璞

A young colleague of mine came to my office in a evening and said that she prepared to give up internal medicine; she's heading for something else.

I was about to say that's a great loss. With all the years of training and experience, it seems a pity to scrap everything and start anew.

But I may be wrong.

Not only does my little friend has very good reasons to go elsewhere, but it is also too often much an obsessive idea to stick with something simply because you have spent some years with it.

Yes, it is true that we all begin from scratch, and gradually mold ourselves to fit a certain position. As to old Chinese sayings: 玉不琢，不成器。

Nonetheless, we often forget that we are the jade but not the instrument. There is no reason for any one of us to exist as one particular instrument - just that we have to always bear in mind that the very nature of us is the jade, not whatever utensil that we temporarily take up.

And, if the time comes and we have to move ahead for somewhere else, we follow the need and regress to our original scratch of jade in order to mold to there something else in need.

This is what Lao Zi (老子) said: 反璞歸真。

(釋名: 璞,未琢玉也)