And I thought that night
That
Maybe our job as writers,
As creatives,
Was to ask the questions
Focus on the small things
Not the forest
Just one single tree…
What do you see?
This brought me to think of you…
We all want to be great at whatever we do…or maybe we don’t, maybe we want a trophy just for showing up…but that’s a different story and maybe there’s a few of us left who want to be great. This requires countless hours of practice and learning and writing and studying…
For you, yourself…It takes seven to 10 years …
I’ve been married and divorced in that time…
My brother has been married, started a family and career in that time…
You’ve been tucked away, studying and writing medical journals about the small things that we don’t have to see or think about…
But we microwave everything …
We want it fast…
We want a trophy and a cure just for showing up…
I remember when I was younger…
Falling into a black hole of conspiracy theories…it’s easy to do…because it’s fun! and it’s exciting! and it’s scary!
And it’s stories.
We all love stories…the power of language and a lot of life is just boring and a lot of answers are just boring and imbued with responsibility. But conspiracy gives us the opportunity to pass the blame to a third party that we can never truly find…or feel that we are part of something more than what we are.
Until I fell ill with Crohn’s and was in the hospital and I remember thinking “oh no I’m in the hospital…big pharma is going to get me..god don’t let me die…don’t let me die…”
I had tried eating herbs and dirt with olive oil and a number of cleanses…
But I was dying
I started going to a doctor regularly
I started medicine
They changed my medicine
Now I take Humira once a week
And it’s been life changing
My point being
I thought back to that today while giving myself my shot of Humira
If I’m afraid of medicine and science
And yet go to the hospital for relief do I truly believe what I say I do? Or am I just mirroring information ?
It’s a big question
Like the saying, if you’re certain about anything you’re almost certainly wrong…
Or everyone is an atheist until their world falls apart and then they pray…
I thought about how we used to flirt with you while you were just starting in med school and working waitressing jobs and other part time jobs and how it must be now…
To have worked so hard for your credentials and have family praise you and seemingly have them thrown in your face because someone googled something …and with HIPPA we now have this wall protecting us from seeing what actual monsters are out there…
Science isn’t what we think it is…
It doesn’t work like our Apple phones
It’s so easy to fall into an algorithm
Two people google the same thing and get different results based on the algorithm
We use the algorithm to fight the algorithm and we don’t understand any of it….
But science is peer review, it’s constantly asking the question “why?”
And is constantly pushing forward
It’s constantly raising its hand to disease and saying, no further, no more …it stops here…
Where we once was afraid of the dark and the stars
Of how quickly we could be taken away…
Now we can ask questions and work towards the answers…even the very boring consistent work to get the answers…
And these call us to responsibility
These call us to ownership
To consistency
In our lives
In our work
We always start here
I thought about how you explained it one night, if you write a journal everyone checks it and if they don’t get the same results it gets thrown out…the evidence stands up for itself…there are no single heroes, you may discover something or raise a question but it takes everyone…this keeps us humble…
I get up at 2am
I get ready
For my creative work
And you’re out there
Doing your work
The very boring
Very life changing
Work
That is you…
That’s what makes you great
Thank you.
As for me
I sit at my desk, I write, I try to notice the small things, and I build…
Maybe this somehow helps you too
I like to think so.
-E
Regarding Samuel 