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Weird Psychological Insights

Epiphany While Painting a Dresser

You find the oddest bits and pieces on your journey to self-discovery

Holly Jahangiri
3 min readMay 19, 2020

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First Coat: The Patient May Live! Photo by Author

Commitment Issues? Curiosity Killed the Cat

I always like the idea of studying medicine. The risk of killing the patient — not so much. As a kid, I enjoyed shows like Quincy, M.E. and as an adult, CSI and NCIS. The science is interesting and you can’t kill a person who is already dead. So “Coroner” or “Medical Examiner” might have worked as a career. That is, until I learned what people look and smell like when they’re dead and really ripe, or they’ve been in the water a while before their bodies are discovered.

Flash forward: I learned, while working for a well-known PC manufacturer, that part of my terror in opening the case of a PC was akin to the thought of being a surgeon and making that first incision. Once you’re in, you’re committed. The “patient” lives or dies; it’s on you. That’s fine, but that first incision implies a terrible responsibility. I could work on a PC if someone ELSE removed the case, though. I loved exploring the “guts” of the machine in a lab, where all the cases were tossed aside.

Until that epiphany, I’d have laughed in your face if you’d said I might have “commitment…

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Holly Jahangiri
Holly Jahangiri

Written by Holly Jahangiri

Writer and Kid-at-Heart, often found at https://jahangiri.us. Subscribe to my (free!) Newsletter: https://hollyjahangiri.substack.com

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