Sometimes clinic feels a bit like Sisyphus must feel. Rolling the stone of illness up the hill but it is eternally rolling back down. I can’t stop it. People age and people die and otherwise there would be no room for young ones.

The last two weeks of clinic has worn me out a bit. A friend says that I take too much of it home, worrying about people. How to let go of this?

I make connections in clinic. Not all the time. Sometimes I fail. I made a connection with more than one person with diabetes this week, but one was funny. The connection is that he mentioned that he is an elk hunter. Oh, and flies to California to fish and has a very lot of fish. I said that I’ve had elk and like it. That was when the connection engaged: he was very pleased that I am not horrified by hunting. Hunting elk is not at all easy or cheap and cleaning the animal and carrying it out, well. He is coming back about his diabetes and left cheerful.

If I go home trailing those connections and spend my time worrying about this people, I’ll wear out. I don’t want pneumonia number five. So how do I connect but let it go when I go home?

I will think of the connection as much smaller than the boulder that Sisyphus deals will. Not a boulder. A small piece of the rock. I can suggest how the person can lighten the load a little. Then I must stand aside and let them go. They have to decide what to do about their health. It is between them and the Beloved, they can try what I say or not.

Now it is not a boulder that I am trying to keep from rolling down a mountain. Each person has their own mountain to climb in their life, their own habits and histories, good or bad, trailing them like Marley’s Ghost in A Christmas Carol. I can suggest a tool to loosen a link of diabetes, or a slightly different trail up the mountain. Then it is up to them. I can’t carry them and should not carry them. Maybe they are approaching a patch of scree and I can suggest an easier or safer path. And then stand aside, stand down, let the people go.

Now I am not pushing a huge rock. I am standing on my own mountain, quiet, and looking at the path behind. I am resting a little and on my own path. I don’t know what will be around the next bend in the path. But I love the mountain and the forests and the birds and the ocean. All of it.

Thank you, oh Best Beloved.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: olympics!