Unleashing your potential

I have to say that it didn't struck me when my mom told me: "It's always you, Jeph, not doing things to your full potential."

Because then I confirmed to myself that such is my case. Along my school years, I crawled myself to every graduation. Not because there's some obstacles or anything, just because I don't want to stand tall. It wasn't until I lived and studied in Melbourne that I quite, well, "excel" in what I did back then. The rest of the school years? I was just a boy who always sit on the middle row during any award presentation.

It's just today that I figured out why my young mind subconsciously put me in that state.

I live in Indonesia, a country that is SO full of shit, they don't even know they stink. Regarding this matter of not unleashing my potential, however, I have one problem that the 5-years old me appeared to have it figured out before I even realize it: subjectivity over objectivity.

Fellow Indonesians would agree to my following statement, but I guarantee they never would have figured it out themselves. We (Indonesians) live in an educational environment where our final marks are not only determined by the things that we did or achieved, but strangely also how we behaved in class or (even more importantly) towards our teachers. PAUSE HERE, and read the previous sentence again, thrice if you need to.

WHERE'S THE LOGIC IN THAT?

I'd simply put it in a hypothetical situation like this: if there are two students, A and B who got the (supposedly) same marks, let's say they got a perfect score of 10 (yes, we don't use letters as marks). B would get a 9.5 if once upon a time he told the teacher "I don't like your teaching methods, it slows me down." Do you see how subjectivity rules in this hypothetical situation? Now think back and replay all the educational events in your life that is actually ruined because of things like this.

I was once given a warning in my report card that "Jeph talks too much in class." Back then I thought it was wrong, okay, but when you think of it...... Why would someone who is so eager to communicate with his classmates be refrained from doing so? What does it matter if at the end of the semester that kid got a perfect score anyway?

Don't even get me started on appearance. How you dress defines your personality, here in Indonesia.

So, have I been restraining myself from unleashing my potential? Or is it actually under tremendous pressure from the environment, that my sane mind prohibited me from doing so?

Why would I want to excel in an educational environment that judge a book by its cover?

Reality Check!

As the patient went apnea, I said to the team: "We're gonna have to intubate him!" And then the head nurse said "No we're not."

Obviously it's not a mental of picture a resuscitation room in a hospital like you'd imagine, having your understanding of a hospital is as shallow as Grey's Anatomy.

I'm a doctor, you're a patient (oh yes, every one will be a patient someday, unless you prefer DOA). Grow up! In hospitals patient died and the revival rate after CPR is not as high as it is on screen.

So hear me out: I have all the guidelines in my head. It's the system that is so screwed up, even the most brilliant of mind would be helpless in the midst of a room full of dying patients, each and every which looking at you every time you enter the room, thinking "Why the hell haven't I been re-examined?"

Don't go to the hospital. Dig your own grave instead!

Sleep vs Deathbed

It's not until later on your deathbed, that you would think: "I've spent too much time sleeping while the world is unfolding before me".

If it's up to me, I'd choose to stay awake 100% of the time.

I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I die..

A Letter to Atheists

How does it feel?
Living this life without a God?
How does it feel?
Clinging on to your own self at all times?
How does it feel?
Not having anyone to hear your complains?

Your argument is "If there's a God, why is the world in such a bad place?"
Note that all your questions begin with ifs and what ifs.
I AM SICK OF YOUR IFS AND WHATIFS! I can easily reply "How do you know the world wouldn't be in worse condition if there's no God?"
But in your last offense/defense, you'll say "Believe what you want, I'll believe mine."

Here's one thought for a change:
If there's no God and no heaven or hell, you can laugh at me in the afterlife all you want, and I'd still be going wherever you're going.
But, what if there IS, in fact, God, and heaven and hell, you WON'T be going wherever I'm going.

The way I see it: you don't lose anything by believing in God. You'll win both ways.



- A Believer

How to save a life..

The Beaver

We salute at the threshold of the North Sea..

..in my mind..

Why I fight..

Lost.

Maybe that's what came to the minds of the Allied Army soldiers when they first heard that Hitler just shot himself. "Why didn't he do this years ago, so it'd save us this war." It was not until they found the first concentration camp, that they came to the conclusion that there was a strong reason as to why the war began in the first place. There was an answer to the question "why we fight". For them, at least..

I have fought 6-years in the endless battlefields of medicine. Three long years of putting new information and terms I have never heard before into my brain. One year to do a research project. Two other years to witness the dirty world of medicine in the supposedly sterile places.

I have fought my fight, and I have prevailed, and I am grateful.

But I haven't found the answer to the question "why I fight..?"

No, not until I set my eyes upon a concentration camp.