Podéis encontrar la versión en castellano de esta historia aquí.
Picture by María José Bosch Campos
As I mentioned in the two previous instalments on “How to kill your adventurous spirit”, I want to know what it is that makes people stay put in a work situation far from ideal. I use doctors as examples, but you can apply my findings to many other professions.
When asked, “Have you thought about quitting, and if so, why haven’t you?” a couple of my doctor friends said- “What else could I do?”. And this particular answer seemed so desperate to me that I decided to find them an alternative.
I like to be systematic and thorough so, in my mission, I applied my favourite three-step approach:
First, I asked Chat-GPT what other jobs doctors could do, and the options it came up with were so dispiriting that I could not count them as a potential alternative to doctoring (e.g. working as a consultant for an insurance company. Shoot me, please). In any case, now I know Satan is running the wheels and cogs of ChatGPT, because I asked it for an alternative career for plumbers, and it said many things, all as grey as:
Plumbing Inspector: Use your expertise to inspect and ensure compliance with plumbing codes and regulations in construction projects.
Only the devil can be behind a machine that insists on keeping the world so grim and devoid of hope.
But I digress; the next step was a Google search, which was even more depressing. It just came up with scientific articles proving my point that doctors are at the end of their rope.
The last step was obvious- ask Siri. With her posh British accent, she told me that two intriguing characters were full-fledged doctors before pursuing an alternative path: Ernesto Che Guevara and Deepak Chopra. Always trust Siri to provide you with a satisfactory answer.
I can now tell my friends who want to quit-
Guys, how about a career running your own revolution or a multi-million wellness franchise?
I wonder if these precedents will be enough to push them to take the leap and pursue a calling outside their comfort zone to see if they would be happier.
In my own quest for happiness, I have put myself in many scary and/or uncomfortable situations. I did not always come out happier, nor healthier, for that matter. But I confess I get a kick out of saying, “Oh! I did that; it wasn’t that bad”. My mother can attest to all of the above. She knows about my addiction to hardship, and she once spent two weeks de-parasitising me when I returned home from a trip. This brings us to the last stop of this story.
Step three- master
Interrail- a story about precarious travelling.
M, A and I in Switzerland, Mount Zermatt in the background.
We stood in front of the information panel with the cable car timetables and prices. "If we climb the mountain, instead of taking the cable car, we save enough money to buy ice cream at the restaurant up there". We had been eating only stolen cans of tuna for 3 days straight. Ice cream sounded good. We really should have invested in fruit because coming home with scurvy was highly likely at this point. At 22, you never think about these things. Visiting Switzerland after being in two other countries was not our brightest idea. Travelling in this very expensive, landlocked state when you have run out of money can feel claustrophobic. It also puts strains even on the most solid friendships.
I was doing interrail with M and A through central Europe that summer, and by the time we reached Switzerland, I had learnt that M was an expert survivalist and could make the poorest dish actually taste like a feast. His luggage included a pot and two small jars containing rosemary and thyme because one might be sleeping on benches, but that is no excuse not to make an effort while cooking. A, on the other hand, was the paradigm of practicality and unfazedness. Nothing stressed her. And if it did, she certainly didn’t show it. This is a great skill when running into difficulties.
I was the pretty one. As my friend C would say, “Ana, that is not necessarily a compliment”.
We walked up the mountain, and on the way there, we met a shirtless old man who spoke to us in Italian, complementing us for being strong youths, avoiding the cable car, and carrying our backpacks around. “We were the salt of the earth!” We listened to his military tirade while staring at the enormous triple-bypass scar that went up and down his chest. “Fuck! should he be up here? Alone? Getting this excited?” I thought while trying to mentally recall the CPR procedures.
Standing at the top and watching the sun set over Zermatt is a feast for the eyes. Doing it while eating ice cream after a three-day strict tuna-only diet feels like Nirvana.
We had decided to sleep on the porch of the cable car's shed. This was an upgrade, considering we had spent the previous night in a haystack that M had insisted on lining with big rubbish bags (also stolen) because we would avoid rats. “Rats?” I had asked. He stared at me blankly, like I was supposed to know that rodents might inhabit haystacks in the middle of the Swiss countryside. Apparently, it is quite common knowledge. I was definitely the pretty one.
We ate our can of tuna and rolled a cigarette with freshly picked grass seasoned with rosemary and thyme because we had run out of tobacco back in Munich. As I mentioned before, M has sybarite tastes. I went to sleep early; I needed to wake up before sunrise to wash my loins in the freezing lake nearby. I had not had any kind of ablution in 4 days, and I was on my period. The bath felt urgent. The amount of miseries just kept piling up.
To wrap the story up, we slept, I bathed, we took the train to Geneva and from there back home. It feels like a rushed finale, but one can only digest a certain amount of catastrophes. I do not want to fill your quota; you might need space to read the newspaper later. However, I will say that, in retrospect, I LOVED the experience. Nothing makes you appreciate your bland, unremarkable living with hot showers, good food, fruits and veggies and rat-free beds as experiencing all the contrary. At twenty-two, I learned that gratitude is a good antidote for dissatisfaction.
Epilogue.
The truth of the matter is that the dissatisfaction I see in my profession applies to many other contexts. We all do it; we hang around in positions that we would rather not be in, and we do it for many reasons, sometimes because we have to, sometimes because any other option is worse, and sometimes because we find no other way out.
Finding an alternative to dissatisfaction with your job, personal life, living conditions, etc., can feel impossible. However, sometimes, if we look really hard, we find that being stuck is the price we are willing to pay to avoid uncharted waters. I am neither a therapist nor a life coach, and this is not an advice column, but I have seen enough to understand that unhappiness is often the fee we lay down for fear of the unknown.
Atreyu's plight will feel familiar to those who grew up in the 80s. At the end of his quest to save Fantasia, he has to cross the Magic Mirror Gate and face his true self.
Falkor: So what? That won't be too hard for him.
Engywook: Oh, that's what everyone thinks! But kind people find out that they are cruel. Brave men discover that they are really cowards! Confronted by their true selves, most men run away screaming!
And he looks into the mirror and “just” sees Bastian. The hero sees himself as the scared child, but the child also sees himself as the hero. So what if it is the same for most of us? We fear searching for what we want because we think we lack the skills to achieve it, but maybe all those skills are unnecessary. For most of what we really want to do, we do not need to be special; we just need to show up.
As promised back in step one, I illustrated how I finished off my sense of adventure before the age of 24. But if I am being really honest with you, this is not what happened. I mean, all the accounts are true, but they did not have the consequence intended. The only thing that changed was my resilience. What could be perceived as difficult for some, has become manageable or conquerable with some adjustments I could make here and there. I refuse to live in perpetual dissatisfaction. Life is too short for that. And I confess I do not have all my shit figured out, oh no. I will say, though, that I am good at both detecting the exit sign and at jumping through the fiery hoops to get there when I feel stuck in a place. I have practiced hard to get those skills (not so pretty anymore, hoorah!).
I have also mastered the skill of surrounding myself with the best people; the ones that whisper- “you can do this Ana” or just plain shout- “Go, go, go!” I do the same in return. Love flows.
My point is that one can go about “killing the adventurous spirit” in two ways- Ignoring it out of fear is one of them. The second is doing what frightens you most but will get you where you want to be.
It just takes practice to master being brave.
You forgot a little help that apeared on your credit card in a moment of need 😅😅😅
“Addiction to hardship”