An Off Beat Perspective

The first time I went to the bathroom on an airplane I remember thinking, “Where does it go when I flush?”  Immediately, the image of human excrement landing on some unfortunate individual while walking down the street flashed in my mind.   I was probably about 5 years old at this time.  It wasn’t until I watched the scene in Christmas Vacation where cousin Eddie empties his camper’s waste into the sewer system that I realized the truth behind airline toilets.  Of course, this did not ease my thoughts as I pondered the idea of airlines carrying thousands of people’s poop and pee across the world.  Where did airplanes empty their “cargo”?  Who has that job?  How do they decide which country to leave it in?  With all of these questions coming to mind, I decided I would rather laugh and think about my first idea…and hope that most people went to the toilet while crossing the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.

It can be a little disappointing when you realize the truth behind a fantasy you have believed your entire life.  Like the time you realized that the reason your parents had you put your fallen-out baby teeth under a glass on the kitchen counter instead of under your pillow was not because the Tooth-Fairy may not be able to find the tooth under your pillow but because your parents were afraid of either waking you up in the middle of the night or accidentally dropping the bloody tooth into the black-hole of the space behind the bed head-board.  However, I must admit I felt a huge sigh of relief when I realized that, despite what my sister had told me, if I swallow a watermelon seed, a giant watermelon won’t in fact, grow in my stomach.

Realizations do not only happen when you are a child growing up.  They continue to happen as you age and grow as a person, intellectually and spiritually.  Adult realizations are often more shocking and harder to deal with then the seeing the secret compartment in the magician’s hat or the fact that American Furniture Warehouse indeed only sells furniture and does not sell an assortment of large, exotic cats.

Most of my life-altering realizations began as I was working at a job I hated between College and Medical school.  This is when I realized that, in general, most people work to live.  They go to work every day so they can pay to have a roof over their head and calories to fuel their bodies… so they can wake up the next morning to work…eat…and sleep again.  Perhaps somewhere in there they find time for a relationship, pop out a few kids, and carry on the genetic code.

I got really depressed when I finally figured this out.  Until that point, I had always had this magical view of the world where anything and everything I ever wanted was possible.  Where life was fun, exciting, and ever changing! But this…this wasn’t fun at all…this meant that everyone I ever looked up to…my parents, my friends, great authors and teachers, were all just people.  People working.  People paying.  We were all just people trying to figure out what exactly living life means.

Any hero I ever had in mind? Gone. Because everyone out there has what they have and is where they are because they either worked really hard or their ancestors did and they are living off of the proceeds.  What an existential nightmare!

Then medical school started and it got even worse.  I remembered the days of going to the doctor with a medical problem and feeling this sort of relief that somehow, this person could magically cure me of anything.  They would be able to take one look at me, wave their magic wand, and everything would be perfect.

Lies.  All lies.

I now know what is behind the green curtain.  Within the first week of medical school, I realized that anyone who can work really hard, memorize a ridiculous amount of information, is a good test taker, can follow a protocol/flow chart, and has the guts to gain half-a-million dollars of debt can become a doctor.  I’m not saying they can become a good doctor, but they can get a diploma.

We don’t learn anything special.  It’s just like any other job.  It just has expensive, painfully long, excruciating, training hours.  We learn how to take someone’s symptoms and place them in a box.  If your symptoms don’t fit into a box we are familiar with, we refer you to someone else who might be able to figure out which box you belong in.  Treatment goes according to your box.

“Oh, you are having a heart attack?  Let me follow the hospital protocol written right here in this handy-dandy computer program! Abdominal pain?  I have a chart for that too!  God forbid I treat you like a unique individual because the insurance company won’t reimburse me and the hospital might fire me if I don’t follow their protocol. “

Yep.  There you have it.  That’s allopathic medicine in a nutshell.  There is no magic wand and at the end of the day, doctors too, work to live.

Okay, Okay.  Stop right here.  Didn’t I say before that I WAS depressed when I figured all of this out?  WAS implies I am no longer depressed…but come on, these last few paragraphs have seemed pretty bleak right?  What is the point of all this?   Why do we still get up and go to work everyday?  What is a life with no fun?

It all boils down to perspective.

Those of you who know me may have never heard me speak with such pessimism (unless you have talked to me during one of my existential crises).  In general I’m a laughing, happy, fun-loving gal with a unique, magical, and positive look on life.  In my opinion, if we are all working and living essentially to carry on our genetic code, we might as well have some fun doing it.  Life really becomes about living.  Living for the little things.  This statement is very cliché, but I’ll explain what this means to me.

Take doctoring.  Anyone can get a diploma and follow a protocol.  But there is something special a doctor can bring to his/her patient that is not learned from a textbook.  This is where the art comes in.  It is the ability to look beyond what is physically in front of us and see the miracle in each and every person.  In Osteopathy we call it the “health”.  Eastern religions call it Ki or Chi. It is the light in all of us, our vital force.  It’s what makes us alive. A good doctor is able to see this and help their patient by making the “health” stronger. It is an amazing, beautiful thing. You really CAN help someone feel better.  The best part is you don’t have to be called a doctor to do it.  Anyone can!

Listening to a heartbeat is one of my most favorite activities.  I’m not kidding when I say I could sit with my stethoscope and listen to someone’s heartbeat for hours.  It’s the sound of life; so rhythmic and spontaneous.  In my head I know it is just an electrical impulse depolarizing and repolarizing cardiac muscle cells with fluctuating levels of sodium and potassium, but I don’t look at it like that.  I look at each beat as a miracle.  Pumping blood throughout your entire body so you can run, jump, stand on your head, eat good food, and love someone.

And babies.  We can’t forget about babies.  You could look at babies as crying, eating, pooping machines…because…well…they are.  However, any parent will tell you they can sit and look at their baby forever.  As a doctor, there is nothing quite like helping a baby into the world and watching it open its eyes for the first time.  Knowing that for that baby, every moment from here on out will be different from the next, full of growing and learning.  What a great reminder right?  We were babies once too…and we still are as long as we are alive, growing, and learning.

Beauty is all about how you look at things.  When I say, appreciate the little things, I mean, the REALLY little things.  Like health.  Like taste.  Like smell.  Like a heartbeat.  Like the feeling of sleeping in on a Saturday, eating a tasty breakfast, and watching a good movie with a friend.

There are many more shocking realizations I have made over my short time here on Earth such as the fact that a government, which is supposed to protect its people, will lie and kill millions of its own citizens just so large companies can continue making money.  Or that someone could beat their own child to death… nightmares I never knew existed actually do exist.  And I have no explanation for this.  I guess in order for there to be light in the world, there must be dark (thank you StarWars).

A big lesson for me throughout all of this has been about my perspective.  It continues to change.  Every day my perspective adapts to new (good and not-so-good) realizations I have made.  Every day I see more and more of the truth in life.  The more truth I see the easier I find it to enjoy the small and large things in life.

And don’t think for a second I regret or forget any of my past perspectives.  Oh, I remember them. You bet my kids will be getting a visit from the Tooth-Fairy.  Because I remember how cool it felt when my tooth magically disappeared and was replaced by a dollar…even cooler was the ice cream I ate with my dollar.

And every time I go to the bathroom on an airplane I laugh to myself.  Even though I know the truth.

Well…most of the truth anyway…

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