Dichotomy
I had an interesting “meaning of life” type conversation with my son this last weekend that got me pondering what I’m doing--not really in an “OMG, I need to bail on this!” kind of way, but more of a curiosity that I’ve chosen a field (or fields) that runs so contrary to my own lifestyle.
An original Earth Mother, I’ve always gone for a whole foods, do-it-yourself, kitchen witch approach to life. For many years, I was a FT mom and had mastered my job well enough that I was feeding a family of four on about $25 a week. I sewed. I gardened and preserved a great deal of what we consumed. We typically only went to a doctor for things like shattered bones, sutures, and really serious, acute matters. After being pushed into a C-section simply because my son was breech (forget that he was already falling out. . .), I even took it upon myself to do my own prenatal care for the next baby and deliver her at home on the sofa bed (admittedly, not a life and death decision I would advocate anyone else to take lightly). When we get sick, we figure out what herbs to take to bring us back into balance, we turn to massage or acupuncture and the occasional juice fast. I suppose part of it was simply not having the funds to live extravagantly, but a large part was just that I lean toward the natural, the basic, and have the genes for stubbornness and self sufficiency. We are a stoic bunch.
So how the heck did I wind up so fascinated by Western medicine? I never did care for soap operas, so I can’t blame General Hospital (I’m trying to ignore the fact that shows like ER and Grey’s Anatomy really fall into the soap category because I’m apparently a snob). I did always gravitate toward TV like TLC’s The Operation and all those documentary-style reality shows. As an art major in college, I loved life drawing and the anatomy you had to learn to do it well. I guess when I discovered MT, it was the language that really spoke to me. I love the puzzle aspect of the job--trying to decipher what that dictator is saying (even when he doesn’t know how to pronounce it himself), scurrying around the reference books and internet comparing conditions, medications, procedures, and filling in every last blank. I sometimes feel like I live for those rabbit trails because the hunt is such a satisfying part of the job.
Besides, as a newly single head of household, I needed a job that paid a living wage, offered benefits and security, and would not disappear anytime soon. Well, okay. . . so MT started to fizzle on me very quickly on many of those key points. I’m hoping that tumor registry will keep its promise as a “burgeoning field” so I don’t need to figure out another career in this lifetime.
My son has always been the left-brain guy of the family. Sesame Street had its place, but as a preschooler, he was the kid who would intently watch those PBS University math classes and blurt out the answers to things like, “What’s the acceleration of this car going down a slope of this angle for this far?” No surprise when his goal in life was to go to the best school for computer brainiacs because the kid spent over a decade hunched over his computer teaching himself how to write code, make websites, create games and music, and basically knock our socks off.
So he went off to school and got his degree, and what happens? First of all, 9/11 came along and destroyed a good chunk of the country’s technical jobs. (Aside: Thanks to Howard Dean's state and a major company then based there, a good number of post 9/11 computer programmers were offered free training and potential jobs as MTs as a means of vocational rehab. I'm not sure if that's still as cool as it seemed then, given the current state of affairs.) To compensate for all those computer whizzes who suddenly had no office to work from, companies started using crappy applications to throw together their own websites and quality became something they apparently decided they could live without. (The similarities are scary, aren't they?) Upon graduation, he learned that the wages were a fraction of what they’d been when he entered school, and genius was a commodity that mattered less than sheer production power--turn out sites fast and furious and focus more on selling ad space than anything. Suddenly, the thing he loved to do best had become a grind. As a web designer for a major paper, he was seriously bummed to learn that newspapers focus on “news” only as a means of selling ad space. He was crushed by the ethical conflict and knowing that his craft really meant nothing.
Parallel to all this, though, was another transformation--my reclusive little computer nerd was suddenly thrust in a school of his peers, many of them a decade or more older. He suddenly became a student of life, a very social creature, and started discovering there are more things in life than writing php in SimpleText or getting a web page to work the same in every browser. Welcome to that social awakening that comes when a kid heads to college and realizes he's not the center of the universe.
Partly as a way to cope with being a poor guy with too little income and partly because he was now interacting with some interesting people, he began to study things he’d taken for granted growing up--a student of living basically, living well, and becoming self sufficient. The more he learned, the more he realized he’d gone the wrong direction and now knows what career really resonates with his personality and beliefs. His new plan is to head back to school and become a doctor of Chinese medicine. I am astounded to find he can simply pour himself into his right brain with as much gusto and ease as he always put into the logic-based side of life, and I think the combination is going to make him amazing.
Honestly, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me for myself years ago (the school has been in our back yard for years!), but I’m happy to stay my course and enjoy his journey vicariously. I figure this way, we have things covered from both sides.