Midnight, December 2008
New Delhi, India

“I’m a champion!” I said to myself over and over again as my feet pounded the treadmill. I was coaxing out yet another mile from my tired legs.

Keep moving.

One more step. One more mile. One more day.

As a staff Neurosurgeon in a major hospital in one of the most populated cities of the world, life was not busy – for that would be an understatement. Non-stop action was more like it. Like Mission Impossible on steroids – minus the fun.

I had come home after yet another hectic day. Early morning rounds. Long hours in the operating room. More rounds. ER visits. Some more rounds. Referrals from other specialties. Holding up hope here, conveying bad news there. Lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat, and so on until long after sundown.

Somewhere in the city, shoppers were out in glitzy malls, getting ready to usher in the New Year. Families were getting together to celebrate. Parties were in full swing. Everywhere in the thick of this crisp Delhi December night, windows glowed bright with warmth from within, and trees were aglitter with strings of lights.

Everywhere – except at my place.

Keep moving, I told myself. Winners waste no time on frivolous things. So I did my 10K, despite the late hour and the long day. Everything was fine as long as I kept moving.

But reality has a tendency to creep upon you when you’re not watching. It stalks you with silent stealth, watching, always waiting for the right time. It pounces upon you when you’re least expecting it – and it pounced on me later that night. As I stood under the shower and washed away the tiredness of the day, the part of my mind that had been goading me to ‘keep moving’ finally shut up. Or shut down. I let the hot water of the shower drench my resistance that night. I cried.

Keep moving?

To what end?

Two months earlier, my father had died. He always used to say that some day he’d stop running after things involving daily grind – to find time for the things he truly wanted. He never got around to that point.

Would I?

Midnight, December 2009
Calgary, Canada

Streams of Aurora Borealis swayed over the city. The dancing lights had blinked in suddenly – I had spotted them from the car, and we stopped at a safe place to watch. Now the lights arced in graceful sweeps from the north, and I huddled in the cold and watched, mesmerized.

I had moved halfway across the world to gain new skills in my career – a Fellowship to sub-specialize in my already super-specialized profession. To be an elite among the elites was how I might have looked at it at another time.

Not anymore.

I had moved halfway across the world to gain new skills. Instead, I ended up gaining something entirely unexpected: clarity. A fresh perspective on life. A change of scene can do that some time.

In that moment of lucid realization, I knew that ‘keep moving’ was not always a wise advice. Higher, faster, and farther are not always the best goals. I wanted – no, needed – to learn to be in the here and now.

In that moment of clarity, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to follow the lights to the northern horizon, to find my North Star, so to speak. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the Arctic explorers, or set sail with Magellan across the sea. I wanted to clamber behind Mallory and Irvine and learn what happened after they disappeared in the mist. In spirit, of course.

What I did not want was this: to be jerked awake by the shrill ring of the alarm clock, to rush to work another day, to stay confined, body and soul, between sterile walls and a roof that spoke no language that humans could ever understand. I could barely take another moment of that cloying landscape.

Yet, leaving would make me a quitter, right? Right?

So I hung on.

After all, years ago it was the spirit of exploration that had led me to choose neurosurgery, the most cutting edge of medical sciences. So, in a way, wasn’t I already following in the footsteps of the explorers I had so admired from afar?

Was I now simply being fickle by wanting out?

Yet, a part of me knew I was not entirely wrong. Over years I saw what working as a neurosurgeon was really like. Practical knowledge, yes. But no deep insights about how the human brain functions in its myriad dazzling ways. It was all – and only – about mastering skills and implementing them, robotically, over and over again. Hardly any time even to explain to patients about what was happening to them. It was all – and mostly – about dealing with administrators and bureaucrats. Walking around the minefields of other people’s egos. Watching death wrestle its victims away one by one by one.

Missing meals. Missing sleep. Missing most forms of human interactions except those that involved ‘getting things done’. And worst of all – missing connection with my own authentic self while the clock ticked away relentlessly.

Enough.

Do I dare? Soon, maybe. Not yet. After all, I was not a quitter, was I?

October 2010, Calgary

The first week after my Fellowship ended, I did not know what to do with my time. I had a spreadsheet open in front of me, with a list of hospitals where I could now apply for a staff position. I had already updated my CV. Everything was ready. Yet, I could not bring myself to hit ‘send’.

I wanted one more day of not returning to the grind.

Yet, I was not accustomed to leisure. Everything felt strange – not having anywhere to rush to in the morning. Not getting to demonstrate how important my work – and by extension, I – was. Not having constant activity to shield me from questions. Such as: Who are you? What do you really want from life?

The questions were scary, for they required me to think. People say that thoughtless actions can be destructive. Just imagine what action-less thoughts can be like! So yes, the questions were scary, for they required me to think – while not continuing to act.

At first I ran from these questions. Running is easy. I was already good at that. Heck, I was addicted to that process – and now that I had nowhere to run to, reality hit me full in the face: I had become a workaholic, and now I was in the clutch of withdrawal symptoms. Of course, the easy way to deal with withdrawal is to jump on the cycle of addiction again. More work. More lucrative work. More important kind of work. Work that would keep me fully occupied.

But the question that had pounced upon me that night in New Delhi returned again:

To what end?

The way I’d been working so far was toxic. I had given more than I had paused to take – and that could not go on forever – it was physiologically impossible to sustain. In that moment I knew that if I stepped inside a hospital again, I’d scream. How disgusting!

A part of me still nagged: But you’ve got to get back in the race – this is what you’re trained to do!

This time, the rest of me rebelled. I will NOT. You can’t MAKE me. Not this time.

And in that moment I knew what I should have realized a long while ago – I was burnt out.

I’d been so burnt out that the only way I was surviving was by numbing myself through running – marking milestone after milestone, following the toxic mantra of Higher! Faster! Farther! that I had somehow imbibed somewhere. Because that’s what champions do, it seems! Ha! Haha!

“Enough,” I said out loud.

And this time, I meant it.

***

Over next few years I slowly reclaimed my life.

Watching constellations march across the sky till the Eastern sky turned pale at dawn. Savouring the aroma of my coffee brewing in the morning. The smell of frost in winter and of warm grass in spring. Rediscovering the touch of sunshine on my skin. Speaking to other humans about something other than ‘getting things done’. I was getting reacquainted with myself again – and I liked the person I met this time.

As I looked beyond my tunnel vision and saw the world around me, one fact grew increasingly clear: I was not alone in what I had gone through. I saw signs of burnout everywhere across the globe in all spheres of life – from the hotshot professional collapsing in their 40s, to the single mom getting by, to the student scraping through the grades. So toxic. So ubiquitous. So shoved-under-the-carpet by one and all.

Why? Does it have to be this way?

How many of us have longed to say “Enough!” but are afraid to – even when circumstances are favourable? And I know I’m speaking from a position of privilege where my circumstances, while not exactly favourable, were not quite unfavourable either.

People grit their teeth and carry on due to a misplaced sense of pride, while burning themselves out until they are no longer themselves.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

In my case I had reached the terminal phase of my burnout, which made it impossible for me to stay in my own profession anymore, especially because that profession dealt with someone else’s life or death.

Over past few years I’ve been reading books and talking to people about burnout, and one heartening fact emerges:
Burnout, when caught at an early stage and treated – both symptomatically and at a causal level – is a reversible condition.

It is my hope to shed light on various factors in our current society that burn us out to the point where we lose our essence. There is an inner fire within us, which is extinguished during burnout.

Is there a way to rekindle this fire?

Even better, how do we prevent it from burning out in the first place?

***

Have you ever experienced burnout? What led you to it? How did you find your way back to yourself? What are you still struggling with?

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