The Cat's Ass
This may be as good as it'll get.
Hi (No) Wonder-ers,
There are many ways to get into medical school; though all of them involve the MCAT and basic science pre-requisites, some are more circuitous and life-experiencey than others.
My undergraduate institution had a post-baccalaureate program designed largely for college graduates who completed an entire Bachelor’s worth of non-medical study before deciding to pursue medical school. Under a physician mentor’s guidance, “postbacs” in the program would (re)take the basic sciences and MCAT to optimize these facets of their medical school application.
Though my wife and I were not in the postbac program, the postbac mentor included us in the postbac program’s activities. This included an invitation for us to spend an evening on his yacht, as the program mentor belonged to the last generation able to graduate medical school in the US without six figures of predatory student loan debt.
The speech he gave to us on his yacht, the “Cat’s Ass Speech,” lives rent-free in my head.
TL;DR. He warned us of the danger in making our happiness contingent on any one anticipated future life event.
He explained that as pre-meds, we think that we’ll be happy once we are accepted into medical school. (“We’re suffering now, but once we get that medical school acceptance then that will be the cat’s ass!”). Then once we’re medical students, we’ll tell ourselves we’ll be happy once we graduate, match into residency, and start earning an actual paycheck. Then that will be the cat’s ass. Once we’re residents and fellows, then we’ll be happy once we finish training and that will be the cat’s ass. Finally, once we finish residency/fellowship and become full-fledged board-certified physicians… we’ll be happy once we retire. And that will be the cat’s ass. Thus spending our entire career overlooking the day-to-day sources of contentment and happiness, never being happy at any one given moment.
The final sentence of The Cat’s Ass Speech went something like “You need to enjoy the present, because the future actually sucks.” As ridiculous as it may sound to hear the words “the future actually sucks” coming from a guy pontificating from his yacht… the message of “enjoy/create the happiness in front of you instead of relying exclusively on some hypothetical future thing that might not happen as expected” resonated strongly enough with me to overshadow that minor detail.
Of course, the idea of “I’ll be happy when such-and-such happens” is not unique to medical training. “I’ll be happy when I get that promotion.” “I’ll be happy when I lose twenty pounds.” “I’ll be happy when we get married.” “I’ll be happy when the White Sox win another World Series.” “I’ll be happy when the US stops its descent into Christofascism.”
These scenarios will keep us waiting a long time. Especially that White Sox one.
When we spend our lives making happiness contingent on future events rather than current ones, we miss out on the little bits of happiness, if any, that are in front of us. We also avoid the effort of trying to create happiness amid the suck, instead resigning ourselves to missing out on it until if/when the Cat’s Ass Event happens. Instead of enjoying, listening to, and nurturing the sparrow in our hand, we overlook it and focus instead on the dense bush hiding the two Quetzal birds we can’t see but know are there because our mentors and our own minds told us they are. Too many colleagues never noticed the sparrow singing until after 30 years of not seeing the two Quetzals, then regret not having done so at the time.
In cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) circles, fortune-telling is a cognitive distortion that leads our perceptions and feelings away from current observable, objective reality. Often this takes a negative form; i.e., believing against all current objective evidence that the worst-case scenario will happen, and emoting accordingly. However, fortune-telling as a cognitive distortion can also include unfounded beliefs that the best-case scenario (i.e. the Cat’s Ass Event) will happen, and hanging our happiness hopes upon that. The Cat’s Ass Event being a future anticipated scenario rather than a present objective reality, we don’t know for sure whether our Cat’s Ass Event will happen… or that the Cat’s Ass Event will necessarily fulfill us if and when it does. This makes our Cat’s Ass Event(s) a tenuous foundation on which to base our happiness.
It’s perfectly OK to want more and better for ourselves – good, even! – but we do ourselves a disservice if that stops us from finding and creating happiness in the here-and-now.
Delay gratification, not happiness.
Merrit