Energy
The last time I wrote something was nearly eighteen months ago. A lot has happened since then: finishing residency, going to India for the first time after ~twelve years, turning thirty and then going to Banff, finishing my first year of hematology and medical oncology fellowship, going to Jackson Hole for my bachelor party, and most recently, getting married in Palm Springs.
I could have written about all of these, but sometimes, I get too busy living life that I don’t have the time to reflect on what I learned. Now that life has subsided to a new “normal”, I pondered about how I approached the past year and a half.
I was never very good at being the center of attention. I don’t think I’ve ever been called the life of the party and honestly, I’m sure most of you are laughing just trying to imagine me in that role. Well, a lot of the milestones I mentioned required me to be the center of attention and so as Amar (my brother) would say, it was time to play the part.
I quickly learned that the energy I put into something is the energy that I would receive tenfold back. If I wanted everyone to let loose in Jackson Hole, then I would have to let loose first. If I wanted an intimate storytelling night, then I’d have to craft that and set the tone. If I wanted to make shopping for my wedding sherwani fun, then I had to make it fun. Most importantly, if I wanted to make my wedding a bonding experience, then it was on me to do that.
This isn’t some novel revelation. The American education system is founded on rewarding success that comes after hard work is put in. The harder you work, the more successful you will become. At least that’s the capitalistic meritocracy we are indoctrinated with.
As I’ve changed the way I look at success over the last five years (re: my previous writings), I’ve had to redefine the concept of “work” and replace it with “energy”. The change in vernacular allowed my Type A brain to understand that putting good energy in would lead to a successful memory/experience. How spiritual of me (lol). And so, for the big moments in my life, that’s what I did. I tried my best to be present, put out the energy I wanted to receive, and stopped caring about how to (as my economics professors would say) “keep optimizing for maximum utility”.
Honestly, it’s not that hard. We overcomplicate life and try so hard to be happy. Here are some small things I did that completely changed my experience.
Just say yes. I had a mixed outlook on going back to visit India (as evidenced by not having gone back since December 2011). In brief, it was always the lack of control (i.e. not controlling where I stayed, whom I stayed with, what we did, or how long we stayed) and isolation (ie all of my friends remained in Chicago). But it was time to go and this time I started saying yes to my parents’ way more than usual. “Do you want to come join our friends and I for a late-night drive at the Gateway of India? Sure!” “Do you want to do this puja your grandmother and mother want? Sounds good!” Once I gave up some control, I found that the people around me reciprocated and we did a few things I wanted (like staying at the St. Regis for a few nights or going to an Indian fine dining restaurant).
As a first-year fellow, we spend a lot of months on the inpatient (in the hospital) side, seeing patients who are admitted for various ailments. Now that I’m on the subspecialist side, different physicians in the hospital (ie surgeons, hospitalists, intensivists, etc) will ask us for assistance on various problems that they have. Fellows are not financially incentivized to see more patients since we are salaried. Across America, at most academic teaching institutions, you will find trainees trying to avoid seeing patients unnecessarily. I started off the year by trying to push back some of these requests or trying to provide some helpful hints, but this still involved a lot of work. I had to review the patient’s chart, make an assessment, and then formulate a brief plan to communicate to the primary physician caring for the patient. This communication would usually require multiple texts. In fact, the only thing I was omitting was seeing the patient — which is just a disservice to the patient and honestly, just sad. The moment I discovered the thumbs up emoji, my life changed. Instead of wasting my time texting the attending, I walked to the patient and said hi, explained what I thought was going on, and moved on with my day. For maybe ten minutes of extra work, I was happier. This happiness spread to the patient and primary team and created a more positive work environment.
Feel the energy. One of things I wanted from my trip to Jackson Hole was to be around a lot of my family and friends from different parts of my life. Fortunately, a lot of them already knew each other, but still, I was the common thread. On the second night, our plan was to pregame at our Airbnb and then take a party bus to a bar in Jackson. I don’t know how many of you have been on a party bus, but in my experience, they are very hit or miss. They can dampen the vibe precipitously. That was how the first few minutes were going as we pulled out of the driveway. But then I got up, grabbed a white claw, and stopped being so self-conscious by singing and jumping to Drake’s Circo Loco (closely followed up by Kendrick’s Not Like Us) Sammy Adams’s Driving Me Crazy, and Prabh Singh’s 9:45. I could feel the vibe shift immediately. Because when the bachelor is having the time of his life, everyone around him feeds off that energy. That’s just how it works.
I used this same mindset for my wedding baraat (aka the groom’s entrance to his wedding). Normally, the groom is secluded by being on a horse or a car, and the music/dancing is fifty feet away. I walked in on my own two feet and could be wherever I wanted. One moment I was in the front with some relatives and the next moment I was in the back with some of my friends. Once it clicked that the energy (aka the dhol player) would follow me, I got to have the baraat I wanted with whom I wanted. One of my favorite moments was seeing the faces of everyone walk around me while I danced in place right in the middle of hundreds of people. Each way I turned, I saw someone from a different part of my life (my childhood best friends chatting with my cousins, my parents dancing with my college friends, my uncles meeting Nithya’s uncles. As the groom in the middle of his baraat, it’s physically impossible to be in all these conversations/interactions, but I could see that they were all stemming from my energy., My face was hurting from smiling (something my new sister Naomi had warned me about earlier).
Be you. I made it almost one thousand words without mentioning Nithya (but her influence has been there since the first word). Both of us wanted an intimate wedding which seemed very daunting to create for an Indian wedding. How do you get an Indian wedding to be intimate? I asked this to everyone: from recent wedding couples to artificial intelligent engines. The task seemed impossible given the number of guests that appear to be a prerequisite without radically changing the core events in an Indian wedding (while also staying within a budget). But both Nithya and I thrive in more intimate situations. That’s just who we are, and a wedding should be a reflection the couple.
We opted to emcee the few performances because we wanted our guests to hear from us.
Who better to introduce a performance than the people they are dancing for? Now you may think that there is a lot of work and nerves to emcee, but it was our wedding and our friends and family. We prepared minimally and just spoke from the heart.
The second part of the program was something I had spent months thinking about. We called it the “Night of Stories” because we had eight storytellers from different aspects of our lives (ranging from our uncles to college roommates to the person who introduced us) in a candlelit/string lights ambiance. Nithya and I introduced each storyteller and for a moment, chatting with our loved one who showcased different aspects of Nithya and I to everyone else. This was the riskiest part of the night as I had no clue how it would turn out. We stayed true to ourselves and had a vision. Once we committed fully, everyone around us dived in right after to create an hour of my life that I will never forget.
— — —
I’m sure there are more lessons and reflections from my experiences since last April. Some of which I’m realizing as I’m writing this now. But the underlying takeaway seems to be the same — the energy that you put out is the energy that you receive. I chose that energy to be infectious happiness and positivity, which created a positive feedback loop that continues to grow.
