Chapter 115: Beautiful, rambunctious Weeds
Today, I worked around 12 hours in the hospital. It was a busy, frustrating, and fulfilling day. As a hospitalist, my schedule is somewhat unique. I work seven very long days in a row followed by seven days of “rest.” My rest usually consists of writing blogs, prepping and performing speaking engagements, advocacy work, some relaxation, and travel. Many hospitalists use their seven days to work in hospital administration/leadership, to teach, to care for their families, to research, etc. I am incredibly fortunate to have a job that gives me flexibility, but I will not lie and say that it’s easy.
With or without cancer, an intense 10 to 12 hour day in the hospital is exhausting. No matter how much I enjoy working with my patients, by the end of each day my intellectual battery, my decision making battery, and my empathy battery are close to empty. It takes an incredible partner, family and friends to understand the patience that is needed while my batteries refuel.
After work today, I went outside into the yard with my dogs and started to water the lawn. As I was watering while half asleep, I noticed an insane amount of weeds around me. I find a sort of comforting, meditative pleasure in weeding, so I weed the yard fairly often. In fact, I realized today that I had weeded the yard just yesterday. Yet here I was, watering the grass and noticing hundreds of weeds which had sprouted seemingly overnight.
First, I thought, “Damn! These annoying weeds!”
Then I thought, “Whoa. How did these amazing weeds grow so fast?”
Despite my best efforts to rid the entire yard of weeds, they outsmarted me.
Once my amazement overtook my frustration, I started to think deep thoughts about weeds…I can’t say I ever expected to type that last sentence, but here we are.
Weeds: we can spend our lives fighting them, or we can learn to live amongst them.
Immediately after I thought that, I realized how many things we can apply the idea of strong and annoying weeds to.
Weeds are strong. Weeds are resilient. Weeds grow in places we do not want them, defying all odds. Weeds seem to grow in droughts, in floods, in insane smoke storms after Canadian wildfires, and even in nicely manicured and weed spray-treated yards.
In some ways, weeds are a lot like brain tumor cells. Weeds are also like anxious thoughts, unwanted fears, bothersome memories, frustrating tics, and regrets.
They grow and they grow and they keep on growing. We can get rid of them for a moment, but they always come back. Those damn weeds.
So, today, my exhausted brain is finally realizing that I have to live with weeds in all of their unwanted and unruly forms.
I can’t fight them any longer, nor do I want to. I respect the weeds. Really, I wish I was a bit more like a weed myself- able to grow, strengthen, and survive despite all odds are stacked against me.
Perhaps we should all aspire to be a little bit more like rambunctious, beautiful weeds. Or at least admire them for what they can teach us.
(Also, I know some of you likely saw this headline and thought this blog would be a whole lot more exciting. Unfortunately for you, I’m literally talking about the green leafy weeds that grow in our yards and not the weed you can smoke. That kind is also rambunctious and resilient, but we won’t go there today.)
Fondly,
Courtney
©️ CB2023