Why Do You Fight?

Last night, I finished the Wheel of Time series. 14 books long, each book being 600-1000 pages apiece, and excellent writing throughout. I've been reading it for around ten years, though it was put on hold quite a few times 'cause it was still being written, then the author died, and a new one had to take over.
And then I finished it.

One of my favorite themes from near the end of the series was the question of what the characters were fighting for. The series ended in the Last Battle, in which mankind makes a stand against the forces of the Dark One. Everyone, regardless of gender or employment or nationality, joins in with the battle. But the question is asked multiple times, first to the main character, than to a few of the vast array (some 2000) of minor characters.

Why are you fighting?
-Because I must.
No, that's not good enough. I know what it is to be a soldier, to know that you have to fight regardless. There is a difference between a man who fights for kingdom and a man who fights for money as a mercenary. They both fight the same fight, but one means something. Why do you fight?
(Paraphrased)

That was the conversation between the main character, Rand, who is to face the Dark One himself one-on-one and save the world. This conversation sets him off to rethink things, and to become the ideal one that the world needed.

It's a real question though. Why do we fight? Why do we keep trying to help people in a fallen world when we know it's all going to end up doing nothing in the long run? Why do I keep working on school and learning, and put myself through so much frustration to keep everything in balance?

At one point, the answer was simply "because God told me to." It wasn't a wrong answer, but it wasn't "good enough," as Rand's father makes it clear in those books. My answer, I suppose, is just that if I take the effort to look past myself, I see other people. And if I can do something, anything to help someone else, that is worthwhile. And if I have the opportunity to do so with a higher degree of excellence, then I have the responsibility to do so.

To drive me onward, I still have those images of Ugandan people in terrible pain, of that patient who was having seizures and had to have a catheter put in, but since the hospital had no catheter, they had to use a small feeding tube, and then despite the work put into helping him, he died the evening following when I had been observing him. Several different tests were being run for the myriad of problems he had, and yet to my knowledge, they never even knew what killed him. I could do nothing to help him, and neither could the doctors.

To drive me onward, I also have the image of a close friend of mine here at school who walked away from her faith about a year ago (I think). I remember when she asked me what kept me believing in God, and I told her that it was just how much I needed Him. I referenced academics in particular, since that does tend to be a place in which God plays a large role. She said that she didn't have the same problem, that she tried to do better at school, and then she did better. No God required. So my honest answer did nothing to help her. She isn't turned off from the faith entirely, but she isn't a Christian right now. I'm one of her best friends here, and she mine, and for the first time, I'm actually terrified that someone is going to hell. It becomes more real. Of course, all I can do is what I would have done regardless and be there for her and hang out as usual. So I continue to be honest.

Slice of Time

I sometimes have a strange concept of time. It comes in part from a concept conveyed in the book Paradise Lost, in which God takes a portion of Chaos and transforms it into the world in which we live. Chaos is personified, as something from which God does literally have to borrow. It turns out to not be a problem at all however, because we realize that Chaos is limitless. You can take a piece of it, and because it is infinite, that piece you took becomes nothing in proportion.

For whatever reason, I often view time this way. When I look at my life, my schedule, the days coming up, and I think to myself, "I really don't have time to do what I need to do," I look at it and realize how infinite time is, and that though I need to utilize my time wisely, time is more vast than I can comprehend, and even if I cut out as much as I can for what I must do, there is always more to be had.

It's pretty abstract, but it stuck with me since my early years in high school. Actually, that might have been 8th grade. I was advanced (back then).

Memoto Camera

http://memoto.com/
Watch the video on their website. It's a camera that takes pictures twice a minute. You just wear it and it does the rest, capturing life as you live it. It'd be a cool graduation present, kiddos.

Why

My friend, Claire, asked me tonight what made me so very passionate about being in medicine.

The answer used to be that God told me to. I was prophesied over, and it was confirmed. God telling me to wasn't a wrong answer, nor was it an insufficient one while it was the only one I had. However, when you are writing personal statements for schools and telling people exactly why you are working so hard and attempting to get into such a challenging career, you need to know the answer thoroughly for yourself. You cannot, with great success, do what I did in writing about personality and your unique past and activities and things, not without a real reason. That, of course, is the reason why, in preparing to go into a professional workplace, you are required to do an internship, to shadow someone in your chosen field.

So when I went to Uganda to obtain my field experience, I went there for the purpose of learning why I want to be a doctor (beyond the fact that God told me to be one). And there I obtained the memories that I hope to hold onto forever. Honestly, I feel like I hardly accomplished much more from that month-long trip beyond finding out why I want to be a doctor. We were untrained, the leadership was inconsistent, and I felt utterly and completely useless.

I remember going into a separate room in the lab at the hospital in Kamuli, Uganda, where they kept a lot of technical equipment. One machine they had could calculate the CD4 cell count (immune-response stuff in cells that decrease in the presence of AIDS). If I remember correctly, a count at 150 or below meant that the patient would receive treatment, 'cause their case was bad enough to receive medical attention with the limited resources the hospital had. So if a patient's blood was bad enough to show up at 157, they would not receive treatment. Life hangs in the balance by a few numbers read on a machine. And medicine has advanced enough that receiving treatment could have drastic effects on the life expectancy of the individual. (More info on that at http://www.aidsmap.com/UK-Life-expectancy-on-HIV-treatment-improving-shows-importance-of-prompt-diagnosis-and-treatment/page/2101259/)

I have an opportunity to go to Kenya this July. It will be with a team with consistent leadership, that trains well, and that keeps you working hard throughout the trip so you never feel useless. Yet I do not want to go. I have so many memories in my mind of people in pain, of empathizing without having a hope of making a difference, that the thought of going to Africa again, even though I won't be working in hospitals, seems unbearable. I need to be able to do more. They will have children there that they treat for AIDS, at clinics set up at orphanages we visit.

I mean, what is it worth if I can preach or be an example or show that I care if I can't even really help??? I don't think I could bear spending $3,000 (or asking others to) just for the sake of letting my personality and the love of God radiate from me. I could be learning to do something tangible for them. If God tells me to go, of course I'll go, but without Him leading me directly to it, I don't think I could allow my feelings of being inadequate and useless to travel there with me, to be a hindrance and an obstacle for the team.

I Obey Dreams

I had a dream in which our team that went to Uganda was watching a film. In it, children were being treated for horribly disfiguring skin diseases. In the dream, I was struck with the same painful thought that flooded my mind the entire time I was in Uganda: I wish I was trained to actually do something. In the dream, I realized that the fastest way to get the basics of such training would be to become an EMT.

Thanks to that dream, I'm going to try to become an EMT in my year before medical school. Of course, I plan to also take the MCAT, work a job, shadow a physician, and take some classes.

New Year (2013)

Before the end of this year, I hope to have obtained my second degree, to be working in a hospital, and to have finished applying and interviewing for medical schools.

Aside from that, there are a few things that itch at me, that I want to do, and this gap year in between undergraduate and medical school is apparently a good time to do those things.

I want to write. Poetry especially, but also other avenues of creative writing. Maybe start on the book of humor I always intended to write. Or my autobiography.

I want to be competent in regard to medicine and terminology and junk. It seems stupid to me that I can be a pre-med biology major and still know so little about medicine.

I want to go to Disney World. The main inhibitor there is that I have to find someone to go with, who can be just as excited about meeting all the Disney characters as I am. I've had many dreams of going back to Disney World.

I want to go to Europe. Not for school, not tagging on the end of some other trip, and not for family. Simply for the sake of soaking it in and appreciating it. I want to go to Paris again, though it does kinda suck to go without a significant other. Yet that's kinda how all of my favorite places tend to be, so I'll deal, and it'll probably inspire poetry.

I want to read classics. I'll be finishing the last (14th) of the Wheel of Time books as soon as it comes out in a week and a half, and I think it's time to move on to reading what everyone else has read. I don't want to get hooked onto tv again.