What do you want to do with your life?

What do you want to do with your life?  

An always relevant question in our Gen Y culture of staying in college too long, bouncing around random jobs, and living at home.  I've read a lot of commentary suggesting our generation needs longer to incubate, so hopefully we’ll be inventing the next iPad and Pintrest in our 30’s and 40’s.  I also feel like I've fielded that question a million times since coming to med school. 

"Oh you're in med school? What sort of doctor do you want to be?"

I got here a month ago..
can I just be a med student for five minutes please?

We're already shuffling through "interest groups" where we meet and network with young doctors in different specialties.  We've been in med school about a month and we just learned how to measure heart rate. Sidenote - we pay $50,000/yr in tuition for this? Do we really need to know what our lives will be like five years from now? 

And frankly, I don't exactly want to be a doctor...  I want to go to med school to become a pediatric oncologist, but I mainly want to be a scientist, run a basic science research lab, and cure cancer.  But I think it's overrated to define "what you want to do with your life" with a job. 

Four years ago, I spent a summer waiting tables at a ranch near Yellowstone.  That was an amazing summer on so many levels.  I had just become a Christian and started to know God for the first time.  I ran 1000 miles. I had a girlfriend for the first time.  I started studying for the MCATs, which lasted about three days.  I was living on my own for the first time.  Lots of firsts. 

The best part - I had an epic email chain with my friend Amulya Iyer.  It started out innocently enough, but soon one of us raised the challenge that every successive email had to be longer than the last one.  We ended up exchanging 19 email, with the last email over 6000 words.  We talked about everything in the email chain.  Girlfriends, Donald Miller, olympics, endless premed hoops, the meaning of life.

One night that summer I was sitting under the one-of-a-kind Wyoming night sky, drinking beer, thinking about the meaning of life, and writing one of these emails.  That was the exact moment I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up.

big old Wyoming sky

I wanted to spend the rest of my life thinking about the meaning of life.

After that, I had to go to med school to become a pediatric oncologist.  I wanted to work with people that were dealing with the most serious side of life - death of a kid has to be up there, right?  Mainly, I needed to live in a world where I could justify philosophizing about the bs/meaning of life on a regular basis. 

"You cannot lie in this work.  There are so many people in this world who have no idea who the fuck they are."

That's what a pediatric heart surgeon said about his job.  I wanted to be at that apex, where my life would stretch me to my limits, and through that experience I would honestly know myself. 

Helping people and getting paid is a good part of the deal too.

See you on the other side,

from ken

What I believe: post-Portland-sabbath

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” 

- Gandhi 

In college this was one of my top three favorite quotes. Of course, then I got to thinking, what do I want to see in the world? I self-righteously decided the world needed more selflessness, so I threw myself into a world of activism. It was great, and I’d love to go work in Haiti someday, but most days the politics of activism is too much for me to handle. But then.. what is the change I wish to see in the world? 

Post-college I spent two years in Portland – where young people go to retire. After the intensity of undergrad – studying non-stop, gunning through experiments to finish a research thesis, interval after interval of track workouts, long nights spent causing havoc – working 40 hours a week left me uninspired and lazy. That said, Portland gave me tons of time to reflect, and develop my core philosophies. 

Sidenote - I imagined Portland being a stage of life similar to when Jesus went to the Mount of Olives to get the hell away from everyone, meditate, and contemplate life. Maybe he was going through a quarter life crisis too – “What do all these people want from me? What should I do with my life?” 

Anyways, in this time I read a book Katie owned called This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. It’s what it sounds like – a compilation of personal credos written by a wide range of people from bartenders to Helen Keller. It has a slew of great ones like “There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Barbeque.” 

Sidenote – my favorite personal credo? David Foster Wallace’s This is Water. It’s actually a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College. I would say he believes in the struggle of life, it's extremely close to how I experience life. 

So this bring me back to my own core philosophies - what do I believe? Well, I believe life is a gray scale, and it can’t really be boiled down to simple maxims. I believe there are many roads to the truth. Some days I believe in fate, but most days I believe an individual determines their own fate. I believe in God and a higher power than myself. I believe in Kobe Bryant more than Chris Paul (this is definitely a future post, Kobe is the best player of the 21st century). Each of these could be its own post, but underneath all the complexity I believe in one important thing. 

I believe in friends. 

I’ve learned a lot of things in my 23 years of life, but the main thing I’ve learned is that life is about the same for most people. Rich or poor, drug addict or professional athlete, Harvard or UMass, stay-at-home mom or trophy husband, people aren’t that different. Life is hard for everyone, nobody's struggles are "not a big deal", and no one should be expected to survive by themselves. 

There’s nothing like going to a bar with a good friend and breaking down the latest struggles of life. Or going for a long run without saying a single word and just getting away from life. I could ramble on, but I’ll stop here since I’m already getting too long.

See you on the other side, 

from ken 

Ken Noguchi has made friends in Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Wyoming, Oregon, and currently makes friends in South Carolina. He is attending school in hopes of producing the second and third coming of Gleevac. When he grows up, he hopes to be his daughter’s favorite comedian.  

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

What is greatness? A KXC tribute

“Running to him was real. The way he did it, the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It made him weary beyond comprehension, but it also made him free.”

- John L. Parker, Once A Runner

So I’ve been thinking about this post for a while, but never really solidified what to write.

I recently finished Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball. Simmons is an ESPN columnist called the Sports Guy, a Boston-bred sports fanatic that religiously breaks down sports and pop culture. I think he is the funniest person alive.

I loved the book, and definitely suggest it to any sports fan. I think it’s a must-read for any basketball fan since he takes being a basketball fan to a whole new level. He breaks down the best teams and the best players of all-time, including a 96 player pyramid ranking.

The most important thing the book made me think of was something I think about all the time. The topic of greatness. In his 96 player ranking, Simmons analyzes exactly what made a player great. He highlights players that introduced dunking, players who revolutionized the point guard position, players that had unstoppable shots, and so on.

Of all 96 players that Simmons breaks down, the player that stood out to me the most was No. 72, Chris Webber.

Webber entered the league labeled as a sure-fire hall of famer, and he lived up to it.

Kind of.

He was a great player, but he was only ever good enough to finish at 72. He was hurt a lot, which isn’t entirely his fault. He never won any titles, so he’s accused of not always showing up when it counted, but that can be attributed to the quality of his teammates. He had the potential to be better, but it isn’t really his fault that scouts overrated him. All that said, here’s Simmons’ conclusion:

“So yeah, Webber finished no. 72. But he still goes to sleep every night knowing he could have been forty or fifty spots higher. And if he doesn’t think about it, then that explains everything.”

This made me think about my own experience in sports. I ran cross country and track for seven years of my life, and I can think of one or two runners that I would say were truly great athletes. I’m thinking of one teammate in particular, my former roommate Jim Boston.

Those of you reading this that had the good fortune of running with Jim are probably nodding along in agreement.

First off, Jim was consistently the fastest runner on our team, so he had the talent. But there was more. Jim was the sort of the runner that Simmons would rave about. The kind that obsesses over greatness. The kind that loses sleep because he knows he could run just a little bit faster. The kind that makes unreasonable sacrifices for greatness.

He was the kind of runner that John L. Parker writes about in the epic novel Once A Runner. I saw Jim as the kind of person that found life and meaning in the suffering involved in the quest for greatness. That’s what I always admired about Jim.

Of all the lessons of greatness I could graft from sports, I think this is my favorite. To be great, maybe you have to be obsessed. You have to care, not just more than everyone else, but more than other people can imagine. You have to be the kind of person, that years later, we still remember how they cared a little too much. You have to have such a life, that it might be filled with exhaustion and struggles, but you couldn't imagine living any other life.

I believe that in a world filled with Chris Webbers and Jim Bostons, I'm in the foxhole with Jim Boston every time.

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

No one laughs at God in a hospital

This is a double Book Review for Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup and Love Wins by Rob Bell AND a theological debate.

Here If You Need Me is an easy to read and laughable memoir about a minister that serves search-and-rescue workers. I highly suggest this book. Braestrup has an incredible story of encountering religion on the frontlines of life and death.

Love Wins is the latest by New York Times Bestselling author Rob Bell. He discusses the confusing co-existence of an all-loving God with suffering. It raises some interesting conversation points, but it’s kind of scattered. I feel like he was pushed to get this book out to make some cash. Not highly recommended.

Sidenote: I’m on a quest to read 50 books during the calendar year, and I recently finished books 18 and 19. I usually read 5 – 10 books at a time, a product of modern day attention spans, so I’ll occasionally have awesome weeks when I finish a ton of books at once, and I’m in the middle of such a week now.

Anyways, it was interesting to read these books at the same time. Both the books apexed to the same major point.

In one story from Here If You Need Me, Braestrup writes about a day when she accompanied the wardens as they searched through snowy woods and freezing cold lakes for a missing five year old, only to find the missing victim under a thick sheet of ice. The girl was long dead and there was nothing they could do for the family.

This raises the question, and the major point from both books. In any god believing paradigm, how can a god be just, and stand by as five year old girls drown to their deaths? How can gods allow war? Why does suffering exist?

Braestrup suggests that this question, “Why does evil exist?,” is the ultimate theological question.

The answer she gives, is by far the best answer I have come across (slightly paraphrased):

“I am willing to have that theological conversation with a cop, any cop – faithful or faithfree, not because he arrives at my answer, but because he has had to look suffering right in the face. Whatever words he uses for God, he is still the one who had to take the little girl’s body out of the water and see her face and hear her mother crying.

Here is my answer: that cop took the child out from under the ice with his own hands, tried to give her his own breath, and his own heart broke when he could not save her life. He is the answer.”

I believe church is a valuable component to life. A lot of my friends now come from church, and it’s a great place for community, but I think religion/spirituality/God/etc, is found outside of Sunday. This is why I believe God has been walking with me long before I became a Christian a few years ago. This is why I believe God walks with lots of people that wouldn’t be caught dead in a church.

I guess I wasn’t able to answer why a just God would allow five year old daughters to drown. But I will say that God works despite five year old daughters drowning.

I believe God exists in the rescue workers, who hold no conception of working overtime, who are out there in the bitterly cold Maine winters searching for lost five year old daughters.

I believe God exists in teachers forgoing fancy schools and big paychecks to work with disadvantaged youth.

I believe God exists in hospitals where nurses look after patients and scientists hope to find cures to uncontrollable cancers.

I believe God exists in a good friend that will sacrifice their free time to help another friend.

Anyways, I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this.

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com