I strongly believe that each one of us is on an individual and unique journey of personal discovery. 

I recognize that this personal journey has its easy slopes and its harsh traverses.  Distractions can pull our attention to the mundane causing us to lose sight of our search for and definition of meaning in our life. We can be distracted by work, by relationships and by ego as figurative detours on the journey to self-awareness.  Yet, it is clear to me that self-awareness alone is not the destination; our internal knowledge of ourselves, and how we express that knowledge externally must be in service of something larger, something bigger than ourselves.  We each have a moral responsibility to serve.  Each task, each job, each interaction has the potential to make the world a better place.  While we cannot always be what we want or achieve what we want; we can strive to leave others better for knowing us.  Richard Bach in Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah proposes a simple test to see if our mission on earth is complete; if we are alive, it isn’t.

Lost at time amidst the distractions in my own life, I have been satisfied with my accomplishments.  I had become a doctor and made my parents proud, I had children and the resources to make sure they would have a good life, and consequently I strived to simply maintain what I had achieved.  But life constantly changes and any attempt to maintain your own personal status quo falls short of total participation.  Bach’s writings have been influential since I first read Jonathan Livingston Seagull in eighth grade, but only during this period of my life do I fully appreciate it.

With this renewed focus, I have shifted my efforts towards improvement of not only my life, but the lives of everyone who comes within the sphere of my own.  I have recently been working out with a trainer and find that I am feeling better than I have in years.  Instead of aches and pains associated with a general malaise, too much work and too little good sleep; I have the aches and pains associated with working out, bolstered by the rejuvenating knowledge that now the path lays itself out in front of me more clearly than ever before.  This sudden clarity has strengthened my belief in an individualized journey of discovery which each one of us must pursue.  The malaise is gone, and I enjoy rowing and setting baseline and stretch goals each month.  I frequently find peace and relaxation in paddling my kayak on the ever-changing waters of Henderson Bay behind my home on Raft Island. I do not have Wi-Fi or cable at home anymore and instead I make use of the spare time by meditating daily and reading a minimum of one book per week.  Life is ever changing, but for the moment, my mission in life is to connect the way I have taken care of myself and improved my own life, with the ways I take care of and look out for my patients and my family.

Broadly, one can ponder how to best define the community of family, friends, colleagues and those who we serve in our work.  I am drawn to John O’Donohue’s concept of ‘anam cara’ or soul friend. He notes in Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom that friendship is an “act of recognition and belonging, thus cutting across all convention, morality and category.”  My journey allows me to do the work I love, be the father I aspire to be, and to see the beauty of creation in each day and in each person.