I’ve long felt that my insides don’t really match up with my outside.
Ask my colleagues to describe me and they’ll probably say words like…upbeat…calm…positive. This is, generally, the type of energy that I like to bring into the world. But internally I’ve always felt much more aligned to the bittersweet and constantly ruminating. Cynical? At times, yes.
I grew up in a household with a dominating, rationalist (perhaps narcissistic?) father, and a deeply empathic (perhaps enabling?) mother. Oppositional forces that culminated in frequent moments of friction and distress. Which, honestly, kind of sucked for us kids a lot of the time. But it seemed to create this sense of a safe space for members of the church community who found themselves going through difficult times. They found comfort in our chaos.
My older sister and brother left home as soon as they could, so most of my teenage years were spent sitting around the dinner table with Mum, Dad, and some random person going through some sort of life crisis. Mum would provide the emotional support, and Dad the practical advice. I learned pretty clearly that suffering was a pretty standard part of life (as was hypocrisy in the church, but that’s another story). And I’m starting to understand now how I’ve brought that experience with me into other parts of my life. And why I’m quite grateful for it.
When it came to finding a career, there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to be of service to others, so healthcare seemed like an obvious choice. However, I didn’t want a job where I’d have to touch anyone. I couldn’t go all in on being some sort of ‘caregiver’ type. Pharmacy offered me a reasonable way of contributing to work that improves peoples lives, while maintaining a safe distance. I could contribute technical proficiency to add value to these difficult situations, and allow the bleeding hearts types to attend to the emotional needs.
What I didn’t account for was how I’d be influenced by the professional environment of a busy tertiary hospital. Up until that point, I’d been pretty good at internally regulating the balance between my emotional and rational self. But working in a hospital seemed to shift my internal regulator turned fully toward the rational and there it stayed.
It was a natural response to the environment I suppose. Steep learning curve coupled with mistakes that can end up in harming someone or at the very least hurt your reputation. Focusing on the technical suited me well and I was rewarded for my rationalist approach. It also helped form a protective mechanism which enabled me to work in emotionally challenging areas like the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and not get consumed by it. And PICU was full of sad stories.
One day when I was visiting PICU I came across a situation that put a great big dent in my protective shield. I saw a mother sitting and cradling her small baby, all swaddled up in hospital blankets as newborn’s often are. But I could see that this baby was no longer living. The baby had died earlier that day and she was spending her last moments with it before saying goodbye. Sitting silently in her sorrow.
I was asked by the nurse to organise the antibiotics for the family. They needed to be treated for whooping cough. I felt as though I wasn't just being asked to organise medication, I was being tasked with delivering the family a physical token of the fact that one of them could be responsible, or at least perceived to be, for that baby's death.
As much as I would've liked to avoid doing this, my rational nature won out. Thinking through the scenario it became clear to me that if I wanted to do my job of providing them with the information they needed then I couldn't ask them to collect their medication from the pharmacy like everyone else. They didn't need to be around other people, and I couldn't risk someone inadvertently adding to their distress. I had to deliver it to them in person. I needed to understand their situation and tailor my approach accordingly.
When I brought the medication to the family I found a group of people who were completely and utterly exhausted. Too exhausted to be emotional. Nothing left to fake a smile. An empty kind of shared silence that I'd never encountered before. They didn't need any small talk. They didn't need any attempts at sympathy or empty platitudes from me. All I had to do was quietly and respectfully provide them with their drugs, basic instructions and written information they could refer to later. Let them get out of there as quickly as possible.
That day I experienced something that I'd only really known intellectually up until then. When your business is dealing with people the most rational thing you can possibly do is consider their emotional perspective. Its not about being fluffy, it just makes sense. It reminded me of what I learned growing up and from then on I started to use my internal emotional-rational regulator much more often. I'd like to say it got fully recalibrated then and there, but it was more like it got unstuck.
I must admit, for a while I felt a bit of regret about how much I’d lacked empathy up until that point. There are still a few pangs of guilt about how insensitive I’ve been at times toward patients and colleagues. But, as the title of this post suggests, as I’ve got older I started to understand how regrets are just lessons we haven’t learned yet. It doesn’t always makes it easier, but at least it helps me to rationalise it.
Since then, I’ve been doing a lot of work to try and develop both the emotional and intellectual aspects of myself. And I think a big part of this has been a willingness not to turn away from the aspects of life that result in suffering.
In my personal life, I haven’t actually experienced a lot of suffering. I’ve had periods of feeling deeply sad and melancholic, sure. Internally derived emotional imbalances, sure, I’ve experienced that often. But I haven’t been struck by the external gut punch of unexpected loss like I’ve seen so many of my friends have experienced. At times, I’ve felt weirdly guilty about that. And, perhaps even scared that at some stage it’s all going to catch up with me and I’m going to be hit with a giant wall of grief. Maybe this is why I’ve had a willingness to move toward suffering in a professional sense. I don’t know.
What I can say, is that I’m continuing to learn, and value all aspects of the human experience and the compassion that it develops as a result. I struggle with how much this openness hurts, but I truly feel like I’m becoming a better person for it. And I feel like I’m starting to slowly move toward a greater acceptance of myself, and all the dark and gnarly bits that reside within.
I’ll close with something I came across in my reading this morning, which triggered this train of thought. I didn’t actually know who Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was, but a quick search provides me with at least some assurance that she’s not known to be some sort of public bigot or anything like that, so seems safe enough to share her words:
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
And, for the lyric inspiring the post title - Beth Orton’s Sweetest Decline.
What’s the use in regrets?
They’re just thing we haven’t done yet.
What are regrets?
Just lessons we haven’t learned yet.
"Regrets are insights come too late." -- Joseph Campbell
Interesting to discover this other Substack with a different valence. Well done Lauren. 👏