another ping in the 
pocket. then, a 
pause. unseen message, or 
inattentive response. 

when should we bother, or 
be bothered about 
becoming a bother? and 

when should we 
ivy branch reach out to 
magnet attractive suns? 

when do we get to call 
strangers, and not think 
about the way we might be 
buzzing up their phones 
unexpectedly? 
unpleasantly? 
unwantedly? 

these sort of things: 
I turn to sleep on my 
left side after a month 
on the right. maybe the 
uneasy chest feeling will 
dislodge itself if I just 
get through tonight.  

I get back to work tomorrow after a long week off (during which I went through minor surgery and major introspection). Do I dread it? A little. Do I look forward to it? Not as much as I should, but I like the work.

At the beginning of medical school, I had a thought that has stayed with me: I am learning to suffer. Not something you really want to hear coming from an age that feeds on hedonism, but I had the thought and I've been carrying it with me, trying to figure out what it means. 

What does it mean to endure life, for example? CS Lewis proposed in The Screwtape Letters that a long, peaceful, otherwise mundane life poses a greater threat to faith than a sudden instance of crisis. The more time I have to live, the more I understand this: at times the sheer weight of living makes me question whether God is real when I cannot see him, cannot feel him. It seems easier to believe in Him when I have a problem and need saving from it, and so difficult to see how equally I need him when life rolls ever on without obvious need for divine intervention. Thus, the necessary virtue of faith. And the necessary virtue of introspection. 

In the same breath, the end of my medical training seems so far away. The current reality of my situation is bleak. There is little sleeping and little contact with the outside world. The suffering wears you down because you wonder: is this all there is? And everyone tells you it gets worse. Does it? Will I make it out in one piece? 

There is no guarantee that anything gets better, but to endure is to take the daily burden of suffering and allow it to chip away at your character until you come out the sort of person you'd like to be. Will suffering properly mould me into the kind of person I wish I was? I certainly hope so. 

Here's a thought: there's an old riddle (arguably by George Berkeley) about a tree in the forest. If no one hears it fall, does it still make a sound? The short explanation: sound is, by definition, a perceived effect. If no one is around to perceive, then it doesn't matter if the tree objectively made noise. There is no sound. The argument seems ridiculous and too legalistic to take seriously, but I use it as a jumping point for my own tangential thought: we exist separately from how others see us, but we also exist to other people as certain versions of ourselves. Does that matter? Or is it, like the tree argument, something that sounds good legalistically, but doesn't do anyone any good in what we call "real life"?