Lately, I have been giving much thought to my career. For many years -- 12, in fact -- I had wanted to become a doctor. But lately, I have been mulling over the idea of doing a course in English Language and Linguistics -- something in the vein of C.S. Lewis.
Yet a few days ago, I deliberately watched Patch Adams again (have watched it umpteen times), to see if I can remember what it was that kept me so single-minded on medicine.
No matter what the critics say about the movie (most of its reviews are bad), I owe a lot of my still burning desire to do medicine, to Patch Adams.
The sheer power of the movie and the man, I believe, lies in how much he values the quality of life, how a doctor's job is to heal the person rather than merely kill the disease.
I know how many tend to scoff at such idealism, but all things said and done, I'd rather live this kind of life, than the life many people claim to live in the 'real world.'
As Puddleglum said to the Queen of Underland in C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair, "Four babies playing a game have created a play world that licks your real world hollow."
Perhaps I will find a renewed passion to pursue this dream that I believe was God-given in the first place. Or maybe not. But whatever the case, it was good walking down that path again.
1 comment:
You ought to try watching AWAKENINGS. That was the movie that did it for me. I told myself did if I ever did medicine - this is what it would be about. Being passionately embroiled in lives, walking alongside the afflicted, sharing their struggle to keep their identities.
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