It has been years, and this is still full of awesomeness. especially at this moment in time, it is more true than ever.
"So let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope, serve as well as that music. The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy. "
- from "My Father's Suitcase" by Orhan Pamuk
and to my own parents who have managed to make a living hell out of the precious time that really should be one's most relaxed and happy, which one really may not have another chance of in a lifetime.
thank you for being so destructive.
yet i fully understand why you come to such thoughts and actions, and could not help pitying you.
i only have my pen... not an impressive one... but i only have my pen.
My Father's Suitcase
mental state deterioration
we had a horrid run of 2 wks plus of absolutely impossible workload, and everyone (except pharmacist, God bless her~)expecting things to be done with the exact same efficiency as when ward was fully staffed... while refusing to offer any help and only adding to the stress.
i ended up in tears last friday at work (which i have not done since internship). mental state deteriorated since... saying nasty thoughtless things to ppl... then realising it... then mental state deteriorating even more.
and attending interviews in such burnt-out state... needing to say how passionate i am about my job... was a herculean effort.
however a conversation today redeemed me:
nurse: blah blah(patient)just said he wanted to kill his psychiatrist.
consultant (easy-going and happily married with 2 cute kids): I don't mind! Kill me, kill me now!! (in stressed-out tone of voice)
i asked her if she would like to spend sometime in HDU...囧
but that was redeeming.
before consultant left today, she forced me to take my afternoon off---
and i happily complied.
God is humorous
I finally caught up with my mentor today. Hardly saw her after neuro last yr. my gosh...even just half an hr of conversation was so...insightful,encouraging and to the point... just cleared my mind.
really therapeutic(didn't expect her to be so therapeutic after all!)... so glad I chose her at the start of the rotation, and stuck with her... even after being suggested multiple times by seniors re: there were things she should have done for you but did not/let me know if you want to change mentor blah blah blah...
I want to become a psychiatrist like her~~~~ *starry eyes*
and i come back to the ward to discover my pt out of nowhere changed her mind abt some major life decisions and unloaded it all onto me. God is humorous, but I freak out too easily and fail to appreciate His humour MOST OF THE TIME. or maybe I really should acknowledge there is no simple happy endings? ie. we really cannot fix pts and unrealistically think their lives might be sorted out "along the way"?
I have a long way to go... God help me.
Ashes to Ashes
I have noted with some kind of a disturbing relief that I have finally become sick.
a long overdue swollen hurting throat, coryza, muscle aches, lethargy...
a sickness I have longed for 7 months ago, but never came at the time I wanted.
A time when I day by day felt I had drained all my motivation to push on for the next, and yet felt too guilty to take time off but prayed daily to become physically sick so I could legitimately rest from the daily trauma.
When I tried to think back to the past year, small and big things became so bright and shiny, that they glared into my eyes.
The seemingly endless desperation and failure ongoing from the start of the year, in stark contrast to the sheer joy and peace of the daily motions towards the end of it.
Maybe there are people around who deserve my apologies:
The poor friend who deserved a happy cozy farewell but instead witnessed me laughing hysterically as my car got scratched in the car park and wondered what really was going on.
The poor neighbours who were ready to call the police (its true!) after hearing me screaming and crying so loud because of what i thought to be the end of everything, but what essentially was just... "a bad day at work"?
and ones who deserve big thank-yous:
Friends who have kept me alive in the past year.
The reg I have so wanted but never got a chance to work with. Still I had the privilege to witness her never failing effort going an extra mile to make others' lives a bit easier, even while carrying her own burdens and stresses...
The consultant and reg who within a week completely lifted my spirit from my yearlong(even longer) gloom...
the same consultant who set the rare priceless example of genuine concern and humility combined with charisma and intelligence, that will inspire me striving to be the same in many years ahead...
and the same reg who's so therapeutic not with charisma but with brokenness and negative energy. Such is what can motivate me to push on in times I feel too ashamed to push on in my own brokenness...
And I still want to make a mention of The Professor's Death Song:
http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2011/janfeb/professorsdeathsong.html?paging=off
The last days of the last working year was dedicated to this wonderful article... I find such honesty so touching and redeeming.
I pray Christianity can continue to empower us to approach this universally uneasy concept of brokenness with honesty, understanding and grace.
I have finally become sick.
I felt this is finally the conclusion of that epic working year.
And I love such an ending to the story.
"justification"
another profound line from Mark Galli:
We human beings have a way of turning profound truths into justifications for all manner of behavior.
..............
after realising all this...
I should forgive more.
Hopeless Prayer
*how many times do I have to post this...*
but indeed... only once in a blue moon we are this honest.
Hopeless Prayer by Mark Galli
"Ask and it shall be given."
So lots of people asked that 33 miners trapped a half mile beneath the earth be rescued. And they were.
It's the sort of thing that makes prayer that much harder, don't you think?
Some people make it sound easy. "God has spoken to me clearly and guided my hand each step of the rescue," Carlos Parra Diaz, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor at the San Jose mine, told The Guardian. "He wanted the miners to be rescued and I am His instrument."
When extraordinary things like this happen, it brings out the megalomania in some people. But I think a local Catholic priest had it right: "God has heard our prayers." Lots of prayers from lots of people.
And it was given.
When this sort of thing happens, I feel like I'm being set up. If prayer never "worked," I could deal with it sensibly. I could just give it up. Or give up one type of prayer—intercession. Just stop praying that God would do this or that, change this or that. Prayer could just be communing with God. But when God answers prayer like this, it sets up this god-awful expectation that God gives to those who ask.
"Ask and it shall be given" is a nice, warm saying, but it should really be, "Ask and sometimes it will be given." Or more realistically, at least in my prayer experience, "Ask and once in a blue moon it will be given."
Answers to my prayers happen so rarely that I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED, when they happen. I'm not talking about everyday prayers—for safe travels or healing from a cold. God seems to take care of travelers and colds whether I pray for them or not. I'm talking about prayers for things I really care about, people I'm really worried about—that a friend might come to know Jesus, that a loved one will be healed of cancer, that a relative will give up drugs. There seems to be an inverse prayer corollary in my life: the more important the prayer, the less likely it will be answered. But indeed, once in a while a big prayer is answered—like the college friend who became a Christian, or a church member who was healed of cancer—and my jaw drops and my eyes fill with tears. I'm astounded, again, that God would answer prayer.
This after living the Christian life for over four decades.
* * *
When it comes to the REALLY BIG prayers, well, I'm a hearty believer. I regularly pray for peace on earth, but it hasn't done any good. Still, Jesus said it would happen, and so as far as I'm concerned, this prayer will be answered.
Some day, far in the future. That's the rub with REALLY BIG prayer. It's so far in the future that it feels pointless to pray it. It's so assured of happening—whether I pray or not—that you think, What's the use?
And yet Jesus tells me to pray such prayers: "Our Father … thy kingdom come." Pray for the thing that's going to happen whether you pray or not. Pray for the thing that is so far in the future and so unimaginable that you feel silly praying for it.
He's also the one who said, "Ask and it shall be given." I'm pretty sure he meant this for big and small prayers, and everything in between.
Ask for things that are likely to happen whether you pray or not.
Ask for things that are unlikely to happen.
Ask for things that get answered sometimes but not others.
Ask when you feel like asking is selfish. Ask when your asking feels foolish. Ask when you feel hopeless.
And it will be given.
* * *
It's that last state—feeling hopeless—that characterizes my prayer life most days. I have so few important-to-me prayers answered that I'm afraid to pray for such things anymore. Who wants to be disappointed with God again?
So I find stories like the answered prayer for the Chilean miners more irritating than inspirational. As a CNN story says, the miners "showed us there is hope even when the worst seems certain." Well, for me when the worst seems certain, I have the hardest time having hope. Sorry, CNN. Lesson not learned.
Fortunately, having a hopeful feeling when the worst seems certain is not a Christian idea at all. When the worst seemed certain, Jesus pleaded with God to avoid it. It was not a prayer confident of bright tomorrows: "Take this cup from me. But not my will, but yours be done." It was prayer grounded in the realism of unanswered prayer, to a God who is to be prayed to because he invites us to do so whether we feel like it or not, to a God who runs the universe splendidly, whether we pray or not.
Here's the lesson I have learned from Jesus, a lesson reinforced by four decades of failed prayers. It doesn't matter how I feel when the worst seems certain. Jesus didn't say, "Ask when you feel hopeful." He just said ask. And he said it will be given.
What exactly will be given is not entirely clear! When it will be given is not noted! How it will be given is not specified! Jesus is being his usual elusive self in this enigmatic saying.
But two things seem clear. First, we are to ask God for things that are important to us, no matter how we feel about God or prayer or the thing prayed for. In Jesus’ theology of prayer, there is no hint that prayer is the way we transcend desire, as if having desire was a sign of spiritual immaturity. Desire is apparently what humans do, something woven into the fabric of our humanity from day one, a divine gift, the first hint that we are made for something outside ourselves, a something that can only be realized by taking the first small step of asking. Prayer is not a way to overcome desire, but the first thing we do with it.
Second, once we announce our desire to God, it’s his job to deal with it. Prayer is not manipulating heaven to fulfill our desires. It’s putting what we desire into the hands of a loving, if inscrutable, God and letting him fulfill it in his time, in his way.
Of course, sometimes he’s gracious enough to answer it in our time and in a way that makes sense to us, like reaching down into the bowels of the earth to raise those who were as good as dead.
