Wow, May has been quite a whirlwind of a month so far! I spent the first seven or so days of May at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, held in New York City this year. I not only learned a ton, but also caught up with friends from Michigan and Stanford and had a great time exploring all that the city had to offer. I found the Big Apple to be extremely accessible and look forward to visiting it again soon.
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[1. Started the first day of the conference by participating in my first Free Comic Book Day (the first Saturday of May, apparently)... 2. And ended the last day of the conference as a member of the Colbert Report studio audience!]
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The very next week I was in St. Louis with my mom and dad celebrating my younger brother's undergrad graduation from Washington University. I couldn't be prouder! (Fun fact: St. Louis is the birthplace of both toasted ravioli and gooey butter cake, both of which our family had the opportunity to sample during our stay.)
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[1. The view from the Gateway Arch (an obligatory tourist stop); 2. Me, my bro, and his college friends.]
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I arrived back in Dayton this past Saturday, and it was the following Sunday that inspired me to write this post. I was lucky enough to be finished with work at the hospital by 10 AM and was trying to think of what to do to make the most of my time. That was when I remembered that the Paul DeWolf Memorial Hero Run was being held in Ann Arbor that day. For those who might not know, Paul DeWolf was a friend of mine from medical school who was killed in Ann Arbor this past July. (I shared some thoughts in this post that I wrote a month after his death.) To make a long story short, remembering the run and finding out the run was scheduled to start at 2 PM inspired me to semi-impulsively spend twelve hours driving up to Ann Arbor, supporting my friends who had organized and were participating in the event, spending some time with M4s prior to their departure to residency programs across the country, and driving back to Dayton.
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[1. Reuniting the Phi Rho Sigma Class of 2012 at Paul's race]
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The inspiration for this post actually came when I was still in Dayton looking up the event's start time. I Googled "Paul's race" (before thinking of adding "DeWolf" to the search term), and what came up were a few Bible verses by the apostle Paul that make mention of "races." The verse in particular that stood out to me was a verse I believe was referenced during one of Paul's many memorial services:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4:7, ESV)
The concept of "finishing the race" stayed in my mind as I made the trip to Ann Arbor and I continued to ponder on its meaning this week. For Paul, his life's race was finished sooner than anyone would have guessed. It was finished sooner than anyone would have wanted...but I guess that's my point. As I watched all the participants run the course on Sunday, especially the recently graduated M4s, the message I wanted to convey was to be aware that the race of life can change at any moment. None of us knows exactly where the proverbial finish lines to our own races are. In fact, none of us knows what the course looks like in the first place. We might have started running on a track with organized lanes and numbers only to find out that the track changes into a cross-country path with hills and valleys. I would go so far as to say that there will be times when the event changes entirely, from running to swimming to skiing to climbing to biking to jumping, like some crazy triathlon/pentathlon where the component sports are unknown ahead of time and the time spent in each sport is unpredictable. We must be prepared to find ourselves in situations we never trained for. We must be prepared to face challenges we never knew would come our way. We must be willing to accept, even embrace, unanticipated changes in our preconceived life plans, not with disappointment but with an acknowledgment that we have completed the run and now it is time for the swim.
If you think about it, the road to becoming a doctor is well mapped out. For the most part, one must complete college, attend medical school, and graduate from a residency to become a fully licensed and board-certified physician, a journey that can take anywhere from eleven to fifteen or possibly even twenty years depending on what paths and detours one takes. Anywhere along the way, even after completing residency and starting our own practice, we might discover that the race we've been in is not the one that we thought was mapped out. If and when we come to that realization, our natural reaction might be to panic or become unsettled. What should reassure us, though, is the fact that we had successfully traveled down this current road despite using the wrong map. With the help of family, friends, and loved ones, we can always chart a new course. We might not know how the race will end, but we can know that we will finish it alongside the people we had met along the way.