Chapter 50: Good Choice, Kid
Beautiful chaos of a Buddhist writing a book manuscript. May 2020.
Tomorrow is the last day of my first cycle of chemotherapy and radiation; it is also my last true shift of my medical residency. Strange coincidence.
I think back to the naïve, nervous intern I was when I started medical residency three short years ago and laugh a little. I think I’ve lived a million lifetimes since then. My program has been nothing short of phenomenal, and I am endlessly grateful for the gifts (even the difficult gifts) my medical residency has given me.
Just over three years ago, I remember going to my pre-interview dinner to meet many of the University of Minnesota’s internal medicine residents. I was so nervous for this dinner. After four wonderful years of medical school at Northwestern in Chicago, I was ready to come home to Minnesota. I knew very little about the UMN’s medical residency program, but I hoped, prayed, and wished that I would love the residents I met at this dinner. In short, I did. I loved every single one of them. These doctors were kind, smart, passionate about medicine, determined, yet also down-to-earth. These were my people.
I left the pre-interview dinner knowing I would rank the University of Minnesota as my number one choice for residency. On my drive home, I passed a billboard with an advertisement for Cutie clementines. The slogan had a clementine with a thought bubble saying, “Good Choice, Kid.”
“Good Choice, Kid,” that clementine said. I took this as a sign, smiling as I drove past. I never forgot that strange clementine message. Clementine, three years later, I can proudly say, “Thank you, it was indeed a good choice.”
Jokes aside, I am feeling all sorts of sentimental for the beautiful life I’ve lived these past three-years of residency. Residency introduced me to wonderful new friends, taught me patience, offered me opportunities to learn more medicine and empathy than I knew was possible, brought me to Thailand and…. well, you know the story from there.
The Dalai Lama says, “One thing can’t be doubted, the “possibility of a quality” is within us. It is called prajna. We can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being better. Simply reflect on that.”
I reflect on this and feel so grateful. We have the possibility of being better. Even when we feel hopeless in all things and in all ways, prajna, the wisdom to become better, stays with us.
This week, I finished my last shifts of medical residency, my last sessions of radiation, my last pills of chemotherapy (for now), and submitted a complete book manuscript to my publisher.
Through all of this, what kept me going was an indescribable feeling, a motivation, a determination. I never knew it had a word until I read the Dalai Lama’s Book of Daily Wisdom and there I saw it, prajna.
Prajna: a Sanskrit word meaning wisdom, intelligence, “best knowledge,” the possibility to understand the true nature of phenomena, among other things.
In Buddhist teachings, prajna refers to a curiosity, an inquisitiveness that can be applied to all aspects of life. From the simplest questions to the deepest, the only way we find answers is by this endless curiosity, this drive to become better than we once were.
If you do not practice Buddhism, prajna, may have a slightly different meaning to you than it does to me, but regardless, I like the concept that even when we are in the darkest of days, the hardest of times, when we have prajna, the possibility of being better, we can keep going.
Fondly,
Courtney
© CB2020