''whoever saves one life, saves the world entire"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPHvLtitxug&feature=related

the most moving ending i have ever seen

illness

lately i have been thinking about my seronegative spondyloarthropathy:

april is blossoming, and it's been well over a month that i haven't been able to function properly. over the course of the last 12 months, i have probably been dysfunctional in some way, shape or form, for at least 3. my right elbow and my left knee have been affected, and many of the springtime pursuits i have cherished in the past remain beyond me. i want to walk and enjoy the beatuiful weather that is all around us. i want to bike, feel the wind in my face, explore the trails with my friends. i want to play squash again (admittedly not a season-dependent sport, but still hugely enjoyable). i remember when i used to run many times a week, looking forwards to the sunday morning half-marathon training runs that gave me my first glimpses of the depth of the beauty of edmonton's maze of river valley trails.

everytime i think i'm about to get better, things get worse again. i've been on my new medication for 4 weeks now, and if anything, things have been worse since i've started. this has been taxing on my mind, as i feel my hope for a cure fades a little more with each flare-up. i know this is probably irrational but i'm losing my grip by bits. i hate being weak. i feel the world has no room for weakness. again, i know this isn't true, but again, i feel the rationality slowly slipping away. but who can i help like this? again, being irrational. i don't really need to be that physically functional to work in policy etc. etc. but surely it dampens my effectiveness. i find that is very troubling. it's like there's something you really, really want to do, something you think is relatively good-spirited and noble, and then something happens to derail you. again, irrational - not derailed, just slowed down a bit. i feel like such a lame (pun!) even for writing this, since if i can aknowledge my irrationality, and am posting it anyway, isn't that clearly a sign of poor mental fortitude?

i also think about why. well, as you have certinaly learned in medical school, the type of arthritis i have is multifactorial in its etiology, associated with HLA-B27 and various other autoimmune conditions, associated with some set of environmental? circumstances, associated, associated. but 'why' in the grander cosmic sense of things. my mind, like your mind, certainly pines towards a cosmic moral order. again, irrationality - even amongst religious folk, i can see no weave that screams of karma on the fabric of reality. but you and me believe it anyway. what have i done wrong? i have a sinking suspicion that my motivations, my aspirations, have been impure. i toy with the idea that whatever darkness zings in my mind, invisible to the outside observer but blatantly obvious to god almight in heaven, has in some way made me deserving of this.

the last thing i feel is guilt. I AM SO LUCKY. what i have is nothing. nothing compared to a childhood cancer that will rob you of your limb and life. nothing compared to someone who has this condition in a poorer setting, where physical labor is demanded daily to feed onself and where drugs don't exist. i am guilty. of telling my parents they stress me out and that i would feel better living on my own when day-in-day-out all they have done is care for me. of even posting this and hoping that someone comes along and reads it and values my attempt at some semblance of genuine honesty. i am guilty of being an 'emo', the sort of person people scoff and scorn at.

these are my thoughts. what an imagination i have.

oncology applied to life

borrowed from my amigo Joey:

I think we have a lot to learn from cancer.

Someday, I hope humans learn to break the gates holding them back from growth. Whether we perceive ourselves to be ready or not (we are ready), we will push ahead and realize our dreams. We will discard anyone saying we cannot, make use of our own resources, grow our own so that we may thrive. We will take the path of most resistance and push it aside and blaze our own trail.

It will be chaotic and some roads wind upon each other, the misfortunes of a charging crash of rhinos that cannot see what is more than a few feet in front of them. We have our goal in mind but not a clue what it looks like, only the raw desire to make it happen. I think that it will be well worth it in the end when we circumvent that which prevents us from falling, which wants to keep us sequestered to our suburban lifestyles, the mechanisms of life that say we cannot when our mantra should quite classically be yes we can.

So fellow cancers, let us be the tumor that offsets the diseases that plague this world. Proliferate.

bill

this is something a friend of mine posted just as we were graduating in '07:

_______________________________________

Meet my friend, Bill

I wish you could have seen Bill back in the day.

In college, he was one of those really spiritual guys with a magnetic personality, a real spark plug. A person who knew the Bible inside-out, who prayed with the eloquence of a Jim Elliot. When he led worship - sans band, unplugged, just him and his acoustic guitar before the fellowship group - he brought heaven, then the house, down. He was a spiritual lightening rod; whatever ministry he led glowed with spiritual urgency. Whatever event he organized - evangelistic coffeehouse, short-term missions - seemed especially anointed. A trailblazer with a prodigious gift of leadership, his fame spread on campus. He sent girls into a tizzy with his good looks and aw-shucks humor, but he never played it up. He dated, but (so I heard) with such humility and consideration that no one spoke poorly of him after the relationship ended. While others went to exotic locales for spring break, he went (unannounced and without fanfare) to the Bowery mission in New York for a one-week internship. He had dreams to be a missionary-doctor.

I had dinner with him recently. The last time we had seen each other was at graduation, over a decade ago. We were young back then, dreams and possibilities spread out before us like the expanse of the cloudless blue sky. God had a wonderful plan and purpose for us, after all. There was a shine in all our eyes. But that was back then.

When I met Bill for sushi this past week, we talked pleasantries at first, spoke of our marriages, children, our jobs. He had gone off to medical school to pursue his dream of being a missionary-doctor. He had fallen for a girl during his first semester, and had married impetuously (his phrase), a few months later. Somewhere along the track of earning his M.D., his missionary dream derailed. He got a job at a prestigious hospital, moved into the suburbs. He works hard, he tells me, to keep up with his hefty mortgage. He likes to go fishing on weekends.

When we were in college, we'd get together for dinner once in awhile. Bill would always ask me the same question at the end of the meal. He�' ask, his voice earnest: how's your relationship with God? That night, just as we were finishing dessert, I sensed him pause. He held the spoon suspended in front of him, deep in thought, troubled. Then he lowered the spoon softly to his plate, as if it had suddenly become too burdensome

"Do you still go to church?" he asked me.

I blinked in surprise. I do, I told him. I do.

He looked like he had more to say, and even opened his mouth to speak. But then he paused. His shoulders sagged a little. "That's good. I'm glad." He nodded, more to himself than to me. "That's good." He wouldn't look me in the eye.

He seemed tired, exhausted. A shell of his former self. I thought to return the same question to him, but I knew the answer already. Some things just don't have to be asked.

We ended the meal soon after that. He insisted on paying, and I let him after only token resistance. When I got home later that night, the family had all gone to bed. I walked in the darkness of the house, letting the silence seep into me. I checked in on my kids, tussled their hair. Then I lay down on the carpeted floor for a very long time, listening to the cadence of their gentle snoring. I thought of my friend Bill - hollowed-out, brow-beaten, so different from the spiritual wunderkind he'd once been - and something like sadness filled me.

* * *

I went to church the next morning. I looked at the other men in church who, like Bill, are in their 30s, are suburban fathers with a mortgage and children. I saw them take their place in the pew, sing, clap, say hello, fall asleep during the sermon, pop in a breath mint right afterwards. Go home. Start work Monday. Mechanical and routine. I saw all that, and a grayness settled into my bones that I have not been able to shake.

Because deep down, I do not think we are so different from Bill as we'd like to think.

Santa

A cute little dialogue from the movie I just watched:

"As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy..."

"So we can believe the big ones?"

"Yes - Justice, mercy, duty - that sort of thing."

"They're not the same at all!"

"You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy - and yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order, as if there is some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged."

"But people have got to believe that or what's the point?"

"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"

salads and big macs

helping

as another round of med interviews are taking place, i am being bombarded with requests for assistance. i must admit that this has beeen pretty annoying, on account of it's repetitive nature and the amount of hours that i have spend helping others.

but taking a step back, i realize that being able to help others is quite a privilege, especially when those others are your friends. it means that they trust you enough to ask for your advice, and it means that you have an opportunity to (hopefully) improve their overall utility in some way.

i have an inkling that the opportunities to help my friend will diminish in the future as our lives become burdened with more responsibility, and having to say no to a genuine request for assistance would be far worse than whatever annoyance i feel now.