to make some difference...

It's like swimming in some endless ocean, I feel sometimes, where we're tiny miserable creatures, trying desperately to come out of it, with no sense of destination, no sense of direction, no strong hopes of getting out of it, no purpose for getting out of it or for staying in it... moving hands and legs tirelessly, bearing the pain, with no joy in doing it, the waves in the form of different strange unforeseen incidents dragging us pushing us to random directions. Life, sometimes, seems like a meaningless occurrence, a negligible phenomenon with everything summing up to a big zero, meaningless, waste.

Something happens then, someone calls, asks for something, someone say thanks, someone blames... results we're waiting for arrive, either we succeed or we fail, something pleases the mind, something hurts it making a deep stabbing wound—we get some feedback... the endless moment of meaninglessness ends making us to feel alive. Part of this universe—we constantly interact with the part of universe other than us. The interactions, our actions and reactions, efforts of the body to stay alive or of the mind to know about life, the thought of we impacting rest of the universe enables us enough to keep on trying doing the seemingly meaningless tasks.

Maybe it's negligible, maybe it's short lasting; maybe we're too tiny and short living to affect the universe, but to the universe we can sense and track and keep record of—to the universe of us humans, we can hope to be something more than negligible... almost anything we do, our any decision, any action whether thoughtful or mindless can affect our world: our world with randomness as an important deciding factor, luck as a major controller; we can't control luck, but we can learn to be wise enough to control our wish to control the luck, to know the factors we can control, to be consistent in our efforts of controlling the controllable... maybe that's what we need to make some difference—significant, and essential to sustain our humankind. 

life of management

It's not just wondering about the diseases of individual patients, nor is it just paying heed to tendencies of groups, epidemics, mentality and educational levels of patients... it's not just following the government rules, or adjusting with current political trend... answering to media, local over enthusiastic political activists eager to make issue of anything to gain some political benefit, managing a team of workers elder to me by decades, paying attention to jobs of newcomers, their friendships and rivalries with each others, answering to taluka and district offices... managing economy of scanty drugs, the sanitation of operation theatre and the instruments... managing the government funds, salaries of workers, and government schemes... being a medical officer is being more a manager than a doctor...

It's hard to keep in touch with your medical knowledge, to handle everything according to standard norms, the conditions being slightly strange or not as mentioned in books... x ray machine is here though not properly trained technician, doctor is here—me of course, though not proper health facilities like even basic drugs... patients are uneducated, politically alert villagers wanting me to diagnose and treat every disease with the x ray machine and whichever drugs I have. PHC is a referral service, they say, but they don't provide any means to convince the people to move to higher centers if they show signs of  malignancies, heart diseases or diseases not treatable at PHC level... People look at the referral chit as a proof of the doctor's incompetence, or ignorance—overall lack of interest in their health condition. Many are not willing to invest that much time and energy for their own health or health of their relatives...

I'm out of my big lovely standard books, in real world, among real patients—posing conditions similar to those described in my beloved books but in highly different circumstances, learning to deal with people with very different viewpoints than that of me—very different from one another, to convince them, to handle their differences and sometimes to make use of them, to handle unforeseen circumstances. Maybe this extended part of medical education is worth a year....

It requires strength

"I'm no more a romantic person living in some dreamland or a perfectionist craving for best or an innocent sweet child, honest, always true to her morals... I know it's nearly impossible for life to be perfect, dreams might be just fantasies, not always meant to be achieved; morals are just luxuries only lucky fulfilled and superhuman can afford, or they're rules of some mad obsessed ne'er-do-wells, or are some chants in fairytales—never working in real life. There's no true love, there's no passion; devotion is a meaningless word... selfishness being the first predictor of success, luck being the second. Loving others without expectation is killing your own soul. Trusting someone is risking yourself, promises being stepped down as cheap talks... or bluffs... cheaters are winners, believers are fools—born to be flop. I'm not describing some nightmare, or experience of some negativistic person with some personality disorder... this is real life, alas, not a fiction...."

It's very easy to be cynic in this world, series of experiences pushing us to pessimism... but thankfully it's not all desert. It requires strength—a lot of strength to see the meadows, the rivers, the waterfalls and the jungles... True love is here—able to surpass all fictions, pure care isn't mythological, here is comfort, here is trust... faith is here to make us relaxed. It's not harmful to rest in dreamland when we know what is real... It's not harmful to attempt mending the future while living in present. Number of efforts may not lead us to success, but they're bound to increase its chances—if done in correct direction. We're not passive limp non-living objects moving only with forces from outside, neither are we reptilian brained animals thinking only of me myself and my present tense... we can gain knowledge, can plan the future, can think strategically while still protecting our morals... we can get joy by doing something for our loved ones; we're humans, we're born to celebrate our humanness.