Confirming Existence: January 2013

I just sat down with a "big cheese" and talked about life.

The CEO of The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia had a coffee and a cookie while I had a long-wanted London Fog. Dr. Gus Grant told me a bit about himself, but not before we discussed what it was that brought us both to Coburg Coffee. My mentor, Bill Black, had mentioned he had a friend whom I might be interested in chatting with. Bill and I have lunch or coffee every now and then and usually discuss topics such as my future, my life, my plans. Because I become a hesitating mess before answering, Bill referred me to Gus.

I had googled some questions that you would ask a CEO over coffee or lunch. Things like ,"How did you get to where you are today?" or, "If you could take back anything you did in the past, what would it be?", or "Where do you see yourself in the next ten years?"

But in the first few sentences of the conversation, it came out. Why I was really there slipped out like a piece of gum when you accidentally talk too fast: I don’t know. I don’t know where I am going, or what I am going to do with my life. His reply was,

“Isn’t that how it should be?”

What were my plans before I concluded that I don’t know what comes next?

Well, of course, I graduated from high school with intentions of going into Medicine because that’s what successful people do. Well that’s what I was told.

Well… I mean, that is what we will consider the path of least resistance I suppose. That’s what people are expecting, and that’s why I’m meeting with a doctor.

Sure, it’s a thing to be thinking about the future and how I’m going to get there. This is the way the world works, right? You go to school, you go to more school, you study what will give you a degree in whatever degree you want your name on. Of course, those degrees come with some courses that are irrelevant- but you still need them, so you work your way through them anyway.

So here’s me sitting with a doctor who graduated from Dalhousie’s Medical School, after he graduated from McGill University with a degree in Law, after he graduated from studying poetry at Harvard. He’s knows the system. And he asks me,

“What is your wildest and biggest dream?”

He says that’s what we are talking about. We are talking about life- your unwritten story. It hasn’t been published yet, so you have complete freedom of working out the draft. We don’t have to write a book that’s just like every other book out there. Why not be exciting- be brave. Write your own words. At the end of the day, if you decide to go backpacking in Europe for two months (you might have to work for money first)or spend a few years making music, or do what it is that you find exciting, you will be where you want to be. Even if that means you really do want to be a doctor- you don’t have to think too hard. Go with the flow and put your pants on every morning so you can go out into the world and do your thing.

Now of course, with that being said, anything you choose is totally up to you, but you bring whatever consequences, whether good or bad, with you. If you can accept that, under the words of a CEO, Doctor, Lawyer, and Artist:

You are unlimited. There are so many cool ways to change the world, and you don't have to find the way you're going to do it.

It will find you.

Writing my story page by page...