I’m Tired:

Tired. This feeling when your eyes feel like closing. When your body aches. When it’s telling you ‘close your eyes Anish. Just fall asleep. All will be ok.’

That’s how I’m feeling right now. And yet the ability to persist through being tired is what makes people so resilient. To push through everything. How many people wake up at 4 am every day, prepare their kids meals, leave to catch a bus to go work a job where no one appreciates them, only to go work at another job because minimum wage is so low, and then to get back on that bus hoping they’ll see their kids again at night. Hoping that their kids are able to be in school, not getting in trouble and listening to their teachers.

Those people are tired. Me, I’m just making excuses. Life is so simple for someone like me. Sitting at home, working in a job I can do entirely remotely, getting paid to sit on a computer all day talking to strangers over Zoom and writing emails. I’m a lucky one. My life isn’t hard.

That’s not to say we don’t struggle. Everyone struggles. Struggle is a human experience. Everyone understands it no matter how big or small you are. But how you choose to define your struggle is up to you. You can use it as motivation to work harder and be better so you don’t have to struggle anymore. Or you can get down on yourself and feel sorry for yourself because you’re struggling more than others.

I choose the former. Use that struggle to be better. Show people that you have the ability to persist through struggle and get to where you want. This is the other thing I don’t think enough people think about. Where do you want to be? What do you want to do? What are you really working for?

If you’re a single parent or someone working a minimum wage job, your struggle is survival. To feed yourself and your family by whatever means necessary. You don’t have time to sit and think about what you want in life because you have to constantly worry about the next meal and next paycheck. I feel for those people.

But a lot of the people I know who are working, particularly as physicians, what are they really doing it for? For themselves? I don’t know about that.

Medicine is hard. Being a doctor is hard. It’s a grind. Showing up every day for people and working in a service job while trying to balance the bureaucracy and hierarchy in a hospital, while also trying to study to prove that you know enough to be qualified, while also trying to get research done so it shows other people how ‘qualified’ you are. Are most doctors really doing all of that for themselves? I don’t think so.

A lot of doctors are stuck. Their parents, friends and society tell them that being a doctor is a great career. It’s stable, you’ll always have a job, and you’ll be helping people. But that’s not the whole job. Those people don’t tell you about residency. About working with people that are rude and treating patients who are racist. About grinding in your spare time to do research on subjects you don’t care about trying to impress people who don’t really care about you. About working 30 hour shifts with no sleep. They don’t tell you about all of that.

My parents told me the biggest fallacy of them all, which is what I’m sure every young doctor hears. ‘Oh residency is hard, just wait. Once you’re fully qualified it’s so much better. You’ll be much happier then.’ But will you? If you’re not happy today, are you really going to be happy doing basically the same job but only less hours? I’m not so sure.

Happiness is a concept that most people think will come once they accomplish a goal, or get to a specific place. ‘I’ll be happy once I become a fully qualified doctor. I’ll be happy once I have a million dollars. I’ll be happy once I can buy a really nice house or a sick car.’ But that happiness is only temporary. People only realize once they’ve reached the goal that it’s not all that it’s meant to be. Sure, you can be proud of the journey it took you to get there, but if you’re not striving to be happy every day, that happiness won’t come down the line.

This is why more people need to discover what they enjoy doing. Sometimes that enjoyment won’t pay the bills so it’s great to keep the day job as a doctor or whatever else you do. But you have to constantly be doing things that make you feel happy. Make sure happiness is part of your daily life. Whether it’s painting, dancing, running, talking to family/friends, being outside, or mini putt. You have to find a way to do more of those things in your life. This idea of chasing something that doesn’t exist right now for potential happiness in the future is foolish.

You have to love the grind and the journey. Happiness is something that can be achieved only if you work for it. No one is happy all the time and most people that look happy all the time are definitely not. Side note: check on your friends/family who always seem happy because they’re often the ones carrying the most burden and don’t have people to talk to. Happiness feels like a baseline emotion that’s also connected to other things like purpose and fulfilment.

Some people are happy when they have their kids and family around, and yet they choose to work 100-hour weeks to earn more money that will never give them their time back. Capitalism in North America is a never-ending cycle of a chase for money and greed. It’s a competition between the haves and have nots to see who can make the most money. But it can take you down a dark path and makes you lose sight of what’s really important. Yourself, your family and your happiness.

Don’t forget to stop and think sometimes as to why you’re doing the things you’re doing. Sure making 10 million or 100 million or a billion dollars is great, but I’d much rather make less than that and be happy with the people around me.  Don’t keep chasing money because you’ll lose sight of what’s important.

It’s ok to be tired. Just make sure you go to bed being happy with the choices you’ve made and the path that you’re on. You’re ultimately in control of your own happiness and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.