Dream of the Future

It seems that no matter how close to the future I get, it always seems like an ethereal, abstract concept, hazy and not quite in focus. Plans are tentatively put into place, but outside influences and personal changes keep sidetracking me from where I saw myself even a year ago and where I see myself now.

I know that I want to be a physician of some sort. It isn't about the money, which everyone seems to say but few truly mean. For me, it's about the environment. I spent afternoons of this last summer volunteering in a hospital. The feeling I had when I interacted with patients--even though I was quite obviously a lowly volunteer who could do little but help them with getting around and distract them from the pain of their radiation treatments--had me convinced that I was in a place where I truly belonged. I feel self-fulfilled in the clinical environment, and the people I worked with were the type of people that I can only aspire to be.

While I felt at home in the hospital environment, I want to push myself further. Since middle school, I've known that I wanted to participate in a humanitarian effort at some point in my life. It's only been in the last few years that my hazy someday-I'll-be ideas started to take on a more corporeal form. After I'm certified to practice medicine, I want to be part of the Doctors Without Borders program for a few years.

After that point, my dream is impossible to pin down. I see myself working in a private practice, or being one of many physicians in a large hospital. I want to live in a metropolis of a city, or perhaps in some rural town that few have heard of and fewer can tell you where it's at. I really don't know what I want, but that's part of what I'm doing now; I'm forcing myself to make decisions and question what makes me happy. I'll have kids someday. Maybe I'll retire early and open my own small business. For me, the point is not knowing everything. I know what I want to do for a significant portion of the next fifteen years of my life. While structure is a nice support to lean on, I don't want to know what makes me happy before I experience it. I want it to sneak up on me and surprise me with how much I love it.