amyvictoriali.

“I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

To My Future Husband, 

As we stand here today, facing one another, surrounded by our beloved families and friends, at the top of a beautiful Colorado mountain, I truly feel like the luckiest girl. 

Let me first take a few steps back to the moment our paths crossed. It was a cloudy Cleveland October day at 6am in the morning, and I was already dreading our upcoming two week internal medicine rotation and the long hours that were sure to come. You greeted me with a cheerful and welcoming smile, and I instantly felt more at ease. My first impression of you was incredibly positive, as my friends surely remember, because I texted in our group chat about how good-looking you were, and how confident you seemed. You made normally boring work days fun with your upbeat energy and sometimes shockingly unfiltered humor. Somehow, what should have been an exhausting two weeks became one of my most enjoyable and treasured memories of residency training. I didn’t know it yet at that time, but I was undoubtedly falling in love.

Growing up, I spent countless hours checking out fiction romance novels from the library, reading story after story about star-crossed lovers, some with fairytale endings, and others in romanticized tragedy. I used to dream about my own Prince Charming one day - someone dashingly handsome, smart and accomplished, a protector and a provider. At some point in my life, as I grew older and realized life was often not a fiction love story with a guaranteed happy ever after, my focus for finding a life partner turned to security rather than romance. I traded in 'butterflies' for 'avoiding loneliness', and my long list of an ideal husband for a more practical list of, “mostly just has to love me”, thinking this was the natural price of growing up. I stopped letting myself dream because I was scared of disappointment. 

After meeting you, however, it felt as if God orchestrated a reminder for me to remember the girl behind the woman, and to re-discover what it means to follow your dreams and take a chance on both oneself and on someone else. The practical side of me felt like you were too good to be true, that there had to be a catch somewhere, that nobody is truly this kind yet also accomplished, funny, charismatic, and handsome, a “checks off every box” type of guy. But the more time we spent together, the more you helped me lay these doubts and insecurities aside. I love you for not only all these amazing qualities you possess, but also for helping me learn to love myself, to be brave, to have faith, to chase all my dreams, and to love without fear. I know I’ve said a lot of things today, but if you forget everything else, I want you to remember this: You are my dream come true.   

In you, I have found a partner who shares my values and my dreams. A partner who is not only dedicated to our relationship but to serving everyone around you with unwavering commitment and humility. Your loyalty to your friends and family is a reflection of the depth of your character, and I am honored to stand by your side as your equal, your best friend, and your forever partner.

It’s been quite a hiatus, but I am back with more hot takes. Agree, or disagree, that is fine. But this post is to make it crystal clear where I stand on this topic. 

Have you ever had conflict with a friend and the result was you getting ghosted for some frequency of time, only for this friend to eventually come back into your life and say something along the lines of, “Hey, sorry I didn’t reply for so long. I was re-evaluating this friendship because of XYZ you did.” And then you, taken aback by this, initially want to be petty and not even respond, but you’re a softie and end up eventually replying with something along the lines of, “No worries! I understand. I’m sorry for XYZ action that hurt you, it was not my intention. Glad you reached back out and we can resolve this!” 

On the surface, that interaction seems healthy, and mature. But ... is it? Was it mature that in the middle of an unresolved conflict, your supposed “friend” retreats away without so much as a, “goodbye”, leaving you confused about where you stand in that relationship for weeks to months to years? Is it healthy that, in a supposed two way relationship, your head was on the chopping block and you didn’t even realize it for months, until the other person was finally “ready” to have a conversation with you about it? Think about it. For months on end, someone you consider a close friend was debating whether or not you DESERVE to be in their life anymore, from one perceived mistake you made. Not only did your friend ghost you and not bother to tell you what was upsetting them and give you a chance to defend your actions/correct any misunderstandings, they instead assumed the worst of you, went back and forth for ages about whether you were worthy to remain in their lives, and only reached back out to you when they felt you deserved a “second chance”. All the while fully delusional that they are being the bigger person throughout this entire ordeal.

Here’s the thing. That friend didn’t reach back out to you to resolve any conflict. In their mind, you committed the wrongful act they thought you did, and they are not coming back for an explanation. You were already indicted and found guilty. The period you were ghosted was that friend internally debating whether you deserved continued, contingency-based friendship despite that error you made. There was NO effort to understand you because you never were given a voice. You didn’t even know you were on the chopping block. 

Unfortunately, I’ve been in this position. And I responded with an apology like I always do instinctively, partly because I’m a people pleaser, but partly because the conflict was so long ago I don’t even have the energy to bring it back to the surface. So an apology is the quickest way to move forward. 

But knowing what I know now, I regret taking the easy, conflict averse, way out. 

Why?

Because over the years, I’m finally learning what loving myself means, and that it starts with recognizing my own value and never allowing someone else to decide how valuable I am. I am someone who has a lot of love in my heart, especially for my friends. I see my close friends as people I respect and admire, but also people who have different values and life goals as my own. Sometimes that leads to disagreements on how we would handle certain issues. But, despite my disagreements, I do my best to be a supportive friend nevertheless, because I firmly believe people should make their own mistakes, and learn from those mistakes on their own. 

My role in the friendship is not to protect them from potential mistakes, because I view us as equals fundamentally, so my “right” choice doesn’t have to be their “right” choice. My role is simply to be a support system, a trusted confidante, and someone to remind my friend that even in the hardest of times, I believe in their innate goodness, and because of that, I would never put their head on a chopping block and ghost them for months while I internally debate if their character is up to par for me. That is disrespectful to them simply because it places me in a position above them to even have that internal debate. If I am ever “debating” whether a friendship is worth investing more time into, it is not a question of, “do I think this person is good enough to be my friend?” - it is a question of, “are we compatible for each other, or have our differences grown so far that continued friendship would bring more suffering than joy?” 

When I got divorced, someone I thought was a close friend reached out to inquire about my relationship status - and when I confirmed news of my divorce, said “friend” ghosted me for over a month just to come back in and be like, “I wasn’t able to respond earlier because it’s hard for ME to process YOU moving on to another relationship so quickly after your divorce”. This is in the context of a similar situation a few years back, where I got into a misunderstanding with another girl and this “friend” reached out briefly to get details about the conflict only to then ghost me for months just to finally come back and explain their absence with, “it was difficult for me to get over what you had done, an action I disagreed with, so I had to re-evaluate our friendship”. Never realizing how her words absolutely reeked of condescension and came from a position of perceived moral superiority. Who was she to determine whether I “deserved” her continued friendship for conflicts in my life that had nothing to do with her? Why did she feel it was okay for her to make herself the center of my conflict with another person AND later my divorce? Full offense intended: it’s not always about you, girl. 

Unfortunately, that was one relationship I held onto for far too long. I let myself be placed on the “chopping block” and fed her apologies she did not even have the right to ask for. I regret not standing up for myself and not recognizing a toxic friendship earlier. 

Hey there! This is a tough situation, and it sucks for sure when you have an otherwise great connection with someone, except on the things that neither side can really compromise on.

One sentence you wrote struck me: "So, conforming to conservative ideals of sex goes against my belief, and once you doubt your own belief...things go bad."

It made me think, hey, you probably answered this question for yourself already. If you really, truly believe what you just wrote down, then you have your answer.

A relationship goes through many phases. What endures after the initial attraction/honeymoon phase is your fundamental respect for each other. You need to ask yourself, once all the hormones die down a bit, do you really see yourself wanting to spend a life together with someone who holds onto beliefs you view as outdated or narrow-minded? Because you describe your own beliefs as progressive, implying hers are...not. And while you may not consciously look down on her now, will you be able to admire those beliefs when the honeymoon phase ends?

Mutual respect and admiration is a foundation for a relationship that lasts. Once that is lost, it's hard to want to stick around.

As for my perspective as an Asian American Christian - I personally was okay with dating outside of my religion, just not someone who is completely and utterly atheist. For example, some of my close friends are Hindu, and I could have totally seen myself being in a happy marriage. Sure we worship differently, but there was that common thread of spirituality and trusting in a higher being that resonated with me deeply. I fundamentally could not marry someone who approached life as ultimately random/meaningless - with no higher powers - with no higher purpose, etc. You see what I mean?

So definitely take your time thinking about what would make you lose your respect for this girl and if it's something that fundamental, it is probably best to realize that sooner rather than later.

Best wishes, anonymous friend!

When I’ve heard of this phrase in the past, I always thought it referred to letting go of traumatic events/incidents by accepting/working through said trauma to a point where it no longer infiltrates your everyday thoughts nor causes you excessive anguish if the incident does cross your mind again in the future - it has no “control” over you life, essentially. And I think this is the popular way to interpret this phrase - probably what the phrase is intended to remind. However, this year I feel like I’ve found added meaning to “letting go of your past” - no longer does it only refer to events/incidents, but perhaps it extends to people as well. 

Is it a common phenomenon as one emerges out of grad school and into the workforce, settling into their “adult” life, that it becomes harder to make new friends, while at the same time easier to drift apart from old ones? If what exists is leaking out and nothing new is coming in to replace, where does that leave your social circle? As the years go by, does it just keep getting smaller and smaller until it’s mostly just your own family/extended family that is left? Is this the norm, and does that depress you? 

As major life events have happened in my own life (marriage, residency/”first” legit job) I’ve been prompted to reconsider my social circle over and over again, more than I’ve ever had to before. It’s not surprising that as one plans for a wedding/reception with a size restriction that these inevitable questions arise - is so and so from my past, despite how much I loved their company before, really someone who I want to see in my future and vice versa? How do we make those decisions, even? When we were young, anyone who was nice/friendly to us could be considered a friend, but those are hardly the standards we hold nowadays. In adulthood, people are all more or less nice enough (or at least able to present themselves that way), but that doesn’t mean we grow to like all of them. We don’t have a child-like innocence and acceptance anymore of the people around us and we grow out of “splitting” people into black vs. white (or at least, most of us do...). Political, religious, ethnic, and ethic differences come to the forefront of how we evaluate the people around us and ultimately decide whether they are worthy of our time investment and, perhaps more importantly, our emotional investment. 

Take a moment to consider how many people you’ve “let go” of as you made the transition from high school to college, college to grad school, and grad school to work. Was it intentional or unintentional? Do you miss them? Instinctually, probably yes. But think more critically - do you maybe just miss the memories, the good ole’ days where you had fewer worries, the (less jaded) person you used to be, the duo/trio/gang y’all were together? If you had to grab dinner together with said person tonight, would you even have a good time, or would there just be awkward silence and unease after the first hour of rehashing old memories passed by?

I think that deep down we probably all have some kind of unspoken understanding about this, and recognize it as uncomfortable and unsettling. Maybe that is why we tend to explain the fallen friendships of our past as merely unfortunate byproducts of too long a distance and too little time - of schedules not aligning - of cost/travel barriers to meeting. I find it unsurprising that this reasoning is the easier one to choke down and accept in our “letting go” process, because it removes guilt/responsibility from either party. If we instead choked down the alternative explanation, that maybe our friendship is over because I don’t enjoy their company anymore, and they don’t enjoy mine... it would force us to examine what has changed so much about ourselves and about them and we might not be willing to confront what we discover down that road. Because not all change is “growth”, and what are we if we are not growing? That’s scary.

To add another layer to all of this - if you grew up in a Christian environment you probably know what I’m talking about - there is this idea that we have to or always should be striving to forgive and be forgiven by our “brothers and sisters” lest we remain trapped in the sin of hatred. I find it so uncomfortably jarring when people who have not spoken to me in years pop up out of nowhere to provide a long overdue and frankly disconcerting apology, and go on to disappear just as quickly as they appeared. It doesn’t feel good to be on the receiving end of this sort of apology because we recognize that this apology is more for the other person to feel like they have done their Christian duty by seeking forgiveness and now the burden is on you to bless them with forgiveness. The fact that they, after finishing up with their apology and getting your obligatory, “Thanks a lot, I appreciate your apology!” in return, then snake back out of your life reveals a lot about their true intentions. It’s not to actually mend a friendship, which would require follow-up actions, the least of which includes spending time in the future together... It is instead so they can feel absolved of another “sinful burden”, to aid them one stop closer to “holiness”. Good for you, but where does that leave me, and leave us, if there even is an us? 

All of these complicated and uncomfortable considerations have sapped at my energy little by little over the past year (probably even earlier) but it wasn’t until my wedding weekend in May that I more consciously and intentionally decided it was time for me to stop romanticizing past friendships and let go of these people who have likely already let go of me, except I was too stubborn to see it. Even more difficult is to let go of people who maybe have not let you go, but add nothing positive to your life, using you financially (looking @ you MLMers and religious donation seekers), emotionally (psa: friends are not your free therapists), and physically; and gaslighting you to their benefit (no, I didn’t forget that time I was told I should be ashamed for publicly calling someone out for lying on this blog because I ruined some ‘honeymoon bliss’ with my complaints - if you lied to me in public, you will get called out similarly in public, accept that as the consequences of your actions it’s called being accountable). Maybe the act of letting go feels wrong when it doesn’t match the rate of people you are letting in, but isn’t part of maturity and personal growth developing taste - and doesn’t taste extend to who you surround yourself with? But one could argue if the taste you develop leads you down a trajectory to increasing intolerance and loneliness, is that really a better alternative? 

I know that the answers to a lot of these questions are as complex and varied as the ones who answer them, and I’ve given a lot of thought to these questions this year myself. My conclusion (spoiler alert!) is in favor of letting that circle decrease, but I am curious to hear where everyone else has been along that journey. For me personally, most of the “letting go” has centered around my past religious community, and if you’ve been following my blog closely over the past few years you’ll know exactly why and how those relationships unraveled (and it’s not because I didn’t try, despite the community default blaming the ones who walked away as people of weak faith, rather than critically examining the environment and circumstances that prompt people to exit). But that’s another discussion for another day. 

What does “letting go of the past” look like for you this year? 

Even if you don’t really care about this clash, I gave the entire article a read and I do feel like some of the “deeper issue” points made by the author were very valid and resonated with me deeply.

Context: referring to the hypocrisy of how Alison Roman’s “#TheStew” recipe BLEW UP when it was really just a CURRY, or the “Pork Noodle Soup” that was essentially pho ... and how that adds another layer to the seemingly petty complaint about how she singled out two Asian women in her examples of what not to aspire towards. 

“There are deep-rooted issues in food that intersect with race, ethnicity, and cultural appropriation that food writers, critics, restaurateurs, and consumers have only begun to reckon with. As Roman’s critics have pointed out, there’s a trend of white chefs and cooks getting very successful making food traditionally cooked by brown and black people. In the same vein, there’s a trend of food that was traditionally seen as gross or weird because it wasn’t made by white people that’s now being exalted. For me personally, it’s been a trip to see white people my age fawn over Filipino food these days when the kids I grew up with shamed me out of bringing adobo leftovers for lunch.”

Why are Asian eyes so ugly? I thought to myself as I outlined their shape with the blackest liner I could dig out from the free Lancôme makeup samples Mom never used. This was my daily routine since I first discovered the beautiful black pencil when I was 12 alongside lip gloss, mascara, and blush. But eyeliner was my favorite – changing most dramatically what I hated most passionately. • Monolids are ugly because they make eyes look like slits. • Double lids are ‘mutant’ because, as my white medical professor once so aptly described, “Epicanthic folds are a prominent feature of Down Syndrome. If you don’t know what they are, Asians commonly have this feature.” Let’s face it: we can’t win, at least not in the beauty arena. But with my eyeliner adding the illusion of a larger eye, I felt halfway there. Not everyone, however, appreciated my foray into adolescent self-transformation. The Chinese beauty culture operates very differently than American beauty culture: pale skin, small mouths, soft bodies, and youthful innocence are prized over glowing tans, wide smiles, athletic frames, and sultry seductiveness. To achieve the Chinese beauty ideal of youthful innocence, heavy makeup such as eyeliner is unacceptable, and makeup at all is frowned upon for younger girls. Mom called them “raccoon eyes” and told me I looked uglier with it on but I never heeded her advice. She also said respectable girls did not waste their time on vanities like makeup, but rather immersed themselves in their studies. She especially hated when I wore makeup to church, a place where teenage girls are supposed to look extra pure. I rolled my raccoon eyes. One year, I met a new girl at our Chinese Christian Church. She was talkative, witty, similarly loved makeup and rebellion, and we became fast friends. This same year, a new youth pastor arrived at our church. He was funny, fluent, and finally our first youth pastor who wasn’t middle-aged. So how do they tie back to eyeliner? Prior to their arrival, I dreaded attending church, paranoid that the judgmental eyes of multitudes of Chinese parents hated my appearance and shared the Chinese cultural views held by my mother. Was it paranoia, or was I just observant? Adults would enthusiastically praise my younger brother’s handsome features and say nothing about my appearance other than, “She is tall!” Their smiles seemed disingenuous and their attitudes towards me distant. Or maybe I was just overly sensitive. Regardless, much of that paranoia melted away with the arrival of a new friend and youth pastor – two characters who seemed more attuned than the other members to the Asian-American dichotomy that was my life. I began to loosen up at church, smile more, and even happily greet the adults. I felt … safe. Maybe not enthusiastically accepted, but also not frowned upon with disdain. One might wonder why I was so concerned for approval from within my Chinese church. When you live in a country spearheaded by people who don’t view you as truly American, you cling onto the safe spaces that still might take you in and consider you a member. I wasn’t aware of how shaky my walls of comfort had been built, though, until one sentence caused them to tumble back down again. “He said he doesn’t like you because you wear so much eyeliner.” She told me. She being my new best friend and he being the cool and young youth pastor we both adored. “How do you know this?” I asked, disbelief and doubt at each other’s throats in the battleground that was now my mind. “Because he told my mom. And my mom told me that it’s not just him who thinks this way, but a lot of other parents. They tell their kids to stay away from you because you are a bad influence.” Bad influence. Me, the introvert who rarely speaks, a bad influence? I let that sink in. That night, I considered giving up my eyeliner. I thought all my fears about being hated by my friends’ parents were unfounded and paranoid. I thought my youth pastor would especially not judge me by something so exterior – actually, why would he judge me at all? Why would a grown ass man concern himself so heavily with whether a teenage girl wears eyeliner? Anger and sadness bubbled up around me. How did one of my greatest fears, one I thought had been pushed away and laid to rest for good, one which only my new friend knew so intimately, suddenly come to surface all over again? And that’s when it hit me: maybe she lied. The seed of thought that this supposed best friend might not actually like me at all was planted. And over the next few months, it thirstily drank up water and sunlight. I befriended other girls and began to uncover bits and pieces of the horrifying truth: she did hate me, and they had evidence. Screen captures and chat conversations were forwarded to my inbox. Not only did she tell others about how terrible I supposedly was, she also told them I disliked all of them and fabricated statements I had never uttered nor so much as thought. I could not believe it – why did she want to destroy my life and capitalize on my insecurities? What did I ever do but consider her my friend? Sometimes, you never get answers. Not too many months after, she moved again. We stumbled across each other’s Instagram accounts a few years later. She had dyed hair, tattoos, piercings all over, eyeliner wings bolder than I had ever applied, false lashes nearly reaching her thickly painted eyebrows, the same deceptively sweet smile as when we first met, and was surrounded by other Asian girls. I once burned with the anger of her betrayal, but all I could think about now was her new embodiment of the criticisms she claimed were the reasons for my rejection from our community and how ironic our appearances were now – me being the studious medical student who sometimes forgets to wear eyeliner and she being the girl who refuses to be seen in public without it - the pictorial epitome of the bad influence she once used to mark me for social abandonment from our only remaining community. Irony, Karma, or Hypocrisy? Today, I won’t know if sprinkled between her lies were grains of truth, and if her comment about my reputation was one of them. I won’t know if my eventual submission to certain Asian cultural values drew its main roots from my teenage experience of potential two-fold community rejection. I won’t know if she ever realized the extent to which she hurt me or if she continues to hurt in similarly sneaky ways our other Asian sisters struggling to find acceptance and self-love in a land which has subjected them to unwarranted rejection. What I do know is this: We All Cry The Same Eyeliner Tears Yes, we do. They trickle down from our unmistakably Asian eyes, glide along our sunscreen laden faces, and leave smudgy black streaks to remind us of both our perceived physical imperfections as well as our efforts to conceal the ugliness we feel inside. 

Feeling ugly is not just some manifestation of low self-esteem as these American schools/media/counselors might tell us in order to erase from our mutual history and from their responsibility the ‘chink’ comments that we heard or the fingers-pulling-eyes-upward-to-mimic-us that we saw.

Our damaged self-esteem is not some personal mental and emotional disorder or a reflection of our weakness but a collective experience caused largely in part by the pervasive belief that some belong here but we don’t and that some are beautiful but we aren’t. Don’t think that just because dating apps are now asserting, “Asian girls are the most desired race!” that the girls who come after us are protected from the less-than we endured. The American dating scene did not just become more “accepting” of us – we changed to look more like them. But underneath the beautifully and extravagantly drawn eyeliner wings, the perfectly filled in eyebrows, the time-consuming application of fake lashes, the hours spent at the gym to avoid ‘Asian flat butt’ stereotypes, and the sharp cut of the surgery knife on our eyelids, we still cannot help but wonder: is this beautiful yet? And when he says, “Yes”, we still worry, was I not beautiful before? Do we really want to be with the ones who only want what is made-to-order, and overlook the ones who saw the original, in all its imperfections, as worth discovering? So while I have every right to be mad at my Asian sister for the hurtful actions she made against me as a result of her wanting to be more accepted by our community than I was, I cannot lose sight of the more formidable barrier to our collective inability to self-love: not the lies she told before, but the lies they still tell today. Why are my Asian eyes so ugly? I used to think to myself constantly. And if you’ve read this until the end, I think you know the answer.

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Comments: Friends who have read this far or read my shared thoughts at all, I know my experiences are not isolated. My past shared posts related to familial pressures and relationships have shown me just how overlapping our experiences can be. The feelings of low self-esteem and self-image at some time or another in your life is probably a universal one. Experiences of betrayal are sadly quite common. Hopefully you enjoyed this short piece - it’s a bit different from the other posts I’ve written (a little more cleaned up and narrative when compared to my usual frenetic ranting) ... anyways, I wanted to share that I’ve been working on putting together some more shorts + poems in my free time (this is how I destress from school haha) and something I hope to achieve through writing with this project (and since day one) is unfiltered and unapologetic storytelling highlighting the Asian voice that is so often completely ignored in discussions of race and discrimination. I’m not saying our experiences are to be equated to the experiences of other minorities because noo, but I am saying we should at least be included in the discussion. 

Growing up, I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard various mentors and friends in my life tell me something along the lines of, “Keep your standards high [when it comes to your life partner] and do not settle.” And it totally inspired me, for so long, until it didn’t, because I eventually opened my eyes to witnessing the toxic effects that statement has directly or indirectly caused in my life and the life of those around me. Feel free to dissect this statement and the notion behind it with me further. Here are just my two cents.

How do you define settling? How does society define settling? 

I’m not a mind reader, so I’ll take a stab at the second question. I think society defines settling as making a choice to do something that doesn’t align with your ideals and knowledge of what you know to be the ‘best’ for you. In the context of a romantic relationship, this is the idea that you should choose a life partner who checks ALL your boxes (thus meeting your “high standards”), and that your boxes must be of quality to begin with or you have “low standards”. For example, if you’re a Christian girl, one of the boxes would probably read as 1) Being a Christian/Spiritual leader. Maybe some more minor boxes would be certain physical criterion you are attracted towards, such as, “Being athletic and fit” or, “at least 6 ft”, or even, “X race”. Whether we consciously try to or not, we all have some rough idea of what our “Qualities I need in my SO” list looks like. 

But life has a funny way of rarely working out that easily for us. Oftentimes, we meet someone who we are instantly drawn towards and develop feelings for, and they don’t fit our neat little lists. Then friends and family chime in and warn us with their analyses of how incompatible we seem to be so we must tread carefully. And then we wonder if choosing that person regardless is “settling”. We become so scared of settling that we might push our love interests away, because god forbid we “settle” in this day and age. 

I dislike this process because it runs on so many assumptions. 

For this process to “work”, you’re assuming that: -Logic and rational thinking is always more important than your emotions -There is a tried and true, evidence based way to determine true compatibility  -We are completely in tune with our needs and desires and capable of creating the perfect checklist  And perhaps, most DANGEROUSLY, the underlying assumption that: -We do not grow or change throughout our adult lives - we remain stagnant and cling onto longheld beliefs regardless of whether we are presented with new information

It’s no debate that all of us are judgmental. But that is okay because we also all have the capacity to change our initial judgments after being presented with new information. It is when we refuse to change our beliefs in light of new and contradicting information that we become prejudiced. Racism, sexism, classism - so many -isms function on this pathological mechanism borne from a flawed assumption.

So why should we keep using this misguided tool to guide and direct our decision on who to spend our lives with? 

I do not think settling is choosing someone who doesn’t meet your entire checklist. I don’t even think settling is choosing someone who meets only half the criteria on your checklist. When you make that decision to throw your checklist away, you are not “lowering your standards”. Rather, you are holding yourself to a new and higher standard, one in which you’re allowing yourself to trust in the goodness of another. It is an act of humility. It is also an act of bravery to explore what you do not know and are not immediately familiar with.

Checklists are unhealthy because you cling onto them thinking you’ve created a formula for happiness when you and I both know that nobody holds that much wisdom or power over their own future. By choosing to adhere to a checklist, and playing into a flawed system, you are agreeing to continue living in fear of the uncertain. Though you may feel temporary stability and control, and maybe even a little pride that you’ve kept your oh so high standards throughout all these years, the reality remains that there will always be situations out of your control. 

I hope that the next time you hear something along the lines of, “never settle” and “keep your standards high” that you do a double take. It makes for a cute Pinterest quote but is a truly terrible system to live by. 

This past week was one of my favorite weeks as a med student. Our team had an attending whose life passion is to promote compassionate care in medicine. She asked each of us to write a little paragraph on compassion so that we could share these thoughts as a group at the end of the week. Hearing the stories and voices of my residents and peers was incredible - by the end of it, we were all in tears. I wish I had copies and could share some of their stories but for what it’s worth, this was my paragraph: