Warriors.

I honestly don’t know how my colleagues pull it off.

I don’t know how they can go to work, day after day, facing their patients, their clients, get them out of bed, fix that sprained ankle, mobilise that stiff joint, massage and ease pain, teach them to breathe, teach them to walk, teach them to make cups of tea, teach them to get into a car, teach them to go home, teach them to live. I don’t know how they do it.

I don’t know how they can wake up each morning, feeling the urge, the burn, the passion to want to go and make people better.

I used to think that being a physio was quite cool. I used to think that to be able to treat a sprained ankle rather than going, “Oh yeah. Take these pills and call me in 2 weeks to see how its going” was wayy better than the medical profession. I glorified in the fact that I was making results happen NOW and being obvious to the client/patient, treating them well as they deserve to.

But now, after a day like this, I’m floundering on the end of the fishing line and I’m ready to flop. I’m ready to throw my hands up in defeat and call it a day. A year. A life.

I remembered when I first had my head shorn (and yes, it is a word, past tense of shear, apparently and it is shorn because look at me, I look like a bald sheep), I remembered looking in the mirror and thinking about how weary I looked. My mother had commented that I looked like an old man. And indeed. I did.

I looked like a man who’s had enough of life. Even though I was a 24 year old, I did not feel my age. I felt a lot older, a lot rougher around the edges, like I’ve seen too much of life and its brutality had ripped my innocence away. Sure, there were beauty spots in between but apart from that, life personally was rather drab and mundane.

I liked the look in the mirror. Sure, I looked older. Apparently, that would finally match my personality. I was said to be very mature for my age. I kind of knew that I never quite fitted into the the conversation of people my age for some reason.

But what I truly liked about the look was that I looked like I was fiercer, stronger, more determined than what I truly felt on the inside.

I felt like a warrior. I felt that I could conquer the universe by tilting my head slightly down and looking up from under my eyebrows. I felt like I had that tiger stare perfected. I could stare down anyone. Anything. I was strong. I am strong.

I felt that I could pull through. One more day of work. One more day of physio. One more day of living here. One more day of being sick and tired and utterly fed up with my job that  I would contemplate calling in sick just for the sake of it. Yes. It’s that bad.

And living with my own personal Dante’s Inferno, I thought that I could potentially seek some refuge in dancing. Yeah. I found it. Well. Some, anyway.

I ended up teaching salsa to a class that perhaps, I would say, is less than enthusiastic about it. I hate it. I hated the fact that I would take at least more than 1 month to teach them a move and yet, they would struggle with it still. They couldn’t get footwork right, they couldn’t get hands or timing right…why did I even bother then, in the first place? Do I suck that much as a teacher? Or are my students that intellectually challenged? I get good leaders and good followers but sometimes, they don’t bother coming. Sometimes, they don’t even bother to show. So why have I stuck my neck out for this?

I was talking to Tofupuff tonight and she said to me, “You’ve forgotten why you’re doing this.” “This” of course, referring to teaching dance.

This gave me pause.

Now, a certain incident happened about 7 years ago now.

I used to lead worship with two of my very good friends in church. I liked to think that we brought our youth group out of the era of singing old children’s hymns to more contemporary Christian music. And I would always think that I was doing a service to my religion and my God for this role that I was partaking in.

But it came to a point where I thought to myself, “What am I really doing this for? Or WHO am I doing this for?”

And in the end, I realised that the focus was no longer really on “God” but more so towards myself. See, I had this dream that I was going to be this huge, famous-as musician and every time I got on stage and played the keys and lifted my hands and head toward Heaven, it wasn’t so much the praise of God…it was the praise of me that I was after. I longed to see people get lost in worship because I led them there. I wanted to hear the applause and people to say and tell me, “Man, worship was soooo good today, thanks to YOU!”

I longed for that acknowledgement. And in the end, it was wrong.

‘Course, as per usual, the Heavenly Father intervened in His own handy little way and ever since then, I’ve never stood to lead worship since. Not that I miss it, of course.

But just thinking about this incident, when Tofupuff mentioned it to me, I thought to myself, “What am I really doing this for?”

Is it just to live my little puny dreams of being a dance teacher? Was I staying here just because I feared that if I moved elsewhere, I would lose this capability to teach/handle a bigger, more progressive class?

I actually think so.

I’m sticking to a crap job, living in a crap house, in a crap town purely for the sake of living out a dream that I don’t even get paid for.

Or wait.

Maybe the blame isn’t so much on others. Maybe its me. Maybe I’m not cut out to teach. Maybe this isn’t what I want to do in life. Because honestly, sometimes, all I really feel like doing is just giving up. Because I guess as great as my passion for worship music is or for dance, I don’t think that its worth it in the end. So what is? F$c|<, am I supposed to answer that question?

Hm.

Maybe that dream of me and my computer might be the answer.

But sleep beckons. Good night.