Finding yourself

Sometimes everything feels like a monotonous script, we are constantly running after one thing or another. We are always in a hurry to be somewhere, to be get something done and when you are there and have done that task, what now? Then we look for something else. 

These things came across my mind but I never gave them much thought until recently when I started reading books for pleasure. I call it a pleasure rather than leisure because there's this reward, this feeling of achievement when you read something and can connect with it.

I used to enjoy reading medical guidelines, the heaviest textbooks, I would get them and make notes, annotate things on my books, make pocket guides so that I would know the up to date management for the diseases I would most likely see in the hospital. These guidelines were not easy to read, but they lead you somewhere, while I felt content with what I was doing, a couple of months later when my internship ended I realized that to me hospital and patients was the only thing I knew. 

I did not know myself, when I collected my experience certificate I was at a loss of what I was going to do next, since the past one year everything revolved around the hospital and my duties, from the food I ate to the clothes I wore. I used to dress formally but with the constant running here and there, the formal shoes did not do my knees any favors and yeah, I just did not have the energy to put my wardrobe together anymore. So came the jeans, joggers and T-shirts into play, out went the proper meals and welcome subways sandwiches, KFC and McDonald's, all because I had to adapt to this life where I had a call on every fourth day and what not. When it suddenly came to a halt, here came the real confusion. 

Who am I? I could not answer that question, frankly I still cannot answer it well enough but at least I have an idea. What did I want to pursue in life? Was it a career in medicine, or did I love writing? What do I want to do with life? How many friends do I have? Why the hell am I even asking myself these questions, am I not supposed to know them? Why did I make it all about the hospital and my job, it was an internship and it would've been over in a year, so why did I make my life revolve around it? 

I had not a single clue, and then suddenly I started to have an unexplained desire to read books. Like anyone who's new at anything, I had no idea about what to buy and what to read. I had read the alchemist, and I have also talked about my experiences in the bookstores. I saw someone's whatsapp status with the book subtle art of not giving a fuc*k in the background. I decided that this is what I was going to read as the first one, after reading the book a few things that came to my mind were that "you give a lot of fucks about things that you should not give a fuck about in the first place" and the other one "don't try."

When you don't know yourself, you don't know what to worry about and what not to worry about. Think of it like this, it's your first day at the hospital, you're a new internee, and you have no idea what kind of patients you'll be seeing. So every time you see a patient with chest pain, the thing that comes to mind is heart attack. Even though when you filter out the differentials by rationalizing at times you reach a conclusion which is far more benign, acidity, or in some conditions, it is truly a heart attack. But as you gain the experience of practical life, you become better at management and putting your knowledge at the relevant fields and staying sane, but this happens once you know, when you know you simply are able to avoid things which do not need to be worried about, but when you didn't know, then everything felt like the most important or the crucial thing ever!

When you read a book, you are taken away from reality, be it for a few minutes or hours, once you are away from the world and in someone's creativity mixed with your imagination you begin to think. As you read those sentences, a picture is being continuously painted in your mind, you see things the writer put out but through your own eyes. Here is where the magic happens, you will read some lines and then say ah, and as you go on further you find a smile making its way onto your lips and then as you're putting that book down, you tell yourself that it was a good decision to read. 

It all comes down to being able to put yourself in an environment free from your presumptions and assumptions. As you continue reading, you will find the ability to question things, more importantly, to question yourself. When we run after one thing and then another only to never be satisfied and see ourselves still running after something different, we lose the ability to question our self. Cause if you question, you will have to stop, and when you stop you will lose your spot. The constant running, the unhealthy obsession with materialism is never going to end if you don't put a stop to it. If you don't stop, you will never be able to find yourself, and this is not something that happens overnight.