© T.H. Warrior – Tender Hearted Warriors
– S.S.P. & E.L.C.
A few weeks ago, a spine-chilling headache kept me up all night: So off I went the following day to my doctor. As it turns out I had an infectious sinus which needed to be operated ASAP!
I’ll never forget the unimaginable pain right before surgery, and the following moments when “magic” happened—The doctor gave me „the shot.“ I guess he forgot to ask me to count from 10 to 1 backwards. But, it took me longer than 10 seconds to go into the lights— Best few seconds of my life. The lightness, the carelessness, the weightlessness, the ease. It was just perfect.
-„You seem awfully occupied this morning, doctor,“ said the nurse.
-„I’m fine, but I could have done better. I mean what’s the point of all this. Cutting people up on a Sunday,“ answered Dr. Schweizer.
-„How could you have possibly done better, doctor? You are 18 years younger than me, and you are a doctor!“ said the nurse with an envious overtone.
-„Well, get this, Mary: One of my childhood friends has recently opened a laundry shop, put two students to work, and they are shoveling money for him. He himself simply stretches his legs, drops by night after night, and collects money without laying a finger on anything. And me? Yeah, I guess I am one of the few who can call himself a doctor, and most importantly, my parents are proud. „
-„C’mon, doctor, you’re rich, thin, and popular. What else do you want?“
-„Oh Mary, I hate myself.“
These were the last words I heard before falling into the best daytime nap I had ever taken.
And then I woke up, and I remember I had gone immediately back to the last sentences I heard before falling asleep: How many young professionals I knew just like myself who play the perfect role all their lives to climb the insurmountable career ladder, and after reaching the top, they find themselves envying “the launderer”, the next-door neighbor, basically anyone. They work all their lives to be somewhere, they would want to escape not long after getting there. It’s like people who spend thousands of dollars on decorating their houses to a magazine standard, and they still eat out every other night and relax in a hotel room.
My mind was busy about this for several days as I was recovering in the hospital. My life was flashing back before my eyes, just like a movie. I thought about every bully who had passively pushed me to get where I was today. And then it hit me: I became what I became not because I wanted to but because I had to. I had to run from one bully, prove another bully wrong; I had to protect someone from another bunch of bullies; long story short, I had to become something that society wanted me to be. There was already a magazine bullying me on how to decorate.
I thought to myself, from the day we learn how to walk, we learn how to be either a shark or a sheep— At times even a shepherd, keeping the sheep in line and safe from the sharks. But at the end of the day, we’re the ones milking the sheep and eating their meat. It’s not the sheep we want to save. It’s us.
Are our dreams simply results of our survival instincts?
Who are we? Should we hate ourselves because we are, either way, a part of the sheep-shark-shepherd-eating chain? Because we’re either eating ourselves or feeding somebody else? When did we stop building, planting, giving rise to, and start to demolish, harvest, and bring down?
Which bully had led Dr. Schweizer to become a doctor? His alcoholic father or abusive uncle?
Which hating envious bully was talking that day about having regretted becoming a doctor? High taxes, high expectations, or was it just him hating who he’d become?
As simple as the matter was, I could not possibly stop thinking about him. Why did he say what he said? Why would a young, good-looking, successful doctor hate himself and envy somebody else?
Living a life full of self-loath, is like living with an inner bully—the worst of the worst of the bullies. This one criticizes and judges at any moment and forces us to consider ourselves worthless, unsuccessful, bad, ugly, dirty, fat, malicious, or strange. This esoteric bully makes the victim believe that the people around them see nothing but the worst in them. This can cause constant anxiety, eruptive and almost illusive self-awareness, and feelings of intolerance towards our existence or personality.
-„you’re all set, Ms. Peterson?“
-„yeah, I guess. Could you just do me this one little favor?“
-„name it.“
-„could you please bring me a mirror?“
-„ha-ha, your date coming and visiting?“
-„no, I just wanna see my face. One side feels swollen, and not seeing it for myself is freaking me out even more.“
-„of course, but just so you know, it’ll go away in 2 days, tops.“
-„thank you ..?
-„you can call me Mary.“
-„thank you, Mary, I appreciate it.“
I thought looking at my big swollen half-bruised face would take my mind off my scary thoughts. But, little did I know it pushed them even further. If I could only see one side of my face, either swollen or normal, how could I possibly know which side looked better? How could I favor one side?
Would Dr. Schweizer still hate himself if he had never known that owning a laundry with two students leads to a better, less hateful life than being a doctor? I keep saying better, but I can’t help but wonder: even if put to comparison, who is to tell which side of my face looked nicer? Some people may find a skinny face a sick face, and some might see everything swollen as fat.
I mean, I think acute pain and opium pills and rain and a hospital room make everyone a philosopher, which got me thinking about an interesting question one of my philosophy professors posed in one of his lectures years ago. It’s called the “trolley problem”:
„Suppose you are the Needleman of a train, i.e., the person who determines whether the train moves left or right by moving a lever. Your workplace is next to a village where a train passes by every day. Ten playful children play on the train tracks regularly.
Unlike the other nine kids, there is a very polite, future law-abiding kid who obeys the rules and always goes by the book, and listens to you carefully. One day you notice that the train reaches the intersection in three minutes. You rush to the children and ask them to get off the right rail and continue playing on the left rail as the train is supposed to cross the right rail. After all the warnings and noises, the result is that only the polite boy, following your instructions, gets off the right rail and jumps to the left one, but there are still nine other children on the right side of the tracks, recklessly playing.
You only have less than a minute left to decide. If you steer the train to the right, you have killed nine children, and if you steer to the left, you have killed the one kid who did exactly what you said.
The point is, there are only two options: left or right? Which one will it be?“
Of course, the professor didn’t wait for 100 students to give him their answers. He simply posed the question and left. Usually, we’d get up immediately after the lecture, heading for some caffeine after his diazepam of a class. This time, everyone simply sat still in their seats. And we were simply thinking.
It was never about the answer. It wasn’t some sort of a psychology test. A philosophy professor doesn’t care if you are an introvert or extrovert. He simply wants you to do three things: Think, think, and think a little bit more.
I mean, who was I kidding? If this hospital room had cable, I wouldn’t be thinking about my boring professor from 10 years ago.
My pops used to say: „Vacuity makes you think.“
Aside from him being a literature show-off and wanting to use all the big words in a wise way, I never understood how an empty-headed person could think?
This was until that night in the hospital. Then, it hit me, and it hit me hard: he didn’t mean your head being empty but your surroundings being empty.
Where there is absolute silence, minutes start to stretch, seconds stop to go by as fast, and you begin to think.
I had turned 30 just a couple of weeks before that surgery. That night in the hospital, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t on the run until my health stopped me. Deadlines, limits, targets, goals. They all make you run. Bullies make you run. Wishes and dreams accelerate your run. But still, you run.
This thought was like having taken out my beautifully-raised chocolate cake from the oven, waiting to be frosted.
Everything was coming together.
Dr. Schweizer hated himself because someone yelled run, and he ran.
He didn’t think twice about the reason why he had to run, where he was going, or what he would achieve. He simply ran, not to be behind everybody else.
He’d stop thinking. All he could think about was the fact that he wanted to get to that finish line. But he never thought about after having reached the finish line.
I realized I could not stop thinking about him because I could see a lot of myself in him. Young, not bad to look at, successful, I had almost made it, but the thing that I thought would make me the happiest was scaring me the most: reaching the finish line. Was that all that I wanted? Had I spent all my youth on becoming better? Had I fallen for a stereotypical societal race? Making it?
That night I knew something.
I was never ever again going to run just because I heard a gunshot.
Only a few people experience anesthesia in their lifetime. Some even get addicted to the drugs post-surgery. They simply need that constant drop of pleasure—the silence.
Only a few people know what it’s like to have the noise canceled out for you without the noise-canceling device.
You go in that operation room, naked, without make-up or nail polish. You simply sleep.
I had experienced that. And I could have never had a better night’s sleep than that.
And I made myself a promise.
From that night on, I was going to sleep thinking about my own thoughts and worries and not the society’s. Thinking about my own role and not the launder.
I was going to master the fine art of not giving a crap about others‘ opinions about my life.
It was my show.
My good other 30 years to come.
I was the leader.
I had the lever.
Whether I go left or right, doesn’t matter.
As long as I think, and I take my shot.