"Open heart surgery often looks like murder if you judge it halfway through"- Dr Tommy Wood

I read this quote from my friend the other day and it struck me so bluntly that I had to write it down. In context, it was about how our supposition of outcome in the current situation is based on an incomplete picture. Until we have more data and hindsight, the totality of our current efforts can not be evaluated. What struck me, though, is how this applies to so much else.

When we are attempting change, it often is a bit of an ugly process. Like politics, no one wants to see how the sausage is made. So we scroll through pictures of physical transformations, we read blog posts of those who have overcome seeming insurmountable odds, we listen to David Goggins yell about something. We love to see the caterpillar emerge as the butterfly, but that whole cocoon phase is a little boring.

In reality, though, that is the change. The boring, monotonous, ugly middle is the value. The failures and missteps and frustrations and tears are where we grow. The pain is our education, not the diploma.

So remember that the next time you forget that you are in the middle of a healing procedure, it might look like murder. But you are the greatest expert on you. You are the surgeon. Yet no one will be privy to the surgery but you; the “after” pic won’t show any of the scars. And that’s ok.