another oldie and embarassingie, but a goodie

wow, i figured out a way to open some old sparkle reflections i've carried around with me... they were saved as WPS files, lord knows why, and word had it all scrambled, but i realized that it was still retrievable.

and man, the season of reflections the summer i got kicked out of highschool are REAL bad... it's funny, cause i have this 18y/o patient, son of bangladeshi professional class immigrants in the bronx, who comes to me with patellofemoral syndrome (from soccer injury) and self-admitted depression, seeking counseling. So, i manage his overall care, but i don't do the counseling... but talking to him, he sort of comes across as arrogant, thinks he's smarter than everyone, but also with feelings of alienation, negative thoughts, low energy, poor sleep... really suffering. so, obviously i feel so much empathy for him, but still put off with his pompous attitude...
until i read my reflections from when i was his exact age! i sounded like the definition of pompous! which is, i'm sure, how i will sound now, if i read myself years from now. nevertheless, i certainly don't regret what a silly child i was back when i was a silly child, so the lesson here is to not only realize that my patient is just a person trying to do his best in life, but that all beings in all circumstances, are just doing the best they can do. and that's something to help me empathize with everyone.

by the way, my fave definition of empathy (though not consistent with internet Merriam Webster): the ability to understand someone else's experience AND the ability to communicate your understanding to the other.


soooo.... here's that reflection, dated 10/1/01, a little over 8 yrs ago. I thought it was interesting enough to copy and paste because i am in a similar situation nowadays, new life in a new situation, with a new "role" to play in society. and my reaction to it back then is similar yet also really different to my reaction to life as a bronx doc now. (which reminds me, i plan to write a postive vibe-ing post here since so often i only write to vent bad days rather than conscientiously reflect on my experiences).




Shuchin Reflection #3

I’m exhausted. Not physically or emotionally or psychologically or spiritually or any other –ly word. But, at the same time, I am. This summer, though I was only complaining and waiting for the school year to start, was much more direct and concrete. I went to sparkle, went out every few nights, and was out on the weekends. Same kids, sometimes I went to Baton Rouge, same activities. And yet I complained that life was stale and those kids were stale and the circumstances were stale. At Tulane, it’s the same it some different way…
I think I spread myself out too thin. It’s supposed to be a mentally healthier way to look at life: have a variety of pursuits and connections with your environment. I feel like I’m juggling the many things I have to do, the many things I’d rather do, the feelings I can’t help having, the feelings I feel I’m supposed to have, baggage and expectation and compulsion and commitment. They all seem wrapped up together. And don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to make this some bitchy reflection. I’m quite optimistic of where I think my life is going and I feel quite in control of the parts of me that I usually feel are out of control. But I feel drastically unconnected. Being at a new school but being tied down to your past sucks. Of course, the home life restricts me from going out, but it’s more than that. I don’t feel a part of Tulane, I don’t feel a part of freshman life, and I don’t feel like a college student. I juggle my intellectual pursuits: I have Sparkle, academia, personal dimensions of all of that… but it’s juggling. It’s scheduling it around… what? Maybe stuff that matters. That Maslow article made me think a lot, though many of you might not have read it. What really matters to me? The Right Thing has been taught, retaught, shoved down my throat. Not that I really want to do the wrong thing. But it’s so hard to tell when things such as what makes a person happy is qualified by people that are nothing like me.
I don’t know where this is going, but I’ll spin it all around to make my original point (hopefully). I feel like my life is a video game system, and each segment of my scheduling book is one of the little cartridges, and each game has rules and goals and legitimate rewards, but they each have nothing to do with each other except that I’m the main character. I don’t quite know what I’m complaining about, but I might be used to having more centrality. Lsmsa, as terrible as it was, was still a place where you know everyone and they all know you, you learn and eat and sleep and have sex and make friends and break rules and do homework and complain and exercise, all in the same one-mile radius. And I fit in so well, the enemy of the state I was over there, I was still an integral citizen to whatever the hell was going on over there. At Tulane, and in most parts of my days, I’m a zombie, a shell, a foreigner. I’m not trying to sound jaded, God knows that I do, because I have heart in what I’m doing, most of the time. At sparkle, I’m excited (or as much as I can be at goshdarn 8 in the morning) to be there, at soccer I’m excited, when meeting people I’m hopeful, in classes I’m anxious for new material, with the family (on good days) I’m happy that I’m blessed as I am, when I’m chilling with New Orleans acquaintances I’m in good spirits…etc. But I’m not really there. Most of these situations, all of my interactions are robotic and so are the people I’m interacting with. Even the kids at Sparkle. They come to a camp or whatever they think it is, learn some chemistry stuff, learn some math stuff, hang out with kids like them… but are they really there. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to regular semesters instead of the summer, maybe ‘cause it’s early in the morning, but those kids are there like they have to. There are exceptions, but it’s not like there are some kids that are closed up and can be worked on and nurtured to a truly honest connection with learning or people or themselves. Some kids, with their behavior and attitude and countenance, just make me feel hopeless for them and for everyone. They, too, are juggling this Saturday morning activity just like everything else. The summer, as most of you know, was terrible because of my INCIDENT, but I retained a sacredness for my life, even on the worst days, because I just considered it all so precious. Now, even on my best days, with a smile and with joy in my heart or whatever, I can honestly say it wouldn’t really matter to me what I was doing at the moment. And that scares me about myself.
I’m looking back at some of this to see how retarded I am. I am. But let me try my best to stay on track: maybe I’m the one that’s stale. Or not a maybe… I don’t want to make it sound like I planned out this reflection to point out the inadequacies of life and society and existence, and then I did some genius move and made it sound like all of that is a reflection of me or something all poetic. No, the possibility of myself being stale is just as valid as anything else; I’m trying to look at all this hella important dilemma of mine as objectively as possible. Hmm… I know I’m on the right track, I feel like in the past years, through all my mistakes and shit, I’m making insanely awesome progress from where I am to where I want to be. I think, though, that every so often, especially when everything calms down, I feel myself getting too situated and too accepting and I see all that as a rut. And as I cycle through different motivations for different motions in my life, be it for the day or for the semester, I can never re-use another one. I always strove for, as I called it for myself, a unifying principle for my life. Something that, for any situation or problem or delight, I could say “this is all connected to [insert unifying principle here], which is connected to everything else, which connects me to everything and everyone.” Honestly, I did not mean for it to sound like this, but it does seem like I’m referring to God, depending on your religious orientation.
That’s very interesting, for me at least. I didn’t know I’d end on this, which is a good thing because now I have a topic for another reflection. Maybe it’s time for a change…