Yesterday

My patient died. She was only 32 years old. A year older than me. She fell in her apartment and never woke up. Her family was faced with the decision to keep her body alive with medicine or let her go.
They chose to donate her organs to people in need. A brave choice.

It got me thinking about life. About my future.
If we knew we would die tomorrow or next year, or next month or in ten years or twenty, what will change?
If I knew I would not live to sixty, with family to dote on, my garden to tend to and stories to write and boat to sail on, what will change now?

I stumbled on this Bible verse written by Solomon, the supposed wisest man amongst the writers of the Bible and he said that our ambition is usually as a result of our jealousy and envy; of coveting what another has.
I caught myself in a lie recently. I had been striving to ‘be the best’ and just last month, I had an eureka moment. Why do I want to be the best so bad. So I can look good, and be respected, and feel good? I knew it was fickle, dependent on moving parts. On how people see me. On comparing myself to people.

I decided then—and everyday I depend on God for his help— to practice medicine, my main jam right now, for the joy of knowing the body. To bear witness to how amazing and complex and smart our bodies are, and enjoy the ride. I might be slower to learn than others or faster than others, but that doesn’t change anything, because I’m me, learning and growing at my own pace.
Could this be what Solomon meant when he said that life is fickle? We labor and labor and labor and for what?
We might as well enjoy the labor itself instead of waiting for the harvest of the labor to rest and enjoy.
I thought about something else, if I knew I would not live to enjoy the harvest, why should I bother with planting at all? But Solomon already covered that. He said that folding our hands and choosing apathy will not lead to a life of enjoyment but even more nothingness.

There must be a balance.
It is better to have enough, just enough to fill a hand and be filled with patience, and joy and satisfaction, than to have two fist fulls and still be chasing the wind of comparison, thinking it will lead to satisfaction.

What I’m saying is: The length of our lives is not what matters. Jesus died at the age of thirty-three. The point is to live each day to the best of our ability in connection with God.

Being disconnected from him is a kind of death worse than our bodies dying.
Life is precious. I want to be present in as many aspects of it as I can, while maintaining my connection to God and living out of love and acceptance and not fear.
All of us are different and unique.
Regardless of how long we live on this earth, my prayer is that we spend our time living from love. Spreading love, and doing away with the distraction of comparison and perfection.

Father, when we notice that our strive for more is so that we can match up to another’s lifestyle, grant us the grace to stop and go back to living from you, because you are love. May your love shine through us, into the world.