Shut up, Zach

Throughout the past year, I've wrestled with what I can only describe as what Holden Caulfield would probably experience should J.D. Salinger have written a follow-up to The Catcher in the Rye in which Holden became a 22 year old medical student.

When we're young, we're told "just be nice and people will be nice back". It's basically a blank slate that gives kids this incredible sense of possibility and innocence that people are good no matter what. If you try hard enough, success is going to come to you and people will love you and everything will be awesome.

Growing up, though, we find that, very often, this is not the case. You're not attractive enough. You're not fast enough, strong enough, smart enough. Let me just say, this is not some bullshit John Green speech that everything is going to be OK because someone is going to come into your life and make it all better. Fuck that. Life sucks sometimes. I'm 22 years old and I already know that fact.

I was an eternal optimist during my teenage years. This was due to a mixture of religion and naivety to how people behave. I earnestly believed that there was inherent goodness in everyone and that EVERY person had the want to act selflessly, despite what their current actions might suggest. I wanted to reach out to these people and help them see how life could be if they'd just let go of their pride. (I realize now, that in that way, I myself was incredibly prideful.) That's the form my Christian life took, as I've mentioned in several of my other posts.

I referenced The Catcher in the Rye earlier for a few reasons. 1: because it was a good comparison. 2: because it's a kick-ass book. And 3: that book absolutely changed my life, more-so than any other piece of literature I've yet to encounter. Maybe it's cliche, but when I was 16, I was desperate to make sense of this feeling of complacency, anger, and dissatisfaction with people. Up until that point, my English lit education had been riddled with Shakespeare, Voltaire, Homer, Bronte, Golding, etc. And while I genuinely look back on these books fondly (except for Jane Eyre), I never really experienced a definite connection with any of the themes or characters. That is, until one day, when I decided to pick up a copy of The Catcher in the Rye from the Bookstore. Most everyone in the American education system has, at the least, heard of J.D. Salinger's best known work. Most haven't read it because of how "controversial" it is.

I don't really see what's taboo about it in this day and age. It's just a whiny little kid saying "fuck" and "goddamn" a lot. (For the 50s, though, that was evidence of possession.) As I began to read about Caulfield's journey home from Prep school, I had a profound experience. I remember picking up the book around 11:30pm and not stopping until I finished it at 4am. I ate it up. Everything Holden said, I understood completely. I felt like the book had been written as a direct letter to me. 

I read it 3 more times the following week.

For the first time in my life, those feelings of angst were put into perspective and I finally felt like I wasn't the only one feeling that way. I understood that feeling disconnected from the superficiality of 99.9% of human interactions was OK. In fact, I felt like it was something that made me different. (Later, I realized that every teenager with any sort of brain at all goes through the same thing. Dammit, even I was one of those douche-y little assholes that thought they were different.)

Now, as I write, 22 years old (about 6 years later), I go through the same shit, albeit in a much more cynical fashion. Again with the cliches, I lost friends that I thought I'd have for life because they didn't respect that people aren't things to be used and tossed aside, like some cheap tool. People have feelings, people have wants and needs, people have faults that make them unique, and people want so badly to belong to someone (whether it be a friend or a partner) that often they compromise what they genuinely believe just so they don't have to be lonely. That's something I still struggle with, both in friendships and relationships.

Going back to what I originally talked about, when I was a kid, I believed that people were all trying to be as good as possible. Of course, generalizing people is stupid and lame, but realistically, people are out to help themselves at the expense of others (which, if we get down to it, is what capitalism is all about, right?). The sea of superficiality that I wade through on a daily basis is vast and deep, and I don't think I'd be able to do the things I'm doing without the small group of genuine people I've become friends with at DCOM so far. People and life end up being so much less than what we were told as kids. 

Five Iron Frenzy has a song called Blizzards and Bygones that really spoke to me as I began transitioning out of Christianity and kind of served a similar role that The Catcher in the Rye did when I was 16. There's a line that goes "...before what might be became what's already been....there's a flicker of desire, and a memory of youth, a faintly glowing fire for some truth." Hearing that played out is really powerful because there's a yearning in the singer's voice, a longing for a feeling he used to have in his youth of optimism and hopefulness. That line really hit home for me when I was furthering myself from Christianity and leaving undergrad in the months before medical school started.

As I write this, I think back on my experience at UT and see that I myself was incredibly selfish for the vast majority of my college career. Blah blah blah. I've said all that before. I think the biggest realization you can come to at this point in the game is that people don't really change (in general, at least). The vast majority of people are out for themselves, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I think we're all on guard, and for very good reason. Some of us have had our trust broken by the people we love most, some of us have allowed too much faith in others' motivations, some of us have just become jaded and cynical. Reading this, I can think of instances in my own life that fit those situations (if the use of "us" didn't give it away). 

Recently, I let something go (really, at the time it happened, it wasn't really my decision, "I was let go" is more apropos) and it really added to stress, despite the fact that I found out about it almost a year later. My point being that everyone goes through shit like that, I'm not some unique person that has such an abnormal life. The sooner you realize that, the better off you are and the better equipped you are to deal with people that haven't clued in yet. 

I always feel embarrassed about posting these things because I feel like I'm whining a lot. But fuck that.

See you soon, often, and for a very long time to come.

As always, I hope you hated it.

Only in their dreams can men be truly free.

Celebrity deaths are something I've never understood. Not in the sense of me not getting how life works, but I just sincerely didn't understand why people got so upset over someone they had never met, nor would they ever meet. Until today, it was something completely out of my field of view.

Robin Williams is dead.

The last few months have been incredibly emotionally draining for me in the sense of starting medical school, being away from my family, ending relationships in multiple capacities, and wading through superficiality from colleagues in school.

To cope, I've turned back to literature from high school and college, namely Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman and The Conduct of Life by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I talked about the former in my last post, how it's helped me really find meaning recently.

Today was my first exam, something I've been dreading for a while, but nonetheless studied for my entire last week. The point of this is not how I did on the test, but rather to account for how drained I am physically at this point. Studying for 16 hours a day really exhausts you in pretty much every aspect. I've been sitting in my apartment since getting out of the lab this afternoon, doing nothing but relaxing and procrastinating my Biochem slides I should be reviewing for tomorrow.

Just like most news nowadays, I heard about Robin Williams' death through twitter. I honestly could not believe it, sitting on my bed, trying to decompress. Despite his previous struggles with addiction, that someone that affected my life so drastically was gone really rattles me. Further, his death (at this time) is an apparent suicide.

Someone so lively, joyous, and kind killed himself. Robin Williams' own demons outweighed his strengths and the love that those around him held for him.

Depression is a term that is frequently used in place of lethargy, boredom, and dissatisfaction. A few people close to me have struggled with true depression in a way I simply cannot, and hope I never will, understand. Robin Williams' death leaves me with anger, sadness, and confoundment.

As evident by my love of Transcendentalist writing (and me watching it when I was 15), Dead Poets Society really resonated with me. I watch it every semester as school starts to get motivated. I quote it with my best friend. I quoted it during my graduation speech. Mr. Keating exhibited such a vivacity and yearning to experience the very best in life and draw out the very best from his students and peers. I wanted that for my own life. I wanted to delve so deeply into literature that I became lost in it and in myself.

Robin Williams' seemed to choose roles that were targeted specifically for me.

Dr. Sean Maguire in Goodwill Hunting reached out to a boy that desperately needed help when no one around him could recognize it. Patch Adams connected with his patients on a personal level in a system that valued detachment. I could go on and on about how striking Williams' choice of roles came to me, but I will leave it instead at this: Robin Williams was an incredible actor and comedian who brought me to tears, made me hurt from laughter, and challenged me to live a life full of meaning.

From The Conduct of Life:

While thus to love he gave his days
In loyal worship, scorning praise,
How spread their lures for him, in vain,
Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain!
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.

Love Others, Take Time to Listen.


See you soon, often, and for a very long time to come.

-Z

P.S. National Network of Depression Centers

Both Sides of the Gun

Here it is. My entire life culminates into what happens tomorrow. You know that feeling when you are on a roller coaster and you're just about to the peak of that first climb before you start the descent, at the exact moment when your stomach starts to go? Yeah, that's nothing like this.

I'm not one to be scared or stressed about shit like this. During college, if I knew I had stuff to do, I'd prioritize it and get it done rather than stress about how I'd do it. I'd just do it. But, for some reason, I am horrified of the prospect of medical school.

Maybe it's the horror stories I've heard from doctors and current M-2s, M-3s, or M-4s. I don't know. But what I do know is that I'm lucky to be in the position I'm in.

During the last three weeks, I've been in an intensive medical gross anatomy boot camp at DCOM, learning almost an entire semester of medical gross anatomy in a very small amount of time. My decision to take that course, I can already tell, was the best possible use of my final three weeks of freedom. I learned a ridiculous amount of material, I learned how to study, I learned how NOT to study, and I made some great friends and have a solid study group, right out of the gate.

Not only have I fallen in love with the school itself, but the area itself serves to affirm my decision to study here. Today, I hiked about 8 miles of the Ridge Trail in Cumberland Gap National Forest, which is quite literally 5 minutes from my apartment. I made sure to hike the section including an overlook of the tri-state area (which, I later learned, you can actually just drive to...) and had a pretty cathartic experience.

I've been re-reading Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman off-and-on for the last month or so, and I brought it along with me. I read a little up overlooking Cumberland Gap and just felt really at home. Here's the passage that I really connected with today:

"O hope and faith! O aching close of lives! O many a sickened heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh."

I forgot how fulfilling it is to sit, looking out over the earth. I forgot how small you feel when you can see for miles. I also forgot how worried I was about starting school tomorrow.

Normally, my posts are longer than this, but I think there's not much to drag out here. More than anything, I'm excited to finally get the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine.

See you soon, often, and for a very long time to come.

Hope You Hated It.

Unavoidable Sub-blogging

I'm at an interesting spot in my life. In just a few months, I'll be leaving to go to medical school (I got in, by the way), venturing out into new waters where I don't know anyone, don't really have a comfort net, and don't really know how to go about it. 


As I begin to transition from one stage of my life to the next, I find myself questioning myself concerning the validity of my choices. 
Am I making a mistake by walking the path I am?

This might be somewhat of a spoiler, but I don't think so. (I'd appreciate it if you kept reading, though.) 

From certain experiences in my own life, I've never been more sure that this is the only logical path my life could follow. (It doesn't mean I'm not scared shitless, though.) But you've probably heard this tired story about why I've chosen to become a doctor before.

This stage of life isn't exclusive to me, though. I look around me at my peers as I finish up my final semester at UT and I see a lot of things, some good, some bad. 

I see some people ready to begin their adult lives, ready to start their careers, and begin the process of establishing themselves in a community. These people have definite plans, some more solid than others, but nonetheless, they seem to know what the fuck they're doing with their lives.

But my words aren't necessarily concerning them. 

As a disclaimer, there's nothing wrong with this: If you need to take time and figure yourself out, by all means, do that. But, too often, I've seen people get complacent with Business degrees or what-have-you and sell themselves out. 

This group branches in two directions: those that just need more time to organize themselves (like I mentioned) and those that have no interest in growing up and ceasing to act like assholes. 

Recently, I ran into a guy I went to high school with whom I had not seen since then. This guy was one of the smartest people I'd ever known. Consistently, I'd envy his ability to blow through calculus or AP Chem without so much as a second thought while I slogged through it, worrying if I was good enough to do the things I wanted to do. As much as I envied him, he was my good friend just the same. He would show me pictures of these cool machines he would build at his house, and I was amazed that someone so young could know how to build things like that.

There's another guy I've been good friends with since we were 10 years old, up until graduation from high school. I earnestly don't remember NOT laughing hysterically with this guy (I'll call him Guy #2 since it'll get confusing later) every time I was with him. He was one of my best friends, and, though we both went our separate ways, I still respect the hell out of him for reasons I will explain later.

I look back on the experiences I had with both of these guys fondly, from ultimate frisbee four or five times a week my senior year, to hiking trips, to going to grab food together, or even just hanging out during classes when we should've been working. Both of them were (and, to my optimistic side, still are) great people. As Guy #1 and I reminisced on old memories, the conversation eventually drifted to the current aspects of our lives. 

I sincerely felt like a MASSIVE tool when i said I was going away to medical school this Fall, because right after, I asked Guy #1 what was going on with him. "Are you still at [the college he went to]? I remembered you saying back in high school you had dreamed of being an engineer for a long time. You are doing some kind of Engineering or something, if I remember right." His face instantly lit up red with embarrassment. He explained he had moved back to Knoxville and was not in school anywhere at that moment. (I didn't ask, but my first thought was something along the lines of money had been tight or something, but....) After a few seconds of awkward silence, he said "Yeah, I, uh....didn't do so well the last few semesters. The work took away from my social life too much." (That's a word-for-word quote.)

Guy #2 has a similar story, with different explanations to his actions. Since high school, I've had a weird relationship with him, as I began to distance myself from church and faith, while he seemed to dive deeper and deeper. He got a fantastic scholarship to a school I probably would've loved (I didn't apply because I knew I was having the spinal surgery before college), but ended up dropping out because, to him, it wasn't helping him do what he wanted to do. I thought he was being an absolute fool, throwing away such a good opportunity. However, since dropping out, he has been much happier, from the limited interactions I've had since then. 

And now, of course, here's the quote that this whole thing plays off of: 


"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble." -Bill Waterson

I unabashedly love that. It probably helps that the guy who made Calvin and Hobbes is the one behind it, but still. 

Guy #1, whom had all the tools to make his life successful but threw it all away, sold out. In this world where, as Mr. Waterson said, wealth is measured by excess and ambition alone, he chose to disregard his drive and his potential. But, Zach, doesn't the quote say that those things are bad, and that this guy actually made a good decision? I personally think that Mr. Waterson meant something other than "don't ever ever ever get a job and make money and want things because that's what everyone else is doing".

I think he meant moreover that success is measured by working hard on the things you care about, showing resolution in the face of adversity that stands between you and your goals, and doing things that make you genuinely happy. By that standard, this old acquaintance of mine sold out. He sold out his ambition, he sold out his drive, he sold out his love of building things from nothing, because the work got too hard and he didn't like it. 

Guy #2, though, is just the opposite, though it might seem more obvious he was the one that sold out at first glance. Though he began his college career with a goal in mind, he dropped out to pursue that goal just the same. I might've thought him naive and foolish at the time, but I have so much respect for him doing this because he stuck to his guns and made the right decision for his life. He's never compromised his beliefs, his career, or himself to get anything. His life has come together in more ways than mine has: he has a wife with whom he is head-over-heels-in-love, he wakes up every morning and works on things that bring him joy, and gets to spread his faith at every turn. If you are reading this, I want you to know how genuinely proud of you I am. Though he admittedly struggles financially, he is happy, and he never sold out. 

In this world of greed and avarice, you hear people preaching to do what these guys did. "Give it all up! It's wrong and it feeds into a system that exploits the misfortuned!" For some people, they are right. For most, though, our goals and dreams can't be accomplished by lethargy, unmotivated apathy, and complacency. 

Doing what you love, even if it is difficult to do or hard to achieve, is better than selling out. Nothing in this world worth having, whether it be a career in music and ministry, engineering, medicine, business, teaching, comes easy. Your resolve has to be stronger than the trials around you. 

As always, I hope you hated it. 

See you soon, often, and for a very long time to come.

2013: The Year of New Stuff

This year was undoubtedly the best of my life, so far. Here are just a few of the material things that made it great:

Music:
Schematic - "Color (n.) Inside the Lines": Dave Elkins is the former frontman for one of my favorite bands, Mae. Since they're more or less done, he released this solo record and it's a fitting continuation of the 3 EPs that Mae departed with. It's an incredibly lush, dense, and complex record that really surprised me, honestly. While I'm not a huge fan of a couple tracks, tracks like "What It Means" really reaffirm how great of a songwriter Elkins is.
Stand-Out Tracks: Outside, I Am The Car, Where's the Soul?, and What It Means.

Coheed and Cambria - The Afterman Ascension: Part 2 of the Afterman concept album. Coheed's a band I really should've been much more into, but for some reason never gave them a chance. While I like the whole CD, "Dark Side of Me" is no-contest the best. "I gave my everything/for all the wrong things. In this cold reality, this selfish war machine. Oh, this has become hell, how can I share this life with someone else? I promise you: there is no weight that can bury us beneath the ghost of all my guilt." 

Five Iron Frenzy - Engine of a Million Plots: If there is one band that has shaped me into the person I am today, it's FIF. For a nerdy, awkward 6th grader that didn't really know his place in the world, their music sincerely connected with me. Their ability to have some songs with an absurd degree of silliness and some with such conviction and sincerity amazes me to this day. They broke up in 2003, a month after I got into them. In 2011, they launched a Kickstarter that went on to break records and make over $200,000. I donated immediately, and 2 years later, here we are. EOMP shows how the band has matured in the last 10 years, with extremely brunt and sincere lyrics, and it did my soul good to be blown away by them once more. While I no longer identify as a Christian, some of the songs reflect some members' struggles with faith as well. The song "Blizzards and Bygones" really captures the feeling of wanting to cling to what you once believed, but not being able to. "There's a flicker of desire and a memory of youth. A fainting, glowing fire for some truth....Can we stand the weather if winter lasts forever?". I was lucky enough to see them in Nashville this November, talk with some of the members, and it really just blew me away that I could ever get to meet these people that made such an impact on my life.
Stand-Out Tracks: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Someone Else's Problems, Blizzards and Bygones, To Start a Fire

Streetlight Manifesto/Toh Kay - The Hands That Thieve: Here we go. Streetlight carried the torch of FIF when I got older, with the absolute best songwriting and music I've ever heard. After a lot of troubles with their record label, they finally released their last album, and man, oh man, it's incredible. All the angst and defiance reaches a peak in the words of these songs. I can't really describe this album, as it draws from a variety of influences, from ska to Eastern European to punk. I can say, though, that this is the album I earnestly believe defines my year. Best lyric: "Who'd have thought, we'd fought so long, we started to see our enemies turned into friends, our friends to enemies and we sat somewhere in the between. But I heard someone say they knew that someday that everything would fall into its place and everything would be fine. And I really, truly, honestly, without a doubt want to believe that everything will be alright." 
Stand-Out Tracks: The Littlest Things, With Any Sort of Certainty, Toe to Toe, and Your Day Will Come.


Books:
American Gods
Fight Club

Movies:
5. Captain Phillips
4. Iron Man 3
3. The World's End
2. Don Jon
1. Her