sometimes i live a very small life, concerned with small things, doing small deeds, speaking weak words. today, the world just opened up again. i spent the morning in class, getting the clinical definition of a heart attack, atherosclerosis, all the other minute details that work together ever so delicately to snuff out a beating heart. i learned how i can help patients prevent that event, how to help them after mild ischemic attacks, how to manage drugs and balloon angioplasties. i spent an hour this afternoon giving an eye and ear exam, practicing how to find the miniscule changes in the body that cause it to deteriorate, that cause it to feel pain, that cause people to seek help. this evening, i listened to a reading from my most beloved professor's upcoming book, written about what he has learned through 50 years as a family physician, mainly about suffering. "managing suffering will be your profession." trying to understand the narratives that patients tell me, trying to have compassion on old men and young men facing the end of all they have known. and i realized that, in the midst of trying to support the callings of others, i have forgotten to love my own calling. the intricacy, the art, the delicate balance of healing the body. in the midst of the studying and the 8am classes, and my own smaller problems, i had simply forgotten. i am still chasing dreams, but some i am already holding in my hands.