Breaking Free

I recently had to make an important decision for a branching point in my career and ultimately it was a question of what kind of life I want. That type of decision in itself comes down to understanding what you value. I have a ton of friends now who finished the same training I did and don’t remember who they are because of the culture we trained in. We are pressed to make life and death decisions while being sleep-deprived, hungry, emotionally drained, feeling unsafe, and balancing what is moral within a system’s failings. Ultimately it isn’t even that which breaks us, but the fact that exhaustion is considered a status symbol- the more you do, the more you are worth. My understanding of “exhaustion as a status symbol” comes from Brene Brown’s work. Her recent Netflix special “A Call To Courage” is worth watching, and if you don’t have Netflix borrow her book “Daring Greatly” from the library as it is the same content. It is hard not to be sucked into the culture in which you work because of the sheer hours that you spend there. Yet it was never about hard work because work ethic is the fibre that makes up who we are as Sikhs. It is that mistake of sacrificing every last bit of yourself, including your relationships, until there’s nothing and no one left. The statistics about physicians are shocking (in terms of depression, suicide rates, substance abuse) and now I understand why. It is not surprising that to survive, people simply mold into what others want them to be, lose themselves, and the depth of their passion because what was supposed to be temporary to “jump through the hoops” became their identity.  

I recently read a three-part series called “Resident Wellness Is a Lie” by Jennifer Berstein. She writes about her experiences with her partner who was a resident: “But here’s the thing about residency: It breaks people and they stay broken. Attending-dom [meaning people who are done their training and in charge of others] is not a magical land where the traumas of medical training evaporate in the glow of better pay and an easier schedule”; she then goes on to explain “Some attendings cope by continuing to work resident hours, not out of necessity but by choice, because they don’t know anything different…Because training doesn’t help them answer the most important question of all: Who are you?” Worse yet I think people don’t realize what else there is in life for them, the vastness to which we can experience the world when we feed our souls. She adds “… To be well is to be most oneself. To know what one loves, what brings one’s life meaning, and to pursue it to the fullest possible extent. This pursuit requires the essential material conditions of what we think of as wellness — rest, shelter, food, water, sanity — but it is the pursuit itself that finally leads us into the land of the well. It is crucial for doctors to pay close attention to cultivating selfhood, because medicine, more than other fields, continually threatens to eclipse the self.” I think she really nails the topic of wellness there. 

Going away to India came at an important time for me. I somehow made it this far because of Sikhi and reconnecting more deeply to my roots, but I had come to a point where I started sinking in my work. I'm in 9 committees and although I love advocacy, it was to the point where it was harder and harder for me to remember that my exhaustion was not a status symbol. So when I left, I shut off my social media and my emails because I wanted to detach from that world, I knew I was being sucked into something I didn't want to be. Visiting the Takhts made me realize how little my daily world is- the daily politics and the nitty-gritty of the details of our lives. Wah! How vast life is beyond that world. You go inside a Gurdwara and you here the Anhad Shabads (the voice of God), and you understand that there is a light to carry forward that has nothing to do with your physical understanding of who you are. There were no mirrors and no one cared what I looked like anyway. I didn’t need approval from others on Facebook either, because I was surrounded by love from the people around me. Standing in line to go into Harmandir Sahib, no one cared who I was, because in Sangat I was not a doctor- I was one of many waiting and longing to have a darshan of my Guru Ji. 

It was like when I left home I was embedded like a thorn, in the medical world, and when I got there, that pain was released. There was such a deep sense of home and belonging at some of the Gurdwara Sahibs that it was very hard to leave. Some places I sat there wondering how I could probably pass my life forever in the bliss of that moment, and never have another desire again. Parts of our journey were actually very difficult but in comparison to the fulfillment it was worth it. Maybe for some people going on a yatra may be about sightseeing or getting away, but for us it was about spiritual growth. One of the Gyani Jis in Pakistan said that it isn’t just about coming and matha tekking and getting what you want; that growth comes from changing the way you think and sitting there doing Simran and immersing in God’s Name. I remember at one of the Gurdwara Sahibs I was standing into the shade, and to take a picture of some flowers, I stepped out into the sun and the bricks were dramatically hotter. As I screamed on the hot pavement, I remembered the hot sand poured over Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s body, sitting on a hot plate and how much connection there must have been to transcend the physical body’s pain. My understanding of my life changed altogether. 

Coming back to my decision. It was beyond whether I wanted to be a hardcore career superwoman or not. I always knew having a balanced life with time for creating a family and personal growth and spreading Sikhi is important to me. It was about the outside pressure because I got told: “don’t waste your talent.” But I’m not and going away gave me the perspective to be confident in that. I’m spending time on what I’m passionate about and the things that keep me well enough to do my job wholeheartedly. I am spending time on things that will be carried far beyond this body’s lifetime and that I've longed and waited to do because this is my chance! So when I came back to 46 facebook notifications, 256 emails, and 95 WhatsApp messages, I realized that none of that was really all that important and I needed to look out for myself. I am feeling very appreciative for the life I have here- from the comforts of my house, to how lucky I am to be a woman and so many options for careers. I am appreciative that I have a job that isn’t repetitive but interesting and gives me the choice and ability to be able to take time away to do these other things. The freedom that life affords here is that my education has opened a new world for me. I chose this career because its rewarding and I love it, but that doesn't mean i will let it be the entirety of my being or let it engulf me alive. Rather, it feels good to be blossoming into my life’s purpose and to surround myself with Sangat that shares that. It feels good to make the decisions right for me. It doesn’t matter whether or not people think I’m wasting my talent because I see it entirely differently.

I've been working on these posts for a while and finally had a chance to finish them, hence the three posts in just a couple of days! I hope this gives you something to chew over and think about in terms of your work culture and life. 

References

Bernstein, J. (2019). Resident Wellness is a Lie (Part 1 of 3). [online] in-House. Available at: https://in-housestaff.org/resident-wellness-is-a-lie-part-1-1319 [Accessed 8 May 2019]. 

Bernstein, J. (2019). Resident Wellness is a Lie (Part 2 of 3). [online] in-House. Available at: https://in-housestaff.org/resident-wellness-is-a-lie-part-2-1354 [Accessed 8 May 2019]. 

Bernstein, J. (2019). Resident Wellness is a Lie (Part 3 of 3). [online] in-House. Available at: https://in-housestaff.org/resident-wellness-is-a-lie-part-3-1461 [Accessed 8 May 2019]. 

Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. 1st ed. Gotham.