What Would You Want to Become When You Grow Up?

The eternal question we all have been asked at some point in my life. So for this post, I decided to talk about the answer I have always had as a child, and even today as an adult.

My last post talked about the importance of Kathak in my life. However, in this post I want to talk about one other aspect that has given my life direction - my true choice of profession. Kathak is my passion... but medicine my profession.

The first time I talked about my ambition in life was when I was a preschooler. My mother tells me that it was a small interview conducted in my preschool at YMCA, (Edison, NJ) for the school yearbook. My mother had no idea about any of this until the yearbook itself came into her hands and she read out what her little tot had written—‘I want to be a doctor.’

I was just four years old then and I do not remember anything in particular that might have sparked a deep-rooted inclination to pursue medicine as a profession. My father was an engineer and my mother had earned a degree in commerce. Both my grandparents had no relations to the medical field. This completely ruled out the possibility of the aspiration emerging from family influence.  It was indeed puzzling then that such a young girl should be so firm in her affirmations.

My mother tells me that my mother’s paternal grandfather had wanted to be a doctor. He even began his medical education but had to terminate it midway to support the Boycott Movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi during India’s Freedom Struggle. He could not satiate his desire to become a doctor and wished that at least one of his four sons become one. My mother’s father was hesitant and instead took up engineering. My grandfather’s brother became a doctor but he devoted more of his time to journalism and politics. The dream to become a doctor, thus, remained unfulfilled for one more generation. Then came my mom. My mother had deeply longed to be a doctor but due to certain eye problems she was advised not to opt for such a profession. She never told me about such a family background until later in my life but her innate yearning unknowingly did spring up in her daughter. What she could not speak of, her genes within me did.

My decision as a four year old remains equally resolute even today. When I turned ten, my mother started talking to me about the various specializations in medicine and asked me to decide what I would like to take up in particular. It did not take me many days to decide that cosmetic surgery was my call. Three intentions drove me to this conclusion. Firstly, this was one of those fields that would enable me to pursue my passions of writing and Kathak without engaging me in unexpected emergencies. Secondly, having faced appalling situations in my early years, I had decided at a very young age that money undoubtedly would influence my choices as an adult and cosmetic surgery was indeed a very lucrative career. Thirdly, I felt that this profession was the kind that could spark hope in people. Several people gave up optimism because they had been stripped off their beauty. When they look in the mirror, I want them to be happy about who they are. As a young child who had been through financial crunches, receiving favors of others and living with broken dreams, all I had relied on was the hope of a better future, and it is this hope that I wish to share with my patients because as Martin Luther said, "Everything that is done in this world is done by hope."

Just like my writing and my Kathak, my desire to aspire for medicine defines me as a person. It has become so much a part of my identity over the years, that I have hardly ever imagined myself in the shoes of another profession. People say that one must keep reconsidering decisions that we make; at different stages in life. I got a wonderful opportunity to do the same when I took up a study of cataract surgery as a part of my 12^th grade project. Standing in the operation theatre, viewing the doctor conduct the surgery, learning about the different tools, watching the patient be treated, the lights, the nurses, the entire ambience filled me with ecstasy. I felt elated to be in that room and that day I could not thank God enough for having guided me towards making the right choices. This was the profession that best-suited me and had no second thoughts about it.

What profession did you choose? Let me Know in the comments below. 

Don't forget to like, share and subscribe

Until then....signing off!

S...