In the dawn of their thirties, I think most people embark on a quest.
To find themselves.
Their true selves.
Maybe they realise there aren’t any more degrees to add to their names.
Maybe there aren’t any more papers due for submission, or exams looming on the horizon.
Maybe, for the first time, they have finally, sort of, arrived.
And then they have to face their existence head-on.
As if for the very first time.
I think this happens especially to medical students.
We study and study for decades to become specialists. There is always a next exam. A next degree.
Student. Intern. Resident. Postgraduate. Fellow.
There is always somewhere else to get to.
And perhaps this is why the transition to being a Consultant can be so strange.
Because somewhere along that meandering, treacherous road to becoming a doctor, you may have forgotten who you were before all of this.
Whether you liked making origami airplanes out of orange card paper.
Whether you enjoyed getting lost in tragic fiction at midnight.
Whether you liked painting, writing, —or simply sitting beneath an old Mangosteen tree.
There is something seductive about always having a goal, isn’t it?
You don’t have to ask Who am I? when the next thing on the list is What do I have to do?
And so it is very easy to keep going.
Another achievement.
Anything that postpones the uncomfortable business of figuring out what you actually want.
When I joined my first position as a Consultant Dermatologist, it felt wonderful.
Compared to the menial and heavy-duty work of being a fellow or resident, this was a breeze.
The working hours were comfortable. There was no boss whose mood swings I had to be hyperaware of. I was independently managing patients. I was learning new procedures.
By all conventional measures, I had arrived.
And then, slowly, I started getting bored.
This was confusing.
Wasn’t this what I had spent all those years working towards?
Why didn’t I feel more fulfilled?
I think, in retrospect, I had become so accustomed to striving that I didn’t quite know what to do when there was nothing immediate to strive towards.
For years, difficulty had given my life structure.
There was always something to overcome.
And now that scaffolding had been undone.
So then I was thinking that -Perhaps I had an identity problem.
I had spent years becoming a doctor.
I had never really stopped to ask who I was when I wasn’t becoming one.
So I had to learn to be with myself again.
Not under duress.
Just me and my mind.
It wasn’t that easy though.
I had always loved reading, but I hadn’t read much since joining MBBS—not the books I actually wanted to read, anyway.
So I stuffed my Kindle with all kinds of books.
Belonging.
Longevity.
Philosophy.
Psychology.
And I started to read.
There was so much I had missed.
I could almost feel little light bulbs going off above my head as I tried to understand myself and other people.
But perhaps what I was really doing was rebuilding an inner world that had been neglected.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t reading because I had to.
I was reading because I was curious.
If there is one thing I’ve always been reasonably good at, it is being motivated to improve myself.
And so began meditation during my lunch breaks.
Working out in the mornings while my toddler was still in the lull of sleep.
Learning how to design a website.
And picking up my pen to write again.
I was trying to find my voice.
Of course, life didn’t suddenly become peaceful because I had discovered books and meditation.
Horrible things happened along the way.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer.
My son underwent minor surgery.
My work remained, at times, uninteresting.
My husband worked long hours.
And without much of a community to lean on, I sometimes felt like I was reeling under it all.
Some things are simply terrible.
But I have begun to believe something.
A good life isn’t one in which nothing goes wrong.
Somewhere along the way, we were sold a lie that life was supposed to go well all the time.
That once we had achieved the things we were working towards, we would finally feel settled.
Happy and complete.
But perhaps that is the arrival fallacy.
We imagine:
Once I earn enough, I’ll feel secure.
Once this difficult phase passes, I’ll finally be happy.
And then we arrive.
And discover that the destination is simply another ordinary Wednesday.
And life continues to contain boredom, uncertainty, grief and delight in roughly the same twenty-four hours.
There is no final level at which life becomes permanently satisfying.
And perhaps that isn’t a flaw in life.
Perhaps that is life.
There is also so much pressure to be happy all the time now.
People talk about happiness as though it were a state we should be able to maintain if we are doing everything correctly.
But no one is happy all the time.
Certainly not me.
I am happiest in the mornings.
By afternoon, after patients and meal- planning and a little kid and everything else that constitutes an ordinary day, I’m only as cheerful as a sad clown.
And I’ve begun to think that’s okay.
A sad afternoon doesn’t mean I have a bad life.
Being bored doesn’t mean I’ve chosen the wrong life.
Being unhappy for a few hours doesn’t mean I’ve failed at happiness.
Perhaps emotional maturity is not learning how to feel good all the time.
Maybe it is learning that you can feel bad without deciding that everything is bad.
And so I return to the question.
Who am I now?
For a long time, I thought the answer had to be something impressive.
Someone who is constantly becoming a better version of herself.
But perhaps those are simply things I do.
They aren’t necessarily who I am.
And perhaps there isn’t one hidden, authentic version of myself waiting to be discovered underneath all the roles.
Perhaps the self is something we keep constructing.
Perhaps I am allowed to be a doctor who sometimes gets bored with medicine.
A mother who sometimes needs to be alone.
A writer who sometimes has nothing worthwhile to say.
A person who is grateful and dissatisfied on the same day.
Someone who can have a wonderful life and still wonder what she is doing with it.
Maybe I haven’t lost myself.
And maybe that is what my thirties are for.
Making room for more of me.
This rings so true. Lucky are those who finally do understand who they are.
<3
I loved this Shilp. You are being so vulnerable here and it inspires me to embrace my flawed yet perfect self too.
<3