The Best is Over.

It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. And I came too late for that, I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over. I think about my father. He never reached the heights like me. In a lot of ways, he had it better. He had his people, they had standards, they had pride. What do we got today?

A couple or so months ago, I was employed as one of the lowest rung of doctors in a teaching hospital. “Teaching hospital” is hospital-speak for where one should access the highest level of healthcare. But this isn’t a blog post about how farcical that term has become in most states today.

My experience here has been so-so. There’s a lot to complain about, but there’s this constant worry – quite comparable to a lump in the back of one’s throat – that I’m gliding through a premeditated path and I can’t stop or steer off its course. The odd thing is that an onlooker may regard it as being a cruise but not having as much as an illusion of control is a problematic realization.

In a bid to clarify, I’ll admit that in the bigger pool I belong, there are some perks I can access and that I have complete confidence that the people who have my best intentions at heart can put in a good shift in keeping a high tide for me. In spite of this, I can’t shake off the feeling that I missed the crucial building process and have just been a part of the gentle decline into a state of decay.

Regarding the sector I’m employed in, it doesn’t help that its history is quite short, devoid of any high-points yet very deep into an irreversible putrefaction process. I always wonder what it would feel like to be a part of when there was hope, potential and a meaningful vision for all of this. This addled hellhole has nothing but depressed workers and fanfaronade from a few who have turned a buck or two.

It’s true there’s more to work with and that some archaic practices are extinct today, but it hardly seems like the surface has been scratched. What runs deep in the place of progress is scepticism – just a lot of noncommittal individuals trying to get to the next checkpoint. This scepticism trickles down through all possible levels and anyone who makes a decent attempt to be different needs to make this lame turkey of a sector fly.

So when Tony Soprano asks “what do we have today”, I see that we have a similar problem. Like Tony, my father and I share a profession and he has done his best to show me the ropes of the business. And in as much as I have everything I need to surpass him, it’s overbearingly bothersome to think that he had it better than me. And to repeat the rest of Tony’s quote, they worked with pride, with hope, with a certain level of reverence for what they did. They may not have known it, but it was the best of times. And it’s over.

Sigh.