I am about to quote Bruce Lee.

Yesterday, I was feeling extremely overwhelmed about life, and the whole “getting into a great medical school is so scary and hard” bit came crashing down on me. I can be pretty demanding of myself when it comes to school. I study like a freak. I live and breathe chemistry and physics. At school, my friends call me overzealous. And they’re right. If you took one look at my Google calendar, in all its color-coded, blocked out glory, you would probably use the terms, “maniacal” or “obsessive compulsive,” to describe the way I plan out every part of my life — what subjects I cover, when I cook, what problems I complete, how many crunches I do, what review sessions I attend — at any given hour on a given day.

Every minute detail is planned carefully and followed accordingly.

So, as you can probably expect, I kind of cracked, cried, broke down. It was silly, and as always, my mom slapped some sense into me. After talking to her on the phone, I talked to Takafumi about how rigid I’ve become and how I don’t know how to make it all work out. My wise Takafumi responded with a quote. It was deep. It was truth. It was Bruce Lee.

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now, you put water into a cup; it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle; it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot; it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

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