The Campbell Academy Blog (80)

Get to not have to……

Sometimes I wish I would just f*ck up.

I suspect there are many other people who wish that, too.

Today, I got some news about a patient of mine.

So, if you work in healthcare or any customer service industry, you will get this; if you don't, I hope you can understand it.

But there are some people who cross our path that we get on with better than others, people who touch us personally or whose stories resonate, or just people that we like and think that in other circumstances, we would probably be friends.

I got some news about a guy I've looked after for quite a long time, which is not awfully grand.

This is not a friend of mine, you must understand, and it's not a cause for an outpouring of grief on my behalf, but it's just sad that someone I know and respect and like is unwell, and I'm not so sure how they're going to do and neither are they.

This is a person who seems to have always looked after themselves and who has been ridiculously successful getting into the tech world right at the early stages and making it work fantastically and then just getting out when it got too rough and too tough and too commercial with enough to do whatever they wanted for the rest of their life and then continued to look after themselves has now seemingly lost the genetic lottery.

And so, before I got that news today, which I found by just going through my clinical system because it was an email directed to me to tell me I woke up first thing this morning.

And so my dad taught me this, and I don't remember it very much, but I know my dad will read this. Dad, I hope you can remember when you taught me this.

My dad lost his brother at a very, very young age, tragically, suddenly, and I think that affected my dad; I'm sure it did, but years and years ago, he told me that when he first woke up in the morning, he's just glad he's woken up. I woke up in the morning and that wasn't my first thought this morning.

Nevertheless, I got up, creaking and tired, and put my stuff on and walked the dogs around a rainy field and then I came back, and then I forced myself to go to the swimming pool, and I swam further than I have swam in the past eight years at the swimming pool.

I got out and was able to self-congratulate myself a little bit before I came back and sat on the sofa with my dogs and did some 'work' if what I did counted as work before I found out about my patient and then I thought to myself, 'sometimes I wish I would just f*ck up'.

I woke up this morning, and I was here, and that was brilliant, and then I got to walk my dogs; I didn't have to walk my dogs, I got to walk them, and I got to think about stuff and decide what I was going to do and be a free-thinking individual.

I love my dogs to bits, and then I came back, and my little dog probably pissed on the floor again for the billionth ten, but it doesn't really matter because she's brilliant.

I then went swimming, came back, and decided what I was going to do. I was well, and nothing was looming over me that was telling me if this medicine or that medicine didn't work.

I might not be here this time next year; every day we wake up, and we don't have that is an enormous privilege where we get to do whatever we choose to do, and whatever we choose to do is a choice that almost all of us have.

And so when other people are complaining about this or that, or more importantly, I am complaining and whinging about it, it is always worth the opportunity, the insight, the space to step back and wish you would just f*ck up and appreciate how good it actually is.