Yesterday, I met this girl who inspired me.
She was around the age of eight or nine, maybe, and had some wicked rock-climbing skills - like no doubt she put everyone to shame, including those buff rock-climbing men who started free climbing a wall by sitting on the ground.
Nevertheless, I strapped myself into the auto-belayer and began climbing a wall right next to her. When I reached the top {mind you - this was the only wall I could climb successfully}, I called out that I had made it to no one in particular.
She congratulated me with a very ethusiastic "good job!"
{Now keep in mind this little monkey was over there climbing up and down and then up again - this is because she partakes in competitions and the competition walls are twice the height as the walls we were climbing.}
So she congratulated me as she was scaling back down the wall to come right back up.
Now, the closer you get to those auto-belay machines at the top of the wall, the less you begin to trust them. What ifs start rolling through your head as you look down to the ground, which actually looks a lot farther up than it really is.
"I don't know if I really trust this thing any more" left my mouth. Well, I slightly did, I just needed to climb down a few steps so I couldn't see the machine as well, subsequently causing me to trust it more.
"Trust me that you can trust it!"
I didn't even know this girl, but the way she talked to me and the way she moved up and down those rock walls like she was just casually walking across the ground, I couldn't help but trust every word that left her mouth.
She was not boastful in her abilities {and my lack of abilities}; even though her accomplishments are many, she did not devalue my attempts or belittle my achievement. She celebrated in my success even though her successes are more substantial.
Although our interaction lasted for a very short time, her character was evident.
And this got me to thinking.
What if everyone congratulated each other on their minute success in life and didn't try to belittle others' plans as if their plans are a whole lot more important.
Selfishness?
Going into my last semester of undergraduate nursing studies, life is getting pretty stressful. We are diving into the deep end of the pool which has a facade of not being too rough, but once you jump in, you realize that it is not a pool that you jumped into, but a roaring ocean with a few sharks. In addition to clinical rotations out the wazoo, last week we were able to sign up for our focused care rotations at the end of the semester {better know as our precepting}.
Signing up for precepting can be a little nerve wracking - correction, it can be a lot nerve wracking, especially when you are a control-freak like me. Thankfully, my experiences and personal journeys over the past year have taught me how to tone down my control-freak-y-ness by putting it in my Creator's Hands.
Yes, a lot easier said than done. It's a work in progress.
So I can understand where you are coming from when you too are overly concerned about where you will end up during your precepting. But when does being overly concerned and intensely worried about which unit you will spend your focused care journey on turn into selfishness and egocentricity?
When you begin to think that you are a priority because of your successes and your perfectly projected future plans - that's when you go from overly concerned to putting yourself in the center of the universe.
And that is not the true heart of a nurse.
What if we could all be like that spider monkey I met at rock climbing. Encouraging each other and truly congratulating each other in successes. No jealousy, no hiding of knowledge from one another cause it may give the other person more of an advantage over you.
We don't have to play dirty to win - we don't have to be selfish to get everything we want.
You are not priority - and when you can accept the situations you are given and live them to the fullest, that is when the most overwhelmingly inspirational journeys take place. You don't have to be in control all the time, and when you worry constantly about not being in control, it sucks the full out of your life and out of you.
