I'm so distracted by everyone else's passions that it's difficult to find my own. There are advocates everywhere (my friends included) who persuade you to take up their cause, and for awhile, I am inspired. I am inspired until I realize that I am motivated not by their cause but by their passion. Their passion moves me, and I feel that maybe if I had a piece of what they fought for, I would feel that passion too. But it doesn't work that way. What works for one person does not necessarily work for someone else.
So I'm still stuck looking for a cause to fight for, and consequently, no passion. I just don't seem to care enough about one thing to really take action. I care about everything a little bit, just enough to get by (get by what, I'm not sure). But I don't care enough to read through all the data, scour the arguments, and critically think about it myself. I don't care enough about those issues.
That is also what makes this hard. It's a lot easier for me to say what I don't care about than what I do care about.
Deep breath. Okay. Let's really try this. A list of things that do rile me up somewhat:
Anti-abortionism. I am pro-choice. I just don't understand where people get off saying that your body and your baby is subject to my beliefs, and therefore, I will impose them on you. Maybe pro-choice isn't the best word, but taken literally, I support the idea of having a choice. I support people who think abortion is wrong; I support people who think it is fine. And officially, I support the idea that both these populations can coexist without forcing their ideals upon one another.
Gender/Sexual discrimination. This is very vague, but in my mind, I'm just thinking of people who are anti-homosexuality. How can you be anti an -ality?
Evolution. Ugh! Okay, maybe this is what I'm really passionate about. I hate it when people say "I believe in evolution." It's weird. You don't say, "I believe in math," do you? Evolution is not a belief; it is a fact. There is evidence. The other problem is that putting it in the same sentence with "believe" makes people think it's comparable with religion. Wrong, again. Evolution and religion have nothing to do with one another. It's like...social studies and history. They're different, obviously. You can't read a history textbook to study for a ss exam. But it's easy to make the mistake of substituting one for the other when you ask something like, Why does war happen? From a history point of view, you can say, This man made that rule but this one crossed that river, and that's how it started. From the social science perspective, you could say the war was driven by ambition and greed. Neither answer is wrong. You're just answering the question in different ways, maybe even answering different questions.
Hm...that's a rather short list. Maybe I do know what I would be passionate about, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Although, when I think about it too much, part of me starts thinking that I don't really care that much. I feel this all too often--dampening emotions and their importance. It's something I found to be too reflexive for comfort, but because of it, I think that I would enjoy emergency medicine. I think I need something as spontaneous and shocking as EM to push some feeling into me. Then again, maybe that too will backfire.
I shadowed a radiation oncologist recently, and my strongest thought was, He seems a little immune to humanity. Does that make sense? How does that make sense? How can you be immune to humanity? But that's what it seemed like. I watched a woman breakdown because she realized she had cancer, and I watched her sister fight for her (fight whom? I don't know). Throughout it all, the doctor didn't react. He wasn't rude nor was he empathizing; if anything, he brought a little calm to the situation, but watching from my perspective, he didn't react. I guess if you're working with dying patients everyday, you have to be a little stoic. Maybe it's mental self-preservation.
I hope I never have to close myself off to save my sanity. When I become a doctor, I hope I continue to feel every tearing emotion my patients feel. I never want to become immune to humanity.
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