"I'm jaded, Bro."

I'm working with a resident this week who's on his second year of residency, and has 2.8ish more years to go to finish residency in his specialty.  From what I've noticed, his demeanor towards patients isn't terrible, but it's not all that great either.  One of the patients said to him at the end of the interview "Your student's been smiling the entire time, but I haven't gotten a single smile out of you yet".  At that point, the resident gave the patient a meek smile and moved on.  Later on, I got to talking to him a little bit and he said to me "Bro, I'm jaded about all of this.  You should probably hang out with someone who's more motivated.  Working hard can be rough on a person."  His gave reasons for being jaded.  His friends whom he had graduated college with had all gone in different paths and those who had entered the financial world were already buying 6 figure houses in affluent neighborhoods and his dentist friends were making "real money" and enjoying their lives outside of the great hours they worked at their offices.  I wanted to tell him, "yeah, but none of them are doctors like you. none of them went through the med school and residency experience that you went/going through," but I don't think that it would have made a difference.  This was a man who had already made up his mind to be unhappy about where he was.

And this is my first experience with a doctor who is unhappy with their lives.  I think I may have been fortunate up to this point to only meet doctors who loved what they did.  And today made me question if I would be happy in the specialty that I'm thinking about.  It is THE most important question that a med student, or any human being has to ask him/herself before entering into something that could potentially direct him or her down a certain path for the rest of their lives.  But you know, the answer is that I don't know for sure but I probably will be happy.  Happiness/the state of being content is such a subjective thing.  Most of the time in our lives, we have direct control over it.  Even through times of adversity, we can decide to celebrate it and work with the situations that we're dealt, or we can also choose not to.

Even within the most hopeless situations in our lives, we almost always have a choice.  The challenge is remembering that we have that choice.