It’s always good to go back through old blog posts, read them, critique them, and then ponder what I may have learned since writing it. This piece is no different. If you haven’t yet read the original, you can do so here.
It is primarily influenced by the fact that our clinic hosted a 7-day liver detox/cleanse leading up to the summer solstice but also because of my own growth in my profession and the time I take to explore the world around me and learn.
Learning is a forever sport, and to be fair, one I enjoy immensely. Fun fact: about 30 days leading up to graduation, I tried to figure out a way to stay in undergrad longer because I didn’t feel I was ready to take on the world at 22 – FYI – I wasn’t and neither was anybody else, for that matter. My impending med school graduation also gave me some degree of pause, but at that point I was 9 years wiser, and by most’s definition, “an adult.”
The summer is an interesting time, where most take some time off from work and choose to spend it with their kids, since the schools are most definitely taking time off. Summer has always been a very clearly delineated time of year, primarily for this reason; always much anticipated and also having marked a transitionary time of life: the completion of one school year/grade and onto the next.
Side note: it’s funny, because I still have yet to catch up to the number of years I spent in school (not even including med school) outside of school, so this transitionary time still hangs in the balance for me.
About 2-3 years ago, I noticed time was moving way too fast for my liking. I’m sure we all have this thought at one time or another, some more than others and some feeling like they can never “catch up.” Newsflash: you never will when you’re constantly stuck in that mentality.
The reality is, time will keep moving, but it’s up to you how you choose to spend it and at what speed; moving in the fast lane most certainly doesn’t have to be one of them. In fact, I strongly discourage it. You’ll be consumed by “where has all the time gone” and the regret you feel by throwing yourself into work 24/7 without enjoying life’s pleasures.
I had opened my doors in 2020, about this 2-3 years ago when I began to feel this spiral. Maybe it was me growing older, perhaps it was being thrown into a business, or maybe it was due to factors outside of my control. I wasn’t really sure, but it drew enough of my focus to begin to try to see what it was I could do, if at all, to stop this seeming warp-speed I was experiencing.
But things are foggy when you’re in the middle of them.
It wasn’t until I sat down to write this, in the middle of a week I chose to close the office (for the first time that wasn’t between Christmas and New Years’!) that I really was moving in the fast lane – and had been doing so for much of my life. I was in control, I was the one making time go faster for myself because I was going too fast. Now, to slow down.
Summer provides a forced slow down – in a variety of ways. While my calendar is not deplete of bridal and baby showers, those are different. People prefer to gather and soak up each others’ company during the warmer days and I welcome those events because life would be incomplete without important relationships. But I can understand how this might make some people feel; I, too, had those fleeting thoughts.
Bitterness. It’s not just a flavor, but can be an emotion, too.
In Chinese Medicine, summer is associated with the flavor of bitter, but it’s also easy to feel this way when we feel like we’re trying to accomplish something and others (people, plans, etc) come in and seemingly “ruin” that. Its easy because we’re more prone to insult during the season that engenders those emotions, flavors, and everything else.
But it’s best to remember that joy is the emotion of the summer, too. Let’s lean more heavily into the joy, because there sure isn’t enough of it floating around, at least for my liking. We should be celebrating joyously at these new lives coming into the world, of which we celebrate by way of baby showers and lets celebrate joyously the union of two coming together in marriage by way of weddings and other festivities.
These events, with these people, don’t happen every day – let us not take them for granted.
But it is easy to feel uneasy, as the small intestine, one of the channels associated with the summer, finds its physiological function in separating the clear from the turbid, but the same is true of the mind. Conflicting thoughts and emotions may arise when the small intestine is involved – and again, because we’re in the season of its reign, it’s easy for the small intestine to grow insulted.
Let us have clear thoughts and also remember that the heart is small intestine’s paired channel in the summer. The heart is a reminder of love.
I’m feeling clearer this year, clear enough to have made the decision to close the office with enough notice to our patients but also to block the schedule before anybody got on. Clear enough to know that these slow downs are not only important, but necessary, otherwise the world would spin uncontrollably until one day you think to yourself, “how am I here, when did this happen?”
I don’t want that for you. I don’t want that for me.
