I was just thinking the other day how people always say "Do what you love and the money will follow..." Is this really true? Or is it more realistic to say: "Do what you love and if you are very lucky or already have money then the money will follow." I mean, really, let's say you love to act but you aren't great. You can act all you want and will never make a living at it. Or let's say you are a fantastic painter, but you never get your big break and always just scrape by, eventually taking a job teaching somewhere. Then you are bitter, depressed and feel cheated. Life is not organized to be fair to everyone, and just having a love or passion for something does not guarantee success. People who think it does, are the dreamers (I used to be in this catagory) and the people who already had a "lucky" break.
So now, I am thinking about "luck" and "chance." I have thought about this for years that "there is no such thing as an accident", or "you make your own luck." I do think that there is such a thing as luck. Things do not "always happen for a reason." I hate these banal platitudes. They make me sick. I feel as humans we always want to look outside ourselves and assign a reason to something. There has to be an explanation to why the young woman who matched at Highland's Emergency Medicine program got hit and killed by a car last year as she was crossing the street. Is there really a reason for that? No. There isn't. It is just luck--bad luck.
I do suppose that there is some truth to making your own luck. This means, you set yourself up to be successful and then you are in the right place at the right time. That is true. But then there are quite simply situations where a person gets lucky--wins the lottery etc. Or maybe it means you "use the law of attraction" to attract good things to you. There is probably some truth in this.
This is quite the rambling post. What made me think of all of this is my own self doubt. Am I doing what I love? No, I am not. That is the truthful answer. If I wanted to get right down to it and really explore what I love, I probably should have stuck to my original career path and stayed in the arts. I love literature and art. I love to curl up on my couch and read a book. I love to write. I also love nature, the environment, animals--so I could have explored that side of life as well.
Do I find medicine interesting and challenging. Absolutely. Do I love it? No. That is the honest answer. I think I chose it because it was lofty, and worthwhile, and challenging, and safe. I will have an excellent job when I am done. I will not have the uncertainty of doing what I love, and never having the money follow. I suppose growing up without money made me want to have money. I suppose the tangibility of being a doctor was more appealing to me than the unknowns of other ways to be successful. And let me tell you, if you don't love being a doctor, the training can be excrutiating!
