I’ve been thinking a lot about how the practice of medicine is not always the practice of wellness. How optimistically I applied to join this profession out of a sense that I intuitively took better care of myself than did many of my peers. I knew that happiness and health intertwined, though my naiveté about how to rescue one if the other faltered was sorely lacking.
Ahh, youth. Unencumbered by the kind of financial and emotional obligations I would eventually crave, back then I could restore balance with a day trip to wine country, or a chance to ski instead of study. I took up swing dancing during my surgery rotation in medical school, if only to prove to myself that my life was my own.
Years later I chose yoga, biking, traveling. Now, in the pandemic, yoga happens in my living room. I write about little moments. I hike. I daydream about the places I once went and hope to take my children someday.
But my pastimes are not my patients’ pastimes. Often, dropping one activity suggestion after another, like feeding quarters into a slot, I hear them fall into the coin return instantly, never registering. Too many teens are