Lesson #13: Stop Counting
As the clock ticks onwards, (just over two weeks to go to be precise), I realize I need to stop living my life in ways I can measure. My love of math started at an early age; it was so neat, so symmetrical, so full of logic and satisfaction and fairness. In math, there are no losers; even a minus sign is just another operation to perform.
In real life I've counted the As or the 100% grades I got, the awards, the presents, and of course all of the times I didn't get what I wanted and someone else did. These days I find myself counting other people's children. A med school colleague just posted pictures of her new twins on Facebook. TWINS. How is that even possible? Why do some people somehow manage to have two babies and other people can't seem to have any? I also count engagements. How many people are engaged? Pregnant? Having their second, third, fourth child? Facebook can be a bit of a torture chamber, a window into other people's seemingly perfect lives. Even though I know all too well about the positive posting bias (who posts when bad things are happening?), I can't help but covet the things others seem to be accruing while I wait on the sidelines. I know I have to stop; that the only true measure of success is the one that you create for yourself, by yourself. Eliminate others and their seeming riches (funny, money was never something I pined for) and just worry about whether or not you're fulfilled. I think what you count depends on what you have lost. If I had grown up starving or destitute, I would probably count different things. I know I have to let go of the notion that if someone else has good fortune, there is a greater chance that I will suffer, due to the whole natural order of things: regression to the mean as we call it in medicine. Whenever I had friends who got engaged after just ONE Internet date, I realized that that meant I would have more years of suffering, just to even things out. And I have not been wrong; that's just the law of the universe.
Today I ran a 5k race in support of epilepsy awareness. I didn't train, I haven't been running in months, I had no intention of doing well or even necessarily finishing, but I did, in excellent time. But it's not about the numbers, it's the feeling of being able to achieve something that will make a difference in someone else's life. I just have to keep reminding myself to stop comparing and competing and adding up all that is missing when I have so much abundance.