“不如歸去，不如歸去……” It was said that cuckoo birds
sang like this. I had heard cuckoo
sang. I could not link together the
sounds it made and the four Chinese words spelling out the desire to leave and
to return to wherever one belonged. Not
until this month.
A neurosurgeon one year senior
than me collapsed and died during a hiking trip. A hall-mate in his fifties chose to end his
life. A colleague had a sudden stroke
and stayed in ICU for a few days. We
were all sad to hear such news. Dormant
Whatsapp groups became active again with self-debriefing messages. Some stressed on the impermanence of lives,
recalling the brief encounters few days before those tragic incidents. Some wrote canned encouraging proverbs,
reminding everyone to treasure what we had.
Some literally turned the Whatsapp group into Personal Emergency Link
Service and asked everyone to call for help there no matter what devastating
problem they faced.
Suddenly, 不如歸去 rang in my head. If you said it
in Putonghua, it matched. There was even
a tingle of sadness and helplessness in it.
It was our mind that painted the world.
It was perception that mattered.
Tired and weary travelers were homesick.
Whatever the cuckoo sang, they could fill in similar lyrics. The cuckoo reminded me of 歸去，也無風雨也無晴。Working diligently or chasing for goals
seemed meaningless. Was it time to leave
all these and return to tranquility, where glory or hardship did not matter?
Cuckoos sang via Whatsapp
also. Many friends got the message of 不如歸去. Retiring became a hot topic in discussion
groups. Work was stressful physically
and mentally. Performing surgery pumped
your adrenalin, but it also exhausted you.
Post operative management disturbed sleep. Family doctors had very long working hours
and virtually deprived them of private lives.
What if we retired and left work alone?
Most said that they would do things they were interested in but did not
have time to enjoy before. I had heard
this vague idea from my patients too often.
Reality was that most of them became depressed after retiring for a
while, as they had all along been absorbed in work and what they thought they
were interested in were all fantasies.
As we had not retired yet, sharing fantasies did no harm. Some said that they wanted to travel around
the world. Others challenged that one
could not wander for years. One said
that he would like to run a coffee shop, so that he could chat everyday with
customers. I hinted that he could
continue his practice as family doctor, as patients from all walks of life paid
to chat with him already. Some wanted to
learn something new. Others then posted
information on CME and various courses.
Finally, an ophthalmologist honestly admitted that he was most
interested in going to clinic and seeing patients everyday. Messages gradually tailed off with most of us
realizing working was not that bad. We
might just need to adjust our schedules and attitudes.
不如歸去 was more than retiring. Life was
more than work. You might get more frustration
if you stopped working and had more time, unless you cut yourselves off from
all the news and social media. I was not
talking about the inequalities and wrongs done that appeared too often. We were not living in a utopia. These things were bound to happen. They made you sad or angry. They would not frustrate you. It was how the society reacted to such wrongs
that frustrated you. Prevarication was introduced
and worshiped. Eventually, while people
still maintained the common sense interpretation of right and wrong, they spinned
that there was no act of wrong-doing; or at least they did not see any cogent
evidence of such act. Finally, people
decided to dispense of all the trouble. As
morality was common belief of the society, just worked on to change the meaning
of “wrong” would do. Facing such
corruption, one could do nothing. It was
this learned helplessness that called for
不如歸去.
I was sure that Professor Yuen heard that cuckoo songs clearly when he
decided to quit. But, where to go? Where to hide from one’s consciousness?
Cuckoos, please keep
singing. Please keep singing to those
people. Hope that one day, they would
realize that what they seemingly gained did not worth what they had done. 不如，歸去。
(Source: HKMA News February 2016)
