Do you strive to be successful? Maybe. Great then we are on to something, now get out of your mind and start working on that in the real world” 

13 Lessons medical school taught me

This blog came as an attempt to revive my teenage dream of one day becoming a journalist or a novelist. That dream died somewhere along the road to adulthood. Probably around my senior year in biology when I discovered my command of English, French and classical Arabic will never be good enough to be published. The dream died thereafter to be replaced by a career in medicine. Well that career is finally about to start. I recently graduated medical school and have been taking a few graduate courses since. However, next week I will be officially unleashed into the working world and no longer be a student. That part of my life has ended for now. Unless I decide to finally pursue that French literature degree I always dreamed of pursuing.

Anyway, away from Voltaire, Camus and Rousseau, this post will ultimately be another list, I’ve found comfort in making lists on this blog. This is a list I have wanted to post ever since I graduated from medical school in May but only managed to finish it now.  

Here are 13 lessons medical school has taught me:

1-You will never find Nemo

Some fish are just not meant to be caught, especially the ones that are an allegory of the meaning of life when you're still 25. 

2-Know when to take a break from work and drop everything else

I learned this the hard way when I attempted to imitate the more avid hard workers in class and isolated myself from the world to study for American board exam. The seemingly unmeasurable depression and breakdown were easily cleansed by a drink and a night out with some friends. 

3-After the white coat

The white coat effect fades away the second you take it off and walk on the street. That’s true unless you've turned into a ruthless narcissist like some of the attending physicians you had always dreaded. 

4- All things that end will trigger nostalgia
That by itself doesn't make them irreplaceable. Yes I am nostalgic to medical school ending but I also currently still regret going through with it and could think of many other things to do.  

5-Always check your sources

Evidence based medicine can be extrapolated to everyday life especially since Lebanese society has a tendency to inflate facts, and personalize versions of the truth. Therefore, a background check on the person giving you the news is always valid let alone required.  

6-The devil is in the detail

Yes he is but the greater picture often leads to sloppy outcomes. Attention to detail is a necessity for most doctors. To me survival was the main propellant in the first 2 years and thus many details were skipped in the process. They came back to bite me till I perfected them thereafter 

7-Growing up is an option

Not everyone gets over their high school insecurities. In fact some stay there for a lifetime despite of the added title of MD.

8-Ambition? 
Superlatives are a defense mechanism of those who need to showcase their success. I lost my drive for academic competitiveness early on and replaced it by total nonchalance. However, I never really knew how much that was a character changer till I saw the ruthlessness of the competitive character I used to have reflected in those who kept it till the end. 

9- Becoming

If you haven't learned to lead your own path rather than follow footsteps in the sand by now then you probably never will. 

10- Humans come in different species
The sooner you know yours, the happier you would be. It is human nature to aggregate in societies and more so to have smaller groups within these societies. And those pretending to be anthropologists (such as yours truly) will pretend to understand how these work. 

11- Chill
The world is not out to get you. As a baseline paranoid person with narcissistic tendencies I had to remind myself very often that it is not personal. When living with the same group of people for 7 years it becomes a challenge to keep believing it is not about you nor targeted at you. 

12- Turning tables

Don’t make enemies and try as much as possible not to gossip you never know how the tables might turn. 7 years are a long time to maintain friends or enemies. The tables will turn so often that you won’t be able to keep track.   

13-Is that really me in that photo?

Pictures from random events will make you question your decisions 4 years later. I now wonder about existence of past friendships that seemed to blossom in pics but more importantly I wonder why I have only faint recollection of these happy moments.

This last thought brings me back to an old French essay I had read back in High school: “Discours sur le Bonheur” by Madame du Chatelet. In a nutshell, we remember hardships more often than happy occasions because happy people are satisfied and do not feel obliged to share joy whereas unhappy people tend to share their misfortune in search of solace. Yes, these were a tough couple of years and medical students around you will always nag about how hard it is but the most important thing was that I always knew medical school will end one day. The career that comes after it might be packed with obstacles and this is going to sound cliché but I really have never experienced anything more gratifying than having helped a patient get through illness and hardship.

Mustard and Hedonism in Los Angeles

This post tells the story of a sweet hedonistic pot of chocolate where I stood out as being the sour mustard.

Before I start, let's get a little context: I have been in Los Angeles for 10 days now on a medical elective and the whole travel experience has been far from perfect. Now this has little to do with the city itself and much more to do with personal obstacles that happened upon landing here or that I had carried with me right before coming from Lebanon. With that in mind, let's get started. 

In the past year I can honestly say I have lost a great deal of my self confidence and assertive behavior . Numerous times this year, I ended up merely a ghost who echoes what others around him do. I gave up principles, tried new things in the name of adventure and the need to cross items off the list before I turn 25. I drifted apart from good people, gained some unnecessary enemies, but more importantly, I lost a sense of identity that I always took pride in. Imagine my apprehension to find all of that confusion culminating on an uneventful California night. In the midst of yet another attempt to fit in an environment that is mot mine, I found myself packing my belongings in a gloomy coffee shop, walking back to my apartment here in Los Angeles with one thought racing through my mind: being in Rome still does not make you a Roman. Even if I am in the most laid back city on earth, that does not mean I am no longer the same pretentious existential young man I always prided myself of being. 

  

The human race is a lonely fragile one. We want acceptance, we search for it wherever we go. We copy others, we convince some to copy us, we travel in herds like sheep and get chased by other packs of wolves on that jounrney. I can't speak for everyone out there but I know I have had major trouble embracing loneliness. I have traveled quite a bit in my life but I always looked for familiarities in foreign lands. Rarely have I actually embraced the foreign settings for what they are. instead, I turned them around to fit my reality. It is in this spirit that strolling down the champs elysee brings back Sabah's "allo beirut" playing in my ears, walking to the hospital in California brings marcel khalife's Rita and Croatia's Split is carved as the spitting image of Sour in my mind. Identity is a tricky entity. For someone who aspires to one day map the human brain, I am surely fixated on certain areas of my identity that seem to recur since early adulthood/ late adolescence. 

It seems that a recurrent theme on this blog has been adulthood: what is it? Have I reached it yet? Is this confusion part of it? 

At this moment, I do not have a concrete answer but I have a feeling that my character has deeply changed in the past 6 months. In fact, the copycat roller-coaster I was on has gotten me thinking that -for those of us unfortunate enough to have a flexible view of life- to find yourself, you have to look around for a while first. Yet the past few weeks have made quite a difference in that vision. 

To make this unclear ramble more lucid: if you go to LA and still want the same things you wanted when growing up in Beirut, if the city's pleasure principle does not alter your pre-set personal ideals, chances are you have already found yourself a long time ago. 

This post was supposed to include much more useless life theories and nicely sublimed personal conclusions from the last 2 months, yet instead it's ending with a different message If you are still reading. 

  

This blog was never an attempt to gather readership or a shot at journalism. It was always intended to be a venue to vent my thoughts into a somewhat recycled lebanon friendly presentation. Lately I have been flirting with the notion of halting my medical training and pursuing a journalism degree, now I may be getting ahead of myself but I want to use this venue for practice purposes in the upcoming few months. So yes, another conclusion to come off from being placed in unfamiliar settings was defining what you want in life. To roughly paraphrase a young stranger I met in a New York pastry shop who holds a journalism degree and has now quit it all to start drawing for a comic magazine: "I've always known what I wanted, I just wasn't sure I was good enough." 

On a closing note, "Too much candy gonna rot your soul...". 

Some shortcomings of Lebanese society.

It seems to me that in the last few posts I have become a rather literary version of a ditsy teenager "à la mean girls" complaining about life and how "so so stupid everyone is." 

If you havent thought so yet, you will after this post!

A good friend of mine once told me the whole blogging business is useless because bloggers never provide solutions, they just raise complaints. I agreed on the second part but I do not believe that it is a single person's job to create the answer, it is rather his job to launch the question and stir up the conversation. Today I will be mixing in my pot many reasons why the Lebanese society simply doesn't work. Keep in mind I love my country regardless of its wrongdoings and hope one day we can make a change.  

 1- Lebanon where women wear black for a traditionally set number of months after loosing a family member all while moving on with their lives regularly. Moving on is entirely normal and there shouldn't be a set deadline for when it is ok to listen to a song after someone has died. Grieving is personal and no one should interfere with it.

2-Lebanon where any group can burn tires and close international highways whenever they feel like it. 

 

3- Lebanon where Halloween is a big deal but independence day isn't. 

 

4- Lebanon where presidential elections depend on international consensus 

 

5- Lebanon where it is ok for men to sleep around with other women when in a relationship because you want to preserve your girlfriend for marriage. 

6- Lebanon where you can get a hymenoplasty as readily as you can order a burger  

7- Lebanon where George Clooney marrying a native gets unlimited coverage whereas the biggest Islamic mosque being closed gets near to none. 

8- Lebanon where a parliament renewing its expired mandate twice passes silently but a religious figure getting criticized leads to mayhem. 

9- Lebanon where a 3 km trip takes you an hour by car at rush hour

10- Lebanon where your skin color determines if you can swim in a private pool

11- Lebanon where yearly the first mild rain showers drain the infrastructure and claim a few souls 

12- Lebanon where the rapist can be forgiven if he offers to marry his victim 

13- Lebanon where plastic surgery loans are offered

14- Lebanon where local homosexuals get rectal dilation tests by the police while visitors thrive in gay bars 

15- Lebanon where local art is almost dead 

16- Lebanon where school history books stop at 1970

17- Lebanon where one sect's hero is another's demon 

18- Lebanon where even ISIS can find supporters 

19- Lebanon where what type of car you own takes you a longer way in society than what type of mind you have 

20- Lebanon where connections are a requirement for job security not an addition 

21- Lebanon where phone calls get you out of traffic tickets and minor felonies 

22- Lebanon where less than 5% of the parliament are women 

23- Lebanon where sharing your opinion online can get you arrested

24- Lebanon where refugees get cut in the face and European tourists get the full hospitality package 

25- Lebanon where armed civilians establish check points and close roads for "security purposes" 

 

26- Lebanon where Hamra and Tripoli experience different meanings of the term "on fire" on the same night

10 thoughts to make you Disinhibited, Disillusioned and Disenchanted in your mid 20s

I haven't written on this blog for a long time. 3.5 months to be exact. Now that happened for a reason. It is not out of lack of Lebanese events to comment on but rather out of personal disenchantment. The summer of 2014 had been very heavily embedded with existential questions and self reflections, all of which could have been shared here but they won't. I did not stop writing but I just wrote on a piece of paper for future references if I ever decide to open this very emotionally charged chapter of my life. 


Now on to today's post, 10 concepts that have made me disinhibited, disillusioned and disenchanted in my mid twenties 

1-Sex drive 

There will come a time where you find yourself desiring the other woman or actively misleading someone into thinking you love them be it for sexual needs or out of solitude. Point is, disinhibited fantasies will sting your moral sense and stain what you thought was an impeccable conscience. And here is the worst disillusioning part: guilt fades away. 

2-The devil is your friend 

Growing up you idealized your parents. Then around teenage years you probably stuck to your flawless friends. All in all, you never really saw evil in someone close to you. One major milestone was recognizing that in reality, as cliche as this is coming off, no one has absolutely pure intentions. Learn to appreciate that your family and closest friends are not always right and that a complete stranger can still be the victim of the crime your beloved claims has been committed to him/her. 

3-Xenophobia 

In a community of smaller communities like Lebanon, expect this more often than you think. You may try to go over and above with your friendliness yet some parties will remain impenetrable. Sects aggregate, social classes aggregate, even same language speakers aggregate. There will always be those who see Beirut as a street of Paris, those who mistake it for Tehran and those who are trying to turn it into New York. What all of them share is the absolute insistence that they are right and the accompanying superiority complex. 

4-Dysfunction is your gift

We all release a scream of despair about wanting to leave this dysfunctional nation, to live abroad where the grass is greener where the law is respected and where humanity is dignified. Truth is, foreign countries are not waiting for you with open arms. Visas and working conditions are more selective than ever. Besides, you are at high risk of failing to live in a world that walks by the book. You have become acquainted to dysfunction and it is your daily bread. Embrace that gift. 

5-Insecurities are ubiquitous

Growing up I always looked up to some of the more confident elements around me. For someone who often willingly shares his insecurities even on social media, I used to think they were mine alone. Time and more importantly acute stress of early adulthood showed me how often everyone had bigger irrational fears than mine buried deep down. Fear of society's judgement, fear of failure, the strive for acceptance were all issues I had processed by the first few years of college and could not even think that others still carried with them well into their twenties 

6-Karma is a myth

What comes around doesn't always go back around. People who walk parallel to the rules without getting caught may or may not go farther than those who abide by them. It's a matter of chance. In the unlucky event of having a conscience, in a country that lacks order, you will follow stringent personal standards. There comes a time when you realize the majority of the nation believes that breaking the rules is a necessary prerequisite to success and they more often than not get away with it while you gradually climb up the ethical ladder at a frustrating pace. Although that is disenchanting, I personally do not see myself changing my standards. 

7-What do you want to be when you grow up? 

That question finally starts to be answered once you're out of college. Or does it? Yes you do choose your major early on, fresh out of high school. What the high school teachers who asked you this question failed to mention is that a major is not a career. A medical doctor can be a psychiatrist, a surgeon or a dermatologist. All of which are totally unrelated career paths. Much in the same manner, business administration is not a career, it's a gateway to becoming a merchant, an employee or even a college professor.  So yes, you have a major in your mid 20s but what you do not even begin to have is the illusion of a stable career . 

8-You can't save them all

You may have gotten used to being the problem solver. The one who always knows the answers. You may have never had a situation where the solution escaped you. However as we grew older the problems grew with us and became completely out of our control. It is highly likely that by the time you are in your mid twenties you would have lost a friend to addiction, another to political corruption or watched another fade into an abusive relationship etc... In the end there isn't much you can do, you have to learn that no matter how hard you try, bad decisions need to be made by someone. How else would novelists and script writers find their muse? 

9-Failure 

 There are too many cliches here today. Then again originality is overrated and often inapplicable to broad populations. We cant have that as we all love our generalizations. One more lesson to learn by the time you're 25 is how to embrace the topography of rock bottom and what troughs to avoid if you ever want to end up living up in the mountains of success. The old young belief that the road to success is a straight ladder is quite wrong, it is rather filled with valleys and hills that may never take you as high up as your thought you'd get.  

10-Hope Vs Realism 

I might be disinhibited, disillusioned and disenchanted but that only adds to my realism rather than cynicism. Being in touch with the shortcoming of reality helps you save up your energy for the latter stages of life. As important as hope is in maintaining a healthy sanity, excess of it is just as toxic as lack of it. My mid 20s conclusion is is not a call for cynicism but rather for self-consciousness and willingness to admit the shortcomings of yourself, your entourage and your belief systems when the overwhelming reality calls for it.  

Diaries from the city of bombs

This blog started with a post about Beirut bombings and now we sadly revisit that notion. In the first post, we walked through a guide of what to do post bombings. Back then, most of the bombings were concentrated in suburbs or in regions far far away from Beirut. In places I had drove by once or twice at best. Granted, there was one main blast in the heart of the capital yet that was a political assassination and not just a random act of violence. Today, the random bombs have reached Raouche, an area I drive by every other day. Granted, from a geopolitical perspective, this bomb was probably never meant to go off in that area but this does not undermine that terrorists are here, they have come from all over the Arab world and are living in the small Beirut hotels/hostels. This might seem absurd to you how one bomb can be different from another one. I am not justifying political assassinations; I am just arguing that I can understand how someone would infuriate the intolerant offenders so much that they decide to take him/her out. Yet the random bombings just for the sake of killing random civilians are new to the heart of the capital.   

In the light of this eminent situation, I have decided to write something I have never before succeeded in writing. Dear readers, I have tried multiple times to have a diary as a teenager but have failed miserably mostly due to my unwillingness to share my deep thoughts even on paper. Now, I give you my latest attempt but with a very da3eish (ISIS) twist, a rather collectivistic and not so personal attempt at writing "Diaries from the city of bombs".

How does it feel to wake up in Beirut in the early days of Summer2014? It is a highly inconvenient nightmare. The water is running low because of the unusually scarce rainy season, power cuts are regular as usual and the heat and humidity are just the cherry on top. You might also want to add the random threat of dying by the hands of a suicide bomber seeking mermaids and heaven and asking for your soul as the key to the kingdom of god. 

In 2014 Beirut, you wake up, take public transport means to work and suffer the second hand smoking and lack of time respect. The alternative is taking your own car, venturing into the deadly roads filled with over stressed drivers in the midst of virtually non-existing road safety measures. You make it to your workplace, a job you probably stay in only till a better opportunity to live abroad comes along. In fact, if you live in Beirut, chances are you are always looking for a way out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a lack of patriotism, as a matter of fact, when it comes to national arrogance no one does it better than the Lebanese. It is rather a sad fact that to afford the extravagant Lebanese mode de vie, one has to make salaries that are most often not compatible with the Lebanese economy. Why do I mention this here? Because we are a population that is going over and above to try and train in Europe and the USA only to find a competitive job near home in the Arab gulf region. Yet, we find ourselves superior to those regions where terrorism nests grow… Can you sense the irony? You should because I was not trying to be subtle.

What do you do at work in 2014 Beirut? Well that varies for everyone of course. However, I think the most consistent activity would be words sharing. Yes, we Lebanese like our gossip, our political analysis, our speculations and our pessimism. We either discuss the doomed political situation in Irak and Syria and the fear of it spreading here, or we simply talk about the ridiculous notion of having no president of the republic, or share the totally inaccurate stories of how last night’s bombing played out, how many more cars are there, how is the state so confident about the number of rigged cars left etc… These topics are not new at all to Lebanon, yet what makes June 2014 special is the addition of the world cup to the discussion panel. You see major news networks are overwhelmed with groundbreaking facts to report. They report a football goal from here and an increase in the casualties of the bomb attacks from there with both reports being minutes apart. All is well, Life is good, and it’s great to live in Lebanon in the summer of 2014. You would imagine our country holds on to its identity with all of this going on. Let’s take a look at the streets of Beirut shall we? They are full of hanging flags, yet none of them are Lebanese. The major football giants are all represented (Germany, Brazil, Spain, Italy etc…). To be fair, our home team has never made it to the play offs but the Beirut cynicism within me tells me even if it did, the flags would not change. On that cynicism, you will rarely find a inhabitant of Beirut who does not suffer from some form of anxiety or stress related condition. Yet if you ever attempt to undermine the greatness of this city, you’ve got it coming to you. The Lebanese patriotism is a weird ghost, it only comes out when foreigners speak of Beirut, it never shows up around Lebanese people. It also seems to take a step back when we are talking to Europeans, as if we have an inferiority complex of some sort. Since the world revolves around the world cup, I’m sure it must be because Europeans have such good football teams.

Now let us forget the inferiority complexes of Lebanon and move to the last part of a 2014 Beirut summer day.

Beirut, the city of bombs by night… what a scary notion right? Wrong! We are renowned for our night life. Our clubs and bars are unmatched all over the world. We party every night even if the bombs rocked our ground by day, we consider it part of the show and dance to the rumbling of the earth beneath our feet. Well… to those who still take pride in that, I ask them to take a walk along Hamra or Bliss street in the past week after the bombings. I think it has finally happened, Beirut is drained. We are tired, we are suffocating. This is not a message of hope or of Lebanese supremacy. This is a message of fear and instability. Beirut is a phoenix, it was destroyed then rose from the ashes 7 times. These are all great titles, but I really do not want to be there for the 8^th resurrection if I can somewhat help prevent the 8^th destruction. Yet how can we do that dear Diary?    

Hospital moments that reshaped my view of humanity.

A few days ago, I finished my third year of medical school. That year was also my first fully clinical year i.e. I spent all of it on hospital grounds. Physicians are often put in situations that challenge their humane side. I have probably learned more by passing on the hospital floors about humanity than I have in the past 24 years where I amassed friends, enemies and idols. I have learned much more about the value of a life than in all the humanity courses combined. I have learned even more about the absurdity of it than from reading Sartre, Camus and Ionesco. Looking back on these 12 months, I wanted to note down some of the most intense moments:

 -Seeing my first embryo on ultrasound and having it turn out to be dead.
All the arguments I have had pro or against choice suddenly became irrelevant. I am a deep believer in the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy but standing there, I had to admit, it did not feel right at all. I still think however that if she could go through with it, it is her choice but unlike what I had previously thought, I would think twice if I am ever in a condition where the fetus has half my chromosomes.   

-Diagnosing a 3 year old kid with advanced cardiomyopathy requiring transplant.
Looking at the confusion in the father’s eyes as the doctor begins to explain to us in a not so discrete tone how this child is destined to die if he does not get a transplant.  

- Hearing the inspiring recovery story of a drug addict my age.
This has by far been the most inspiring moment of my medical path so far. It is both destabilizing and reassuring to see a young man take control of his life and turn an extremely horrible situation into a success story.   

- Carefully approaching the parents of a possible abuse victim.
How can you explain to parents that it is very likely someone close to them has sexually abused their daughter when she was barely 5 years old without reconsidering the value of humanity. 

- Soothing a young girl after learning she got her infection from the man she thought she loved.
Imagine her crying as you told her that he caught this from someone else and transferred it to her when she thought he was faithful.

-Seeing and smelling the blood of a teenage trauma victim as it sprays all over your white coat, and ultimately losing that patient.  

- Meeting uneducated empowered women who overcame more adversity than you can imagine and argued about feminism, equality and metaphysics without having read about it in a book

 -Watching the truth being hidden from a man with cancer and vaguely answering his questions when he asserts you're his favorite part of the medical team. What can you do in a society that refuses honesty and claims it is in the greater benefit of the patient?

-Gazing into the eyes of a paralyzed speechless man as he moaned begging not to be fed by a tube. How much is left of you if you can no longer express yourself? You’re just a consciousness stuck in its place, incapable of drifting away as those around you forget who you were.  

- Hearing the screams of a patient with cancer in the bone. Never will I forget the plead for help as I stood there speechless after all the possible pain medication given was in vain.

  

- Trying to understand how the patient who makes perfect sense at day, deeply cuts herself with any available item at night. Mental illness is not a joke to be fiddled with. It is a very frightening notion not to be able to control the full spectrum of your emotions.   

- Watching daughters instantaneously shift from pleasant polite ladies to irrational, shouting insane women when talking to you about the well being of their dying mother. I think this is my closest encounter with the pure form of what they call love.

- The intense fear when finding similarities between my life and the story of a schizophrenic patient.