My Fate As Sealed Into the Book of Life As of Today

Or so the Jewish tradition goes...

Today is Yom Kippur, “the day of atonement”, a day of repentance, which according to Jewish tradition, is the day that God seals the verdict upon one’s fate for the coming year into the Book of Life.

12 years ago, at a work shadow program for the Osborne Head and Neck Institute, in Beverly Hills, California, I sat with the head of the program, Dr. Osborne, ready to learn about my “fate” as a surgeon, and orthopedic one to be exact. I had entered this program so that I could beef up my resume on the way to becoming a pre-med student, hopefully somewhere reputable.

I had been there because I was part of a six-week work shadow program where each week, students could shadow a different Head and Neck surgeon at the Osborne Head and Neck Institute. Dr. Osborne was the founder of the practice, an intimidating man, who told you to stand up straight and button up your lab coat the second you shook his hand.

He was going to lecture us on head and neck cancer treatment, a touchy subject, his expertise. He was, after all, the founder of the practice, a man who built it up from scratch, a man the other surgeons feared but respected.

I was the only student being lectured that day, because the other students were Jewish and had the day off for Yom Kippur. Dr. Osborne and I had the whole hour session to ourselves.

He started off cordially, asking me where I was from.

"Oh, Culver City. I went to high school there."

"Culver High? Forreal?"

"Yeah I played basketball there."

"Wow, that's awesome."

He started talking about cancer surgery.

"Cancer treatment is a lot like Mexican food. See you got a few major ingredients, right? Like beans, rice, salsa, cheese. There are three major ways to treat cancer. There's radiation, surgery, chemo, there's more but those are the three major ways. We use those in different amounts to see what works."

He paused a second.

"You know what? We don't have to do the lecture, it's just you and me. Let me ask you, why are you here?"

"I wanna be an orthopedic surgeon. I used to get injured a lot and I got really into looking up what exactly was wrong, and I've always thought it would be cool to get into that."

"Well, if there's one thing I can tell you. If there's anything you can picture yourself doing besides this, do that. Anything at all. You can wanna be a circus clown, a trapeze artist. Go do that. Because this is one of the hardest things in the world to do, and you can't have any doubts. Not an ounce."

Immediately the word "stand-up" came to my mind. I had been writing jokes for 6 months at this point and obsessively watching stand-up. I even looked up on Google once, "How To Be A Comedian".

He said, "You can't have any doubts when it comes to something like this, you have to love it. See this? This is a surgery I've done 800 times. I've never made a mistake. You know why? Because it's easy for me. Because I love what I do. People come all over the world to have me operate on them. I'm great at what I do."

Suddenly this hour session had turned into a motivational speech. One where I listened and he spoke. I've learned so many lessons from that talk, things that have stuck with me and defined who I am to this day.

He asked me, "There's two runners. One gets a time of 10.000001 seconds and the other gets a time of 10.0001 seconds. What's the difference between these two runners?”

“One’s faster?”

“No, they’re the same person. They got the same time. One just wanted it more.”

“90% of the decisions you make are based on fear. You don’t run a red light, because you might get caught, or hit by another car. You can’t decide who you want to be based on fear.”

He told me about his journey to get to where he was.

“When I was 8, I would read anatomy textbooks. I knew I wanted to be a doctor. I was the top of my class and I played sports, had the resume. My counselors told me to apply to community college. I applied to Berkeley and got in. I did my residency and went from maybe wanting to be a family doctor to getting interested in surgery. I became a surgeon, and I started this practice, from scratch.”

His main emphasis was, “I am good at what I do, and I love what I do.”

“You have to love what you do, but you gotta be good. Find the things you love, and hopefully you’ll be good at it too. Most of the time, you will be. Or it’ll just take some time.”

I left the session in a haze. I had built my whole identity around becoming a doctor. I would tell people from the age of 12 that I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. I had done well in school, signed up for internships and programs, volunteered so I could beef up my resume to get into a good school, hell, I was at that shadow program purely to have something to put on my college applications.

So I thought, “You know what? I’m gonna do both. I’m gonna be a doctor and a stand-up comedian. F—k it. Ken Jeong did it.”

Next week I came back and another doctor was our teacher for the day, Dr. Hamilton. This time, the other students were there. We were learning about knot tying. To become a surgeon, you had to know how to tie knots, sutchering up wounds seamlessly, effortlessly, any mistake could be fatal. We had a knot tying kit in front of us, with rubber tubes parallel to each other. Dr. Hamilton told us their importance.

“See, this is the major part of the interview. I’ll ask the person some questions about themselves, get to know them, all while having them tie knots. I did this all through college. I had a study chair, it was covered in knots. The stick shift to my car, covered.”

“Some people would sweat, some people couldn’t handle the interview. I’ll ask them to tie a knot they can’t do, and they’ll crack. Other people keep the conversation going, and if they don’t know how to, they ask me. And they’ll figure it out.”

“Those are the people we hire. Those are the people I want to have coffee with. Because I know they did the work to get here. Everyone did the work to get here. They’re all the same person. But that person was more prepared, more ready to take on challenges. And most importantly, I want to have coffee with them. They’re interesting.”

He showed us the cover of the box.

“See this kit? You can get it free online. If you guys are really serious about this thing, you guys will get this kit, and start now.”

I left the session feeling flustered once again.

I talked to the other students on the way out. “Wasn’t that crazy? About what he said? Like people would sweat in interviews.”

One guy said, “I mean yeah. But like I’ve always known I wanted to be an anaesthesiologist.”

The other guy was pretty sure too. They both are still doing it. One of them ended up going to UCLA with me.

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“Still doing the pre-med thing?”

“Yeah man, of course.”

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I ended up ordering that knot-tying kit and I got it in the mail. I looked at the CD they had come with it, watched some videos and it wasn’t for me. That kit stayed by my bedside for 3 months. And that’s when I knew I didn’t want to be a surgeon.

Well, I guess it was just stand-up.

Kind of.

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I ended up writing about this experience for my personal statement, which got me into UCLA. I wrote about it again when I was 5 years into pursuing stand-up comedy. You can read the full essay, which I posted on FB at the time below:

I then wrote about it again in my one man show and contextualized it within all the mishaps and fractionating of my “fate” as a stand-up comedian, and took that show to Edinburgh.

Now, as I sit in a classroom at my old middle school, I have 20 minutes before the next bell rings to ink out something looking forward, towards a hopeful verdict upon my fate as sealed in the Book of Life, one that somehow, some way, surely includes, stand-up comedy.

When I was a kid, I thought I was going to become something impressive, like a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, mostly because those were the things I heard made a lot of money and sounded cool to parents.

Then, I thought, I’m going to make it as a comedian, famous beyond measure, one who hits the mark in more ways than one with verbal quips and measures, cracking a whip that hits harder than any doctor’s paycheck.

The truth was, I only chose comedian because I thought being a poet wasn’t possible unless I became a professor, and I didn’t want to do that. Above all, I didn’t want to become a teacher.

Now, I’m a substitute teacher, trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing, because everything in me up to this point has been getting me to do everything beyond what I’ve been made to do for so long. I’m a writer. I’m a poet. I raise my hand and say the right thing, at the right time, and it’s all I did in school. I’d raise my hand, say the right answer, then get back to my books.

I write, I speak, and tell other people what I wrote down. And generally, people usually thank me for it. At least the people who ask for me to tell them the things I wrote down. Sometimes, strangers don’t like it, like online, but then again, no one likes unsolicited advice anyways, I sure don’t.

When I was in fourth grade, I spent the entire year reading every single Hardy Boys book, and my teacher thought I wasn’t paying attention. She asked me what we were doing in class, brought me up to the front, and I showed her the right answer, then went right back to reading, because that’s what I wanted to do.

She told my Mom to enter me into the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins, where I took a college aptitude test and placed within the top percentile of applicants, gaining me acceptance into the program. It was six thousand dollars for the three weeks, and so I didn’t go.

This summer, I worked as a resident assistant at the camp, learning what it looked like be a “gifted child”. I felt old, out of place, thinking, what have I done, wasting my life on this dream of becoming a “comedian”, only to find out that all along, I’m a writer, a poet, and I could have just done that, answered the right questions, then went back to reading.

I came back ready to use my talents, started posting a bunch of things online, only to feel lost once again, confused about how to integrate all of my many gifts into something that made sense, something that I could hold on a wall, like a degree, like a certificate that showed my qualifications to be “gifted”. But what I really wanted to do, was get back to reading and writing, answer the right questions when prompted, then get back to exploring, playing with my friends, getting better at sports, and figure out who I really was.

I’m running out of time and this English Teacher I’m co-teaching with is asking these kids what they really want to do with their life. Do they want to flip burgers, or do they want to work hard and be something bigger than they can imagine?

I’m not saying I don’t want to be a comedian anymore. I’m not saying that a poet is all that I am. But I guess the truth is, if on the day of repentance, the verdict on my next year has already been sealed into the Book of Life, becoming “child of God” is the only gift that I really need.

Dr. Osborne told me to do what I love, to value respect over being liked, and most of all, to do the thing I could picture myself doing, above the thing that I felt like I was supposed to do.

Right now, I picture myself trying to etch another Tome into the Book of Life, asking the Father if he’s pleased with my writing and my speech.

I’m going to write, to speak, and tell people who asked me what I wrote, what I wrote down. And above all. I’m going to tell the Truth. Hopefully that’s enough.