The Descent Begins

Age is catching up.
There's no doubting it.
I'm approaching, if not already on, the asymptote of my life and it's a rapid downhill hereon.

I'm listening.

I'm listening to the creak in my bones.
I hear questions from familiar faces in the crowd.
I hear my own history read out.
I hear the 'new' music that's now a golden oldie.

All I did was drive up to Ipoh to speak at a medical conference. I'm exhausted like I climbed Kinabalu. I pulled a muscle carrying Ethan up a flight of stairs and my gluteus still feels like it's been ripped apart.

When I was delivering my talk I saw familiar faces. No, not my colleagues or old friends from med school. They were medical students of mine who, obviously, have completed their housemanship and are now full-fledged MOs. They are attending my talk, not as teeny-bopper undergrads, but mature medical officers. And they are asking me questions about their patients.

I heard my own CV being read out. I did all that? I asked myself while fiddling with the mike trying to look modest. Worse still, it all seemed so long, long, ago in another galaxy far, far away.

iTunes is playing Eric Clapton's 'PILGRIM'. Drowning in a RIVER OF TEARS. It still sounds new. The CD looks like it was bought yesterday. The groove is still real and echoes resound from depths I cannot plumb as Clapton's guitar wails with sorrow that has no words. It was the soundtrack of my housemanship 12 years ago. It still is.

I started the '10 Things I Would Like To Do Before I Die' viral tag on Facebook. A tiny step towards charting the second half perhaps? A bid to redeem the past and create a future? A second chance at it before the curtain closes? Live, learn, love, leave a legacy, Stephen Covey would say.  

Jung, Tolstoy, Shakespeare all had a renaissance of sorts at 37 and their best works produced thereafter. We begin to reclaim all that we sacrificed in the steep ascent of adulthood. We want to relive what we lost. I have come to the place I can not give a shit what others think, not care about pleasing any bosses, and earning a living isn't the all-consuming drive anymore. 

I can live as I believe.
I can live on purpose.
I can start my descent..