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Bring adventure, change and calculated risk-taking into your life
Make “someday” happen before it’s too late. One surgeon shares his “years of living dangerously.”
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Somewhere, sometime “someday” slips into our lives. Sometimes “someday” is restless: “Someday I would like to travel to all seven continents.” Sometimes “someday” is bold and fearless: “Someday I want to climb mountains.” Sometimes “someday” is intellectual (learn a second language), athletic (windsurf) or involves new motor skills (play a musical instrument).
| John C. Hagan III, MD, and wife, Becky, visit their seventh and last continent, Antarctica. | |
| Images: Hagan JC III |
“Someday” I will do all the exciting, unusual and venturesome things that have instilled in me awe and a sense of wonder from childhood. Someday I will indulge my wanderlust and travel to exotic faraway places.
For many of us “someday” is elusive. We burn through the years of our lives with relentless toil and work. Our days belong to our families, our patients, our profession, our churches and our communities – they are anything but “our” days. The inexorable passage of our days does not include the proverbial “someday.”
This is the personal epiphany of an obsessive-compulsive, workaholic, personality type-A physician who fortunately “got it” in time and spent 10 adrenaline-soaked, memory-producing years making “someday” happen.
My message is perhaps most appropriate for physicians ages 40 to 65. Medical school, internship, residency and the early years of establishing a medical practice are pretty much survival situations. Time and money are precious, obligations to family and practice dear. However, it’s never too early to draft a personal list of unique life experiences to do “someday.” With proper planning even the young physician may be able to cross a few items off their life list.
The ideal time to make “someday” happen is that great ennui-inducing epoch called middle age. Without shaking things up, without indulging whim and passion, the middle third of our lives will morph into “muddle age.” The vagaries of health, our inevitable decrease in stamina, the certainty of death and the uncertainty of lifespan make the deferment of making “someday” happen an injudicious proposition.
Making a life list
The idea of creating a list of extraordinary things to do in your lifetime is not unique and has been written about extensively (see list). Indeed, doing a Google search of “things to do before you die” listed 28,200 hits and various life list iterations up to 1,000 items long.
A urologist I know was my inspiration to get my act together. He frequently operated the same day I did at North Kansas City Hospital. We’re roughly the same age. Shortly after we both turned 40, whenever I saw him and inquired what he was up to the answers were esoterically diverse and uniquely spellbinding: “windsurfing off the north shore of Venezuela,” “climbing mountains in the Americas and Europe,” “backpacking in Patagonia,” “living with a family in Mexico for a month to learn Spanish,” “photographing exotic wildlife in Africa.” You get the idea.
“And you, John? What have you been up to?” he asked.
What could I say? The most exciting things I experienced were living vicariously through his travels and adventures.
“Well, I went to the Amish festival in Jamesport and… ah… ummh… the crafts exhibit at Silver Dollar City.”
He was always gracious enough not to say, “Far out, John, you’re really living life on the edge.”
Eventually I asked why he was doing all the things he did.
“We’re getting old; we’re not going to live forever. We’ve got to go for it with both hands and make these things happen. We’ve got the money, we can spare the time without shortchanging our practices and families. In another 10 to 15 years we may not be able to physically do a lot of these adventures. Hell, we could even be dead. Just do it!”
Time, money, not living forever, getting old, go for it. I got it! I also would make “someday” happen, and over the next several weeks, I cobbled together an extensive list of things I longed to do “someday.”
Living my “somedays”
My wife and I began to travel. We visited all seven continents. Not ones for constructing itineraries and logistics, we used the services of Abercrombie and Kent (A & K) travel company. Their trips are spectacular. For adventure travel to Third World and remote locations we used Mountain Travel Sobek. Memorable days, marvelous months of high adventure followed.
The most exciting day was in Queensland, New Zealand where I parachuted from 9,000 feet, rode a jet boat on the Shotover River and bungee jumped off the Kawarau River Bridge. The most dangerous adventure was mountain climbing. On Mount Rainer, a winter storm created a chill factor of –30°. Fierce winds up to 90 mph blew two Japanese climbers into a crevasse. Our climbing party turned back 500 feet below the summit. A year later I successfully reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at 19,340 feet. Two of our climbing party, suffering from high altitude cerebral and pulmonary edema, were rushed to safety down the mountain by native porters.
For 10 years I happily and enthusiastically whittled away at my life list and scratched off most goals. Then the years of living dangerously came to an abrupt halt. My mother’s health failed and I had to manage her affairs and look after her needs. She died last year. A son-in-law was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In the interim, I developed a number of moderately severe arthritic and degenerative joint diseases that curtailed my intense aerobic exercise program and the high level of physical fitness that enabled me to complete many of these very strenuous endeavors.
Dr. Hagan reaches the 19,340 foot summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, Africa. | |
| (a) Bungee jumping off the Kawarau bridge and (b) tandem skydiving from 9,000 feet in Queensland, New Zealand. | |
I’m 61 years old. I do not remember my 347th patient encounter or the 157,353rd. I do not remember my 6,782nd cataract surgical procedure. But I do remember the years of living dangerously. I remember in blazing Technicolor and Dolby sound when each “someday” became the here and now.
I hope and believe there are other adventures to come. I still would like to hike the Inca Trail. There are other countries I hope to visit. I still want to fly in the open cockpit of a biplane. Presently I greatly enjoy golfing with my buddies Ken, Carl and Chuck – but I have yet to break 90.
I urge you to formulate your own list. Bring change, adventure, mental rigor, physical challenge and calculated risk-taking into your life. I made “someday” happen and so can you. “Someday” it may be too late.
Carpe diem!
A note from the editors:
This article originally appeared in the September/October edition of Missouri Medicine: the Journal of the Missouri Medical Association.
For Your Information:
- John C. Hagan III, MD, can be reached at Discover Vision Centers, 9401 N. Oak Trafficway, #200, Kansas City, MO 64155; 816-478-1230; fax: 816-454-8478; e-mail:jhagan@bizkc.rr.com