Being Present

By Reba Sebastian Galut

A new year has dawned on us, along with hoping that what this new year brings is a complete
turnaround from the lows of 2020. During the break, I hope that aside from getting enough sleep, you
were able to refill your hobbies outside of medicine; for me, it has recently become watching and
reading all the backlogs: from anime, manga, webtoons, shows and movies. Amongst these, the movie
Soul did not just capture my attention but also my heart. A spoiler alert is warranted here just in case
you have not yet heard/watched, and I suggest you do.

As medical students, we are geared – excited, even, to become future doctors. We toil day and
night, just to appease a part in ourselves to make us worthy of it and to be the best we can be for our
patients. We have batchmates who are just “in the zone,” and if you are like me, one who is almost
always lost, we often cannot fathom how they can do it continuously. We get eaten up by doubt, our
anxieties, and worse the judgment of the very people who we look for to mentor us to our purpose.

We always say, “Matatapos din ‘to! Kaya ko ‘to!” We just have to get through this one week,
then the next and so on. We are so caught up in the end that we get tired of the journey, we sometimes
forget the value of rest, of experiencing the peace of dinners or of lists all being crossed out.

One of the aspects of the film that had enraptured me was the contrast of detailed
backgrounds, the accessories while the characters themselves are cartoonish – the Jerries and the
Terries are line art. I found myself rewinding to appreciate the words on the shops, the lighting, the
rusting and the peeling white paint on the gate.

The film made me realize that being present is just as fulfilling as every other milestone I’ve ever
had. The graduations were similarly as magical as every vein I hit on a busy Monday morning when I
used to work; the lunch I had shared with my friends in High School were just a nurturing as the ones I
had alone staying up late to cram; the exams I passed with flying colors were as stunning as the ones I
failed so miserably.

Life is always teaching us, and with every stride we find that our purpose is not just to have
goals to clear out and achieve by a specific age. It teaches us to live and love, may it be the pitter-patter
of rain while holding someone’s hand or the heat of the summer air while burying a loved one. To my
fellow medical student reading this, do not forget that we are not just cogs in the machine churned out
to make the best diagnoses, to perform physical exams in under 15 minutes; we are our families’ pride,
our friends’ shoulder to cry on, and our selves’ best cheerleader. Life is hard, but it is also very much
worth it. Puhon at Padayon.