Several times I've started and stopped versions of this post, not sure what the focus or point is or even if there is one. I’ve had the great fortune to get out sailing some more and was in a race — as crew, not my own boat — on Wednesday
The past week has seen the onset of northern Ontario summer. That is to report: actually hot days, muggy feeling sweat that won’t stop in the glaring sunlight and finally the mosquitoes feel like they might be giving up. But then they re-emerge hungrier than ever. So that’s also summer along of course with black flies.
I have undertaken this description of the new adventures that retirement from active engagement from the world of work entails in the hopes of gaining and sharing insights or so I promised myself. Needless to say the fear of unbridled narcissism being the underlying motive exists. But that’s impossible to disentangle from other, better motives. “Look at me!” cries the self-focussed, self-indulgent person who however lacks insight completely.
I’d still hope to give something back to this world from which I’ve received so much, quite possibly undeservedly.
Anyway we are all free to look at, or look away; and to share (or not) what drives us, so I hope. Understanding my present presupposes an honest look at my past or as honest as I’m prepared to be at this moment and keeping in mind the frailty of human memory and the tendency to self deception.
There were times on my life when I asked myself “when does it start?” I distinctly recall thinking that I was waiting for some indication that I was now living, as opposed to the prelude to life that I was in the middle of being stuck in. I don’t ask myself that question any more. There isn’t a specific date that I could point to as being transitional but there must have been one and I must have been about 24 years old: in 1989 perhaps, a year in which I experienced one of my several brushes with death. Maybe it was an expression of relief as in “I’m still living”. I crashed a motorcycle on highway 403, heading into Hamilton, sustaining a distal femoral fracture and requiring screws for repair of same, it took several months before I would walk again unassisted and six years before I entertained the idea of riding a motorbike.
Two years after that crash, in May 1991, I graduated from McMaster University’s Arts & Science Programme, and was accepted into Mac Medicine the same month. I’m pretty sure I knew that life had started by that point. My then-girlfriend (and future wife (and slightly further into the future, ex-wife)) received her acceptance letter the same day. We were quite happy with that but there some less happy days on the horizon.
Brushes with death can be instructive to recall.
A serious bout of pneumonia occurred in my early childhood in a time where the antibiotic choices were far more limited: I have been advised that some experimental possible beta-lactamase resistant antibiotics was ultimately tried in a hail-Mary and it worked.
God knows how many other near-death experiences I had that I don’t recall.
I do remember sitting on an empty hay wagon being towed by a tractor and immediately before the pin that held the tongue of the trailer to the back of the tractor popped out, I and my friend moved from the front of the wagon where we were sitting with our legs hanging over the bed back to the middle of the wagon. The wagon landed in the ditch in a pile of rocks while we sailed unharmed over the wreckage and landed in the grass beyond.
Let’s not forget the motorcycle crashes.
Is there some unrecognized guardian angel who could be bothered to look out for me?
Don’t take anything for granted.
In any event, I don’t intend to recount all the stupid things I did that could have snuffed out my light but for some reason didn’t.
I’ve always loved studying. Not that I always applied myself to the degree that retrospectively, I might have. Regrets.
The study of medicine was never tedious for me. I loved being a student, where all I needed to do was learn.
After all this time, I’m thinking of going back to school now. Although the end may be different, I think the motivation may not be: through learning, I wish to discover who I am.
And thereby perhaps figure myself a way through this mess.
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