This new year of my life is starting out in such a way that I felt compelled to write about it. For one, it has brought me back to writing. What you'll find in this post will probably be a lot of reflective nonsense, but maybe your year started similarly. I hope it did. But the way that mine started is very representative of who I am at this stage in my life.
For one, I woke up homesick, which is not all that surprising, but at the same time it is. This is pretty typical during the summer months and warm days that make me take a second to close my eyes and yank myself out of a flashback of me taking a step out of the front door of my grandparents' home into the beating sun. The sound of this morning's call for prayer caught me off guard as I forgot that it was not the mosque next door singing the adhan but rather my dad's iPhone. I was also deleting old emails when I found pictures from my PCRF medical mission trip last summer and realized that at this time last year I had booked my flight for the busiest and most inspiring month in Palestine and Jordan. I remember thinking how 21 would be different.
So here I am at 22 realizing how much a person changes in a single year and it the changes started with that trip that put in the homes of families who did not have much but wanted to give everything (they also happened to be refugees, but they are much more than just that). I ended up in a center that housed a year-round school and summer camp for autistic children, who at one point used to be seen as a burden no one wanted to carry as there were no places that could grant them an education. I was in an OR for 10-12 hours a day, watching surgeons reach across their own borders and boundaries and establish bonds and friendships via the language of medicine and the art of the connection of neurons, muscles, and bones that weave together and make our body.
I found myself thinking back to those moments as I wrote my English senior thesis on the Palestinian identity and had conversations with my professors that revealed my own search for my identity throughout the year. There is a part of me that breathes and sleeps on the secrets revealed in a stanza of poetry that highlighted an oppression and spoke it to a colonizer in his own language. A part of me dreamed of standing on a platform surrounded by people whose beliefs are different yet similar to my own so we could prove that we could live together and love one another. Fast forward to graduation when that actually happened.
I also found myself in little hole I had dug myself after thinking that the only reason I loved medicine was for the people's lives I could change abroad. I wondered if I could go through a process that tested me every step of the way and made me question everything I thought I knew about myself. Could I accept another career that was similar to what I wanted but not yet there? Could I live in the shadow of a person who became the person I dreamed of being? Absolutely not. So I'm still halfway through this journey to medicine. But I'm halfway. Every day there is something new (even if small) that brings me closer.
This year made me question the art of writing and love it at the same time. I watched the English lover and the future doc in me fight to win me over. I questioned which of them was right. But as I reflect on this year of growth, change, some disappointment and even surprises, there was so much passion in every step of the way. There was so much support coming from every direction. And I realize that every effort was made to keep me together. So here I am, whole and content with where I am. I am less of a person without either one of the two passions in my life and trying to pick one actually made me a pretty crabby person to be around. That was enough for me to realize that I could not be one or the other because they both make me feel complete and whole. So don't try to make yourself less than who you are because of what is "right." You don't have to do what others did to be right. Do what makes you you and maybe that's why Allah gave you multiple things to love: because you are less of a person without one of them.
Here's to a new chapter, a new day, and a true self with all passions combined to make you the person YOU should be. My plan is to take this time that I have before the next step of my medical journey to write about it all and continue to put both of my passions together to use. :)
For one, I woke up homesick, which is not all that surprising, but at the same time it is. This is pretty typical during the summer months and warm days that make me take a second to close my eyes and yank myself out of a flashback of me taking a step out of the front door of my grandparents' home into the beating sun. The sound of this morning's call for prayer caught me off guard as I forgot that it was not the mosque next door singing the adhan but rather my dad's iPhone. I was also deleting old emails when I found pictures from my PCRF medical mission trip last summer and realized that at this time last year I had booked my flight for the busiest and most inspiring month in Palestine and Jordan. I remember thinking how 21 would be different.
So here I am at 22 realizing how much a person changes in a single year and it the changes started with that trip that put in the homes of families who did not have much but wanted to give everything (they also happened to be refugees, but they are much more than just that). I ended up in a center that housed a year-round school and summer camp for autistic children, who at one point used to be seen as a burden no one wanted to carry as there were no places that could grant them an education. I was in an OR for 10-12 hours a day, watching surgeons reach across their own borders and boundaries and establish bonds and friendships via the language of medicine and the art of the connection of neurons, muscles, and bones that weave together and make our body.
I found myself thinking back to those moments as I wrote my English senior thesis on the Palestinian identity and had conversations with my professors that revealed my own search for my identity throughout the year. There is a part of me that breathes and sleeps on the secrets revealed in a stanza of poetry that highlighted an oppression and spoke it to a colonizer in his own language. A part of me dreamed of standing on a platform surrounded by people whose beliefs are different yet similar to my own so we could prove that we could live together and love one another. Fast forward to graduation when that actually happened.
I also found myself in little hole I had dug myself after thinking that the only reason I loved medicine was for the people's lives I could change abroad. I wondered if I could go through a process that tested me every step of the way and made me question everything I thought I knew about myself. Could I accept another career that was similar to what I wanted but not yet there? Could I live in the shadow of a person who became the person I dreamed of being? Absolutely not. So I'm still halfway through this journey to medicine. But I'm halfway. Every day there is something new (even if small) that brings me closer.
This year made me question the art of writing and love it at the same time. I watched the English lover and the future doc in me fight to win me over. I questioned which of them was right. But as I reflect on this year of growth, change, some disappointment and even surprises, there was so much passion in every step of the way. There was so much support coming from every direction. And I realize that every effort was made to keep me together. So here I am, whole and content with where I am. I am less of a person without either one of the two passions in my life and trying to pick one actually made me a pretty crabby person to be around. That was enough for me to realize that I could not be one or the other because they both make me feel complete and whole. So don't try to make yourself less than who you are because of what is "right." You don't have to do what others did to be right. Do what makes you you and maybe that's why Allah gave you multiple things to love: because you are less of a person without one of them.
Here's to a new chapter, a new day, and a true self with all passions combined to make you the person YOU should be. My plan is to take this time that I have before the next step of my medical journey to write about it all and continue to put both of my passions together to use. :)
Comments
Post a Comment