I’m not going to recap Sunday because it was a rest day. Instead, I’ll go straight to the lessons learned because I omitted a lot of smaller events from the week. Here we go!:
1) Real > Fake, always
Aki and I went to a pawn shop to try and sell some of Aki’s old jewelry from her ex in London. Unbeknownst to me, she was holding on to two Cartier watches and a platinum ring with a large diamond, supposedly. Well, it turned out the watches were fakes and the ring was silver with a piece of glass in it, which means its potential value fell from a collective $12,000 to about $80. A couple notables: the jeweler looked at the stuff through his looking glass thing, and it was easily the coolest thing I saw this week. I definitely have to get one for myself. But the lesson is that real jewelry is always better than fake stuff, even if it’s much smaller. The disappointment and contempt on both the jeweler and Aki’s faces made me realize why people are so afraid when they lie. It is something to lie awake for, nervous that someone is onto you or will discover your con. Take your truth, no matter how tiny, and sleep like a baby knowing that if nothing else, at least you’re authentic. That’s worth more than nothing, which is what fakes are.
2) Put yourself through the crucible
We live in a society that is largely bereft of crucibles, that struggle separating the wheat from the chaff. By the time people get sorted, it’s often so late that people are able to delude themselves into thinking they’re worthy when they’re not. Maybe it’s that we want a society where everyone is super nice to each other, too polite to point out each other’s flaws yet too blind and sensitive to accept criticism for what it is. Or maybe we’ve forgotten that it is the pain of hell that gives us the strength to create heaven, which is why immigrants who come here desperate and hungry are often more successful in social mobility than their children. My life tips from those rants? Put yourself through a little hardship – put yourself out there, take a little criticism and a few losses, and move forward. Also, learn to take advice from others, separating mean-hearted comments from comments that hurt but are in your best interest.
3) Be honest to yourself
This week I’ve realized that I know a hell of a lot of people that want to go to med school, but simultaneously they don’t want to live a hard life or they’re not willing to give up everything for that career. It’s made me realize that I don’t like deception but I absolutely loathe self-deception. Of all the people to lie to, the last person should be yourself. After all, you can see the falsity of your own lies. When you claim to be an angel to the outside world, you know what an awful person you are because you have memories of your own faults. I’m astonished at how a person with poor grades thinks they can be a doctor – getting a C in biology means you’re either not very good at the subject or you didn’t care enough to learn about it. And that’s fine. I was getting a C in computer science when I dropped it, realizing that I suck at programming and don’t even really care that I suck. But I don’t dream of making a start-up and selling it to Google for a billion dollars. Seeing my friends’ careers is a stark realization that medicine is a hard and brutal life, one where you have to be smart and tough. And the life never gets easier – med school is much harder than undergrad, residency is much harder than med school, and a career is much harder than residency. You have to want it bad, to have that drive that pushes you when nothing else will. In short, I have no idea why anybody would choose that life when they should know better. I can see why someone would think law or business school isn’t so bad from the outset because it’s years before the vise starts squeezing out the weak, but grad or med school? Please!
4) My low self-esteem and all Russians are ex-KGB
I got another reminder of the fact that I have tremendously low self-esteem from a photo session I had with the wedding photographer. We did it semi-formal so that the photographer could get some idea of how Aki and I interact and find out what angles we look best. He told me that I have good bone structure and that we’re photogenic together. I know I have low self-esteem because my immediate reaction is that he is either lying to me or he says that to everyone. I don’t really mind either, because I’ve convinced myself that he’s a good photographer by sheer virtue of the fact that he’s Russian. Not just that he’s Russian, but that he must have been a photographic agent for the KGB, sneaking around to US military installations and taking pictures of them and their employees. If he can get sneak photos of the Stealth bomber and America’s front-line nuclear missiles, then surely he can capture my moment of happiness with Aki. In fact, the main selling point is that he keeps saying that he’ll be so invisible during the wedding that nobody will notice he’s even there. Also, his assistant is a very attractive Russian beauty (ahem Money), which only convinced me further that he’s a former Russian agent. Finally, he’s the only person in the entire wedding process to have brought out astronomical charts to find out when the sunset is on Oct 10 and how much moonlight there will be. Brilliant.
Goals from the week:
1) Didn’t get to 500 but got the 75%
2) Nailed the extra workouts
3) Didn’t practice daily
4) Practiced the foreign language
5) Weight is at 158 lbs
6) Reduced computer use adequately
7) Did not meditate, too busy
Verdict: Pretty good!
Holy shit. Aki’s former engagement ring was…fake?!
“Also, his assistant is a very attractive Russian beauty (ahem Money), which only convinced me further that he’s a former Russian agent.”
She’ll uhh…kill me, won’t she.
Also, Russian girls are hella tall.
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