Truth Shall Set You Free

Guys, THE TEST is over. 'Twas less painful than expected, but most importantly, no one has to worry about it anymore... until next year.

Was surprised to hear that people in other specialties don't prepare for their in-service exams - they just show up and take it. Some take it post-call. Would that I were so brave! When you're taking a test with some of the highest scoring test-takers in the country, AND you *know* that you know very little, AND the senior residents are studying like madmen, you study because you don't want to be the lowest scorer - in the country.

Fear, my friends, is a wonderfully strong motivator.

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Speaking of fear - Watched Merlin last night. Interesting storyline, OK movie, special effects left much to be desired. There's a lot of different versions of the King Arthur legend, and I still prefer the Mist of Avalon one (book version).

One thing, though, hit a chord. The gist of the movie was that "Mab," a pagan goddess, realized that with the arrival of Christianity, she was losing the following of the people. So she creates the wizard Merlin to try to bring the people back to her. She fails miserably, and is portrayed as a cold, calculating, almost evil goddess in the story. Merlin spends most of the movie trying to defeat her, but her magic is much stronger than his. In the end Merlin succeeds, after realizing that Mab's hold over people is possible only because people grant her that power. And when people stop fearing Mab, and stop remembering her, they are freed from her power.

It reminds us that the things that we dislike and fear often seem to have a life of their own. These fears grow large and powerful because we unwittingly and continuously feed them with our thoughts and emotions. And the beauty in this realization is that if we are able to step back and look at a self-created vortex of fear, we'd realize that ultimately, one has the choice to continually feed the nightmares, or finally face them with this self-awareness and make the conscious decision to leave them behind.

Here's to you and me, as we work on removing our fears.

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