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...".