The Why
Kilimanjaro, 2010
Many of the theoretical tasks are now very real. It came time for me this week to submit my letter of resignation. I’ll see my last patient on July 15th. I didn’t get it done, in part because the week was really busy but also in part because it feels very final. Cutting the cord with our financial security. Cutting the cord to this huge piece of my identity. There is fear and uncertainty. Voices of self-doubt kick in: “Why are you doing this? Is this an act of vanity? Play it safe and keep in the center path.”
I keep coming back to the why. It is very simple yet hard to put into words. Perhaps Thoreau put it best when he said:
“I went to the woods because I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Our trip is not about escaping this life. In fact, it’s mere presence on the horizon has made me feel so deeply grateful for the life I live. Instead, the trip is an act of deliberateness in a lifetime that can feel so devoid of day-to-day agency. It is a nod to impermanence, a carving out of deep time together as a family in the arms of a big, beautiful world that has so much to teach us.
We just need the courage to walk out our front door.
