Light My Fire

I have a hard time knowing what and how much to post about my husband on this blog since it's not his and he's a fairly private person. Charlotte doesn't care so I can post pretty much whatever I want, for now anyway, but I always have to sit and think long and hard before mentioning Daniel on this thing. But I decided that he wont care if I share parts of our conversation last night on here.

He came home from school yesterday all fired up about a lunch lecture he'd attended. It was about physicians' rights and responsibilities and how or when the government should be involved. He shared with me all the things that the lawyer presented and how doctors are, as a whole, not very politically involved which is probably not a great thing for them or their patients in the long run. He was also saying all his opinions about it and what some of the other students had been talking about and what he thinks needs to happen with regard to health care in the US.

He was more passionate and excited telling me about this one lecture than he has ever been telling me about any of the classes he's had so far in med school. That is not to say that he's not passionate about learning medicine. I think he doesn't share as much of his school stuff with me because he knows that after about 5 minutes of it my mind starts to wander. Not that I don't find it interesting, I just don't really need to know the depth with which he explains things most of the time.

Noticing his passion coming out (a rare thing indeed) I told him, "It sounds like this is something you're passionate about. If you wanted to pursue this I'd support you in it." He said, "Really? I've thought about it before, but I figured you'd think it was silly." To which I said that he'd really need to work on not calling people that disagreed with him idiots, but other than that he has some pretty great ideas.

The problem with him pursuing this passion probably explains why physicians in general aren't very politically active. You have to sacrifice so much of your time and yourself to become a doctor and you chose something that you really love to do. So then you'd have to sacrifice reaping some of the benefits of all your hard work to go and start something completely new. As Daniel put it, "Do I want to be an orthopedic surgeon or work to defend physicians' autonomy?" Plus, he has no desire to become an MD JD. (I think the initials for lawyer are JD anyway.) To which I replied, "Life is long. You don't have to do everything at once. I bet your dad never thought he'd be acting CEO of anything when he finished his residency, but here he is. Being both a urologist and a CEO."

I don't know if anything will ever come of this passion of his other than just yelling at the TV when the news comes on about health care in our country, but it was kind of fun to see him so excited.