We do not change ourselves for anything less than love. True, unconditional love.
It could be the love of a person, the love of a game, or the promise of a better future for those we leave behind. The only force powerful enough to drive us to sacrifice and change without destroying us, is love.
These temporary propellants: greed, praise, rage, fear, and the allure of power, can motivate us for a while but they eventually lose their shine or consume us. That is why the phrase "burnout" is so spot on, we can burn like fire for a while until there's nothing left to fuel it and all that's left is ash.
This, I think, happened to me. The weight of parental responsibility, a new job, grief from losing my friend Wyman, and the uncertainty of Griffin's Down syndrome diagnosis torched me, and this week, all I was was embers. Just last night, I fell asleep mid conversation with Robyn. Last July, I was laid out with a fever for the first two days of vacation because my body finally allowed itself to break. Robyn even said this to me this weekend, "everyone who cares about you, is worried about you…especially for the past six months."
But I cannot, I will not stay burnt forever. I will rise again from ash.
But how?
It is in large part rest. We have to take breaks, take care of ourselves. But what I've learned is that it's not JUST rest that matters. To only rest is a mistake.
We have to remember the love, the "why" that gives us the strength to pivot and transform, to look in the mirror and accept our failings, to want to change and actually do it. This was the most important lesson I learned when writing Character by Choice: the courage we need, especially that courage needed to change ourselves, only comes from love.
So why have I chosen this path? What is the true love that got me here?
It was the love I have for Robyn and the ordinary fall day with soccer, friends in the neighborhood coming over, and family dinner we wrote about in our five year vision. It's that I want to show my kids that what their Dada said is true, "there are many problems but also many solutions." And that we only quit when it's time to move on, not because we are scared or failing.
And I remember why I chose this ridiculous path of public service - the path to work harder, with fewer resources and pay, with more pressure and stakes, with more stress - the conviction that my life conspired for me to follow: that high performing government matters. I would've much rather have been an academic studying philosophy, astrophysics, or astrobiology. But I remember the lesson of my brother Nakul's death: that governments have an outsized influence on whether people live or die, suffer or prosper. When he died from dengue fever - because medical facilities were not prepared, not because it's incurable - it didn't motivate me to pursue medicine, but to understand institutions well enough to prevent senseless suffering. The hope of a free and trusting society - built upon a foundation of effective government - is why I ended up here.
It has been tempting to want to give up, to stay hopeless. To say, "I just can't" or "it's too much." I realize now that this is normal, there are periods where we feel like we are burned to ash and that this is what darkness feels like. The light can feel so far.
But this is the paradoxical irony I've learned - we do not need to go to some distant place where the light is. We are already in that place, because the light is here. The light is in the love already within our hearts. And it is in the people like Robyn and our sons, who have their arms around us, holding us up, sharing their light with us.
We are already where the light is, we just have to rise up to it.
