What makes a good life? How does one truly define happiness? If you could choose only one investment to focus on for your future self, what would it be? Would you save more for retirement? Travel more? Learn a new language? Take a cooking class? Learn to fit scleral lenses (finally)? What would you do so that when you look back on your life, you truly feel as though you lived it well?
As we move into our adult years and away from optometry school, it’s easy to put our heads down, get into the daily grind, and move through the days while time just …. flies. Those days become weeks, and then years. You look up one day and realize that life has passed by at an incredible speed and relationships that you once cherished have become a casualty lost in the day-to-day hubbub.
After 17 years of practice, that is where I found myself. I had a busy practice, an amazing husband, and two beautiful daughters. I had kept in touch with my best friends from grade school, college, and optometry school, but I hadn’t made any close friends in my adult life. I had work acquaintances, but no true ride or die who really “got me” on a professional level. At that moment, I knew I had to do something different (for my family’s sanity as well as my own).
I became much more intentional about putting myself out there. I sat for my fellowship with the Academy, I showed up at meetings and talked to people I didn’t know. I said yes to lecturing, to being highly involved in organized optometry, and I began to write. I spent time in the hallways, at dinners, and even at cocktail hours meeting and connecting with fellow optometrists between CE hours. I got way out of my comfort zone. I joined the Intrepid Eye Society.
Today, I’m surrounded by friends and colleagues across the country, and I never could have imagined the life I lead now. I am deeply grateful. I find myself forging great memories with so many of you—including these two amazing goofballs I am privileged to work with on this stellar publication. The photo above is of the three of us—after hightailing it down a mountain, in forgotten irrigation ditches on a sugar plantation, laughing, spinning like tops in inner tubes, having the time of our lives in a scene straight out of Jurassic Park (minus the dinosaurs), all while holding hands and forbidden from saying “sorry” as we bumped into one another in the dark on our rocky path blown up by dynamite more than 100 years ago. If that isn’t a metaphor for living life joyfully with those we love, I don’t know what is.
I highly suggest you put yourself out there, go to a meeting, find your tribe, slow down, and nurture those around you while feeding your soul at the same time. (Do put $$ in your 401[k]—the sooner the better.) Tell your friends and mentors how much they mean to you. I promise the joy is worth the initial discomfort.
My cup runneth over.
—Selina McGee, OD, FAAO
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