What am I here for?

Over my three years of medical school, I have had the opportunity to make new friends, and so many acquaintances. In my third year, one of them moved from being just an acquaintance to being my roommate. We, therefore, not only got to share classes, but also to share life, in some way. When you reside with someone, and have to look at their faces when you go to bed and when you rise from it, isn’t that sharing life? I can only guess what marriage is like, and shudder! To some point, our academic and career goals seemed to converge so much that it almost seemed like we would be the greatest duo in medical school, yet not quite so. After a few months, I have had to step back and ask myself what it was that I really wanted from life. Both Njoroge and I certainly hoped to be great doctors in the few years to come, we hoped to be successful and turn back the tide of privation in our lives, but soon it has become quite apparent that we won’t take the same path to attain our goals. Our destinations bear some semblance to each other, but our roads diverge, and a glaring fork-road it certainly is.

Medical school is a sort of agglomeration of students who have crafted legacies for themselves. It’s a community of diversely skilled and different comrades who, clearly, by diligence and unwavering commitment, have been able to make a name for themselves in whatever they set out to do. When we see all these flowers in their lives, we want to blossom in the same exact way. So many of us have taken upon ourselves pursuits that weren’t ours for taking. Down the road, our life has never been so unfulfilling and burdensome. We cannot rejoice when we are living a life that is not our own. As much as we all want to be successful, our paths up that ladder are so different. I have had to understand that just because someone else is doing spectacularly well in Forex doesn’t necessarily mean that I will be successful if I try it out myself. The same is true for online marketing or whatever it is called. I have intentionally avoided mentioning anything that would have a medical connotation to it, as I have lately been made to understand that I never know for certain which exact field I may have to venture in in future. Neither do I look down upon those who trade Forex or do online marketing. Some of them are actually driving by now, while I am still trying to make my way in the world. Did I want to be like them? Yes. Right now, do I want to be like them? Goodness no! We do give honor to whom honor is due, but we do not have to follow the path they took just so that we can get honored as well.

Our lives are beautiful when we take the pen and write our own stories. No story is beautiful if it's not original, if anything, it’s intolerable. Those who have done well, amazingly well, are there to guide us in our path towards our greatness, not their greatness. They can only teach us the indispensable values and kind of deportment that is requisite for success in any frontier, and that most often goes back to diligence and sacrifice. I am sure there is no one in the world, who has done amazingly well, by his own efforts and not on the basis of wealth bequeathed to him by family and the like, who has not had to pay the price of diligence and sacrifice. There is a price to pay for anything we wish or hope to have, sometimes, it even is our souls. When we don’t live as well as we should, when we don’t give our best, we pay a price for that. We all have heard that if we think education is expensive, we try ignorance. There is a price we pay for ignorance. There is a price we pay for our indolence and our unwillingness to plod and strive. And there is a price we pay when we take other men’s strivings on ourselves.

I have always wanted to be a neurosurgeon someday. But even with the sublimity the field is known for, it’s all for nought if that will not allow me to serve my purpose to the world. The question each day has now become, “what am I here for?” If that isn’t what gets me out of bed in the morning or keeps me from bed at night, then is it really what I am here for? When I finally become a neurosurgeon, would I be of use to the world in the best way I could ever be? I wonder?

Sometimes, the path less traveled on in Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, becomes the only worthy choice we can make. If getting rich, if becoming the greatest neurosurgeon in the world can keep me from fulfilling my purpose, is it worth it? But then, what really is my purpose? What road am I called to take?

Day by day, I am drawn to think of the first devotional teaching in New City Catechism by Collin Hansen and Timothy Keller. “What is our only hope in life and death? That we are not our own but belong, body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Savior Jesus Christ.”

In the end, whatever happens with my life, my prayer is that God will be glorified. I may not be as successful as I would want to be, as my family would expect me to, but whoever I will become in the years to come, may God be glorified. Whatever I will do, whatever my hands will excel at, whatever I will fail in, may God be glorified. Because I belong soul and body, in life and in death, to him, and not even to myself, not even to my family. As uncertain as this may seem, I am convinced that my destiny is secure in God. I would love to be successful, but what path exactly am I to take there? I cannot afford to be anyone else. Neither can you. So, what about you, what are you here for?