Lessons of Life

Life expectancy for man is increasing day by day. Taking it to be an optimistic eighty for an Indian woman, I have still passed the halfway mark in lifespan ages ago and what do I have to show for those years...

This irritating voice in my head makes its presence felt at the most inconvenient times. It reminded me of the time our science teacher walked around school wearing his T-shirt inside out and back-to-front for one whole day. Unfortunately the reminder came along days later and at a most inconvenient time. It was also just as he got to the height of his harangue on my many shortcomings; my barely stifled giggle multiplied my punishment for that particular day. But the voice often gives me company, and I never feel lonely; it also keeps me on my toes at all times by impartially informing me of my exact worth.

Now on my fifty-second birthday it chose to make itself even more aggravating than usual by questioning my life’s achievements.

Here you are, more than half your life done, and what do you have to show for it? Did all those days and months of breathing and walking around teach you anything? What have you learnt from life that you could impart as wisdom to your children?

Well, firstly I have learned not to question the direction, but to go down the most appropriate and available path and make the best of it. We can’t all walk down well-paved floodlit roads, but we can make steady progress down any path with determination and faith.

Talk realities here, what made you take those particular paths in life?

Funnily, those around me, whom I loved, easily influenced me. I do not think that is a bad thing, if my choices made them happy, and did not make me unhappy; well, that was fine with me.

I was an eager and inquisitive child, full of queries about everything, and that trait may have been less obvious as I grew up, but it always remained. I liked answers and logic, reason and sense.

Uh-huh. I remember you even questioned God.

It was not God I questioned but meaningless repetitive rituals, fixed elaborations of ceremony and blind faith. I grew closer to God by the questioning than many who followed without thought. This faith stood me in good stead in troubled times; with one blink, one deep breath I could delve into an unwavering belief that if I was right, I could not go wrong. I could endure much of the trials I later faced.

Well, did you want to be a doctor to help people then? Is that where faith led you?

My favourite subjects in school were Mathematics for its fixed and dependable structure; and English with all its convolutions and defiance of logic. I reveled in the logic of one and the wild untrammeled beauty of the other. In fact when I went to college; the interviewer, the Vice-Principal, asked me why I wanted to take up the combination of Physics, Chemistry and Biology. He said with my exemplary English scores I was a natural for that branch. I remember telling him English was my joy but Science was my interest.

Medicine was just accidental; I might have taken up Microbiology or Biochemistry except that my father had this wounded expression on his face when I told him my choices.

I was the youngest of three, and he said “So, you too do not want to be a doctor?”

I tried for admission just to please him and to my surprise secured it easily; I continued just to prove to him that it would not succeed in holding my interest. But a whole term raced by without my finding any reason to dislike it, and I was insidiously drawn into the course. I completed it without mishap.

But even your post-graduate line was not by choice, was it?

See, that is where Luck plays this enormous part. I was not the brain of the class, but nor was my intellect as abysmal as my final score implied. Murphy wrote his law that if something can go wrong it will, by observing my life. In fact he made a second law: Even if nothing can go wrong, for Jyothi it will. My practical exams were a disaster, my marks plummeted and I could not opt for my first choice. I wasted a year trying to, by applying at various institutions; then settled for the optimum ‘clinical’ branch I could secure.

I threw myself into that discipline to prove that it was not a bad choice, and it was not. Even today, I am enthralled by the delicate act of suspending a patient in the limbo between full life and near death, perfectly working in all systems and yet immobile and feeling no pain. Then one brings them back to full awareness and they ask with wonder, “Is it over?”

That is the best thing for me; that he should not even know how much pain he has been spared. My most grateful patient is the one who thinks I did nothing for him.

What is that saying you keep spewing to all and sundry? The one about surgeon’s being tailors and orthopedic surgeons carpenters, gynaecologists are plumbers, but anesthetists are like master chefs, their work is a delicate balance of ingredients...

Well, don’t say it aloud; but I feel like that maestro indeed. My colleagues would hardly agree, so I take care to sound off only in their absence.

So, that’s Career taken care of, let’s talk about an area in which you did not excel; your personal life, and marriage in particular.

You know the biggest mistake in life is not making one, but refusing to admit that you have made one. You can’t erase the mistakes in life, but you can learn from them. You cannot undo or negate but you can refuse to continue the mistake. You cannot start over again but you can start anew.

I married for all the wrong reasons, and blinded by social mores and personal needs married totally the wrong kind of person. To get married only to 'get married' is ridiculous; but that is what I did. Then, too intelligent not to realise my mistake, I refused to admit it for fear that I would be seen as incapable. I tried to fill water in that leaking vessel for fourteen long years, then my children made me realise I was a better person alone and away from that relationship. The first few years alone were hard emotionally and economically but I finally found peace of mind. I could concentrate on being a good doctor and a good mother.

Would you make that decision differently today, if you could relive events? Spare yourself fourteen tortured years?

No, I needed some of those years to really know I did my best, but it was just not viable. But maybe I would walk out before the full fourteen, maybe just as soon as I realised the children were better off with one sane parent than two crazed and angry ones. And I would never choose not to have married; that was the one mistake that gave me my children. I am blessed to have had them in my life. It was like this huge manufacturing unit, the machinery gave way without production; but two wonderful by-products came out of it, more precious than anything else it could have produced.

My whole life has been one of compromise and situational decisions, but I do not regret a single one. I learned as I went along instead of having this plan to life, knowing where I wanted to be five years from any point of time. Interviewers these days like to fire this question of where one sees oneself 'x' years from that point of time, but who can have such a rigid view of life? There are twist and turns, paths ‘less traveled’, obstacles galore; the other travelers keep moving too, and one ends up in strange places with stranger fellows. I say, go wherever you have to, but keep your faculties keen, and your will strong; allow abilities to develop according to need and befriend all you can. Life may not satisfy you, but you can be satisfied with life.

The little voice mumbled something about having to see a fellow about a conscience and that is the last I heard of it for that day. My birthday passed off without noisy revelry but rather a quiet celebration of my years. I was content.

Word count: 1438
Chosen prompt: I learn by going where I have to go. - Theodore Roethke (American Poet)
Form: Interview.
I later chose not to submit this for the "Project Write World"