My
friend and neighbor Marty – as in “The Red Car Redux” – is my age and is just
about to retire from a long career as a pathologist. On a walk together last week, she recounted a
talk she had heard by someone in his mid-70s about the challenge of letting go
of one’s profession-centric identity and the need to embrace an identity that
is perhaps more authentic [my words].
This certainly resonated for me, as this is my struggle too, but I
discovered myself protesting, “I agree only 90%.” Our professions are an outgrowth of what
makes us tick – our interests, our abilities – which is why we chose a
particular career path to begin with. I loved
doing science, and I still love science.
These aspects of me simply haven’t gone “poof” now that I’ve retired,
they are still very much a part of who I am.
My passionate response surprised me and made me realize that being a
science geek is not just a part of my past, it needs to be part of my future.
One
evening this week, Marty stopped by to return a DVD I had lent her. As we chatted in the kitchen she said, “Today
I performed my last needle aspiration,” and her eyes started to redden and tear. It was a terrible moment. This was it
– the end, the last procedure of its kind she will ever do, and the tragedy
is that she loves doing it. She told me that what she wishes she had done
was to pursue this more patient-orientated aspect of pathology. “That would have been a career that I truly
loved,” she said.
Both Marty
and I chose to retire because it was “time”, the end of long road. Can we find a new path, maybe one that covers some of the same beloved scenery, but challenges us in new ways in the future?
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